Senate Passes Non-Binding Budget in 13 Hour 'Vote-a-Rama'

Saturday, March 23, 2013 by Common Dreams
- Jon Queally, staff writer 

 

After thirteen hours of voting that lasted into the early hours of the morning, the US Senate passed its first budget in nearly four years just after 3 am on Saturday.

The budget passed narrowly 50 to 49 on a largely partisan vote at 4:56 a.m. There was much to yawn about, however, and seemingly little to cheer for a Senate this week that found it impossible to find enough votes to re-instate the assault weapons ban or put any meaningful measures in place to curtail the runaway gun violence in the country.

In addition to a vote calling for the approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline from Canada and a vote against signing an international arms trade treaty, the Senate voted on nearly a hundred other separate amendments.

Among those were a slew of Republican-backed amendments designed to undermine protections for the nation’s air, land, wildlife and public health.

According to the Center of Biological Diversity, the GOP's "backdoor" proposals included efforts to stop the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and slash funding for protection of native wildlife under the Endangered Species Act, placing hundreds of animals and plants at risk of extinction.

“Senate Republicans once again pandered to powerful special interests at the expense of wildlife, our climate and a healthy environment for people,” said Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s ugly to see so many politicians doing so much to try to dismantle crucial environmental laws.”

The Senate's budget, which passed 50-49, was recounted by the Associated Press with the following:

Many of the proposals were offered in hopes of inflicting political damage on Democratic senators up for re-election in GOP-leaning states like Alaska and Louisiana.

Some $1 trillion in new revenue would flow to the government over the coming decade — on top of more than $600 billion in taxes on upper-income earners approved in January — and would be coupled with a net $875 billion in spending cuts. Those reductions would be generated by modest cuts to federal health care programs, domestic agencies and the Pentagon and reduced government borrowing costs. The budget proposes $100 billion in new spending for infrastructure projects and job training programs.

The president will reveal his own overdue tax-and-spending plan in two weeks, a plan that will be judged in part by whether it offers new, more politically risky proposals that could form the foundation for a bipartisan agreement between the two houses.

And Politico added:

The 12-hour series of votes — more than 100 amendments were considered, breaking a previous “vote-a-rama” record — is mostly political theater and gives both sides the opportunity to force votes on pet issues. The budget is non-binding, therefore none of the passed amendments will likely carry the weight of law.

But the votes are symbolic victories, demonstrating the ability of one side to rally enough senators to support a measure in hopes of using those votes for future bills. It also gives both sides a litany of roll calls to try to clobber their opponents during the next election.

The Hill cataloged just some of the most distracting and ideological of the GOP amendments, all of which went down to defeat:

- Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) amendment 184, to expedite exports from the United States through reform of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 in such a manner that greenhouse gas emissions produced outside the United States by any good exported from the United States are not subject to the requirements of that Act, passed by voice vote.

- Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) amendment 382, to increase funding for interstate bridges and pay for it with funding that would have gone to for foreign assistance and the Department of Energy loan guarantees, failed 26-72.

- Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) amendment 526, to require photo ID to vote in federal elections, failed 44-54

- Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) amendment 338, to end subsidized mobile phone service, failed 46-53.

- Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) amendment 471, to reduce aid to Egypt to pay for the East Coast Missile Defense Shield, 25-74.

- Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) amendment 702, to raise a point of order to prohibit funds to the United Nations while any member nation forces involuntary abortions, 38-61

- Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) amendment 673, to raise a point of order on a bill that would limit the Second Amendment, failed 50-49 to waive the budget act (60 votes are required).

Treasury Dept. warns of ‘extraordinary measures’ amid fiscal cliff deadlock

(The fact the Democrats are playing along with this fake fiscal cliff lowers the little credibility they had almost down to nothing. Both parties are using this scare tactic to justify cutting social security and the people aren't going to fall for it.--jef)

By Dominic Rushe, The Guardian
Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Barack Obama cuts short holiday to tackle budget crisis as country faces breaching its $16.4tn debt limit

US Treasury secretary Tim Geithner warned on Wednesday he would have to take “extraordinary measures” to avoid a default on the US’s legal obligations as the country is set to breach its $16.4tn (£10.16tn) debt limit.

In a letter to Congress, Geithner said the debt ceiling would be reached on 31 December and that the Treasury could raise $200bn (£124bn) to fund government spending as a stopgap measure. But he warned that the current impasse over the fiscal cliff budget crisis meant it was uncertain how long that money would last.

“Under normal circumstances, that amount of headroom would last approximately two months.

“However, given the significant uncertainty that now exists with regard to unresolved tax and spending policies for 2013, it is not possible to predict the effective duration of these measures,” Geithner warned.

In the two-paragraph letter Geithner also warned that “the extent to which the upcoming tax filing season will be delayed as a result of these unresolved policy questions is also uncertain.”

A similar row over increases in the debt ceiling in the summer of 2011 led to a historic downgrade of the US’s credit rating and panic on stock markets around the world.

The Treasury secretary’s warning comes as Barack Obama prepared to cut short his Christmas holiday in Hawaii, with the intention of returning to Washington in the hope of restarting the stalled budget talks.

Discussions with House speaker John Boehner collapsed last week after the top ranking Republican launched his own “Plan B” aimed at tackling the year-end budget crisis. But Boehner’s plan also fell after members of his own party threatened to block any deal that would raise taxes.

Boehner and other senior Republicans released a statement on Wednesday saying: “The lines of communication remain open, and we will continue to work with our colleagues to avert the largest tax hike in American history, and to address the underlying problem, which is spending.”

Obama is hoping to pass a stop-gap deal through the Senate, where he has some support from Republicans. The president wants to implement measures that would raise taxes on those earning over $250,000 (£155,000) while preserving most of the other tax cuts under threat, delaying spending cuts and extending unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed.

Boehner said the Senate would have to make the first move before the House would commit to voting on any bill. He said two bills had already been put forward to tackle the crisis.

“If the Senate will not approve and send them to the president to be signed into law in their current form, they must be amended and returned to the House. Once this has occurred, the House will then consider whether to accept the bills as amended, or to send them back to the Senate with additional amendments,” he said.

The Treasury said it can free up around $200bn (£124bn) by taking four “extraordinary measures.” Nearly all the measures relate to peripheral investments that the Treasury makes in certain funds.

In essence, the Treasury will act like an indebted consumer who stops running up his credit card when he already has more bills than he can pay. The result: the Treasury will not cut its debt, but only stop spending until its credit limit is raised again. Only Congress can raise the debt limit.

The department took similar measures last year, when the US passed the debt ceiling limit in May and Congress didn’t increase it again until August. The most remarkable of the extraordinary measures includes allowing the Treasury to redeem, or stop, any investments in two major pension funds.

The first is the civil service retirement and disability fund. The CSRDF, as it is known, is a kind of pension fund that provides defined benefits (stock market-linked retirement incomes) to retired and disabled federal employees.

The US Treasury puts about $6bn (£4bn)a month into the fund – not in cash, but in Treasury securities. The Treasury would either redeem some of those securities or suspend new payments. It could also choose to continue to make payments to the fund, but if the debt ceiling is not raised within two months, the Treasury would have to stop.

The second major pension fund is the government securities investment fund, or G Fund, which is part of the federal employees’ retirement system thrift savings plan. Like the CSRDF, the G Fund is invested in special securities. But, because the G Fund matures every day, the Treasury can immediately free up money by suspending the whole thing. Suspending the G Fund will do the most to make room for the Treasury, freeing up $156bn (£96bn) of the $200bn (£124bn) it’s aiming for.

After Congress raises the debt ceiling, the Treasury has to make up for all the payments it missed to the pension funds, so none of the employees will be hurt.

The Treasury will also temporarily stop issuing state and local government securities or SLGS – bonds it created to help state and local governments reinvest any profits made from issuing regular municipal securities.

Since state and local governments are not allowed to reinvest their profits in other, riskier kinds of investments, the Treasury gives them SLGS bonds as a way of holding their money safe.

But stopping SGLS bonds won’t cut the country’s debt; it will only avoid adding to it. In its most minor move, the Treasury will stop contributing to the exchange stabilisation fund, which it uses to buy foreign currencies. The public debt of the US is increasing at about $100bn per month, the Treasury said.

Shutdown Closer as Senate Blocks Spending Bill

by: Jennifer Steinhauer, The New York Times News Service | Report

Saturday 24 September 2011

Washington - An impasse between the House and Senate over a bill to keep the government open after Sept. 30 and provide aid to natural disaster victims deepened Friday as the Senate easily shot down a House measure passed just hours before.

House members, considering their work done, headed home to their districts for a week’s recess, trailing uncertainty behind them since no resolution to the standoff appeared imminent. The Senate set a procedural vote for Monday evening in an effort to advance an alternative, but it was unclear whether it could draw sufficient support or whether Republican leaders would call members of the House back to consider it even if did pass the Senate.

The dispute meant that less than six months after the fiscal throwdown that left the government at the precipice of a shutdown last spring, Congress has brought the nation there again. While the government has until next Friday before it runs out of money, the $175 million in an emergency aid fund for disaster victims is set to run dry as early as Tuesday.

After House approval of its stopgap bill after midnight on Friday, the Senate voted 59 to 36 to set aside the House bill, with a handful of conservative Republicans joining with Democrats to deliver a quick and decisive rejection. Democrats opposed the measure because the disaster relief effort was offset by spending cuts to other programs dear to them. Conservatives appeared to feel their House colleagues had failed to cut short-term spending deeply enough.

The House bill, which had passed on the second attempt after cuts were added to appeal to conservatives, provided $3.65 billion in disaster relief. The money was offset by cuts to an Energy Department loan program for energy-efficient cars and another department program that was used to guarantee a loan for Solyndra, the solar equipment manufacturer that filed recently for bankruptcy protection.

After that measure failed in the Senate, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said he would counter Monday with a new bill that would embrace the House disaster relief amount, far less than the $6.9 billion the Senate had sought, but still reject any offsets, which Democrats and some Republicans say set an uncomfortable precedent. Asked by a reporter if another form of offset would be acceptable to Mr. Reid, he snapped, “No.”

However, Mr. Reid declined to allow a vote on his bill on Friday, saying he needed the weekend to try to cut a deal with Republicans. “Take a weekend, work with us, cool off,” Mr. Reid said in a news conference. It is also likely that Democrats hope Republicans come under pressure in their districts over the weekend to pass quickly a bill with disaster relief.

But the ticking clock may work against Mr. Reid. If his bill cannot pass the chamber — and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said it would not — he will be left with just hours before the federal emergency money runs dry and a House scattered through the nation.

House members were told Friday that no votes were scheduled until Oct. 3, though the House will be in pro forma session next week. Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat, said Friday that he believed that if the Senate bill received 60 votes, it could pass the House by unanimous consent without lawmakers returning, an optimistic assessment given the partisan atmosphere.

Indeed, 24 Republicans voted against their own party’s bill early on Friday morning, because it did not cut enough current-year spending even though an agreement reached in July with both parties to raise the debt ceiling set the spending levels.

Without an agreement on a bill to pay for federal operations beginning Oct. 1, the government would run out of money before lawmakers returned unless some resolution was found. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has postponed several repair projects, and the money in its disaster bank is at its lowest levels in history.

On Friday, four governors from states hit by natural disasters — Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Bev Perdue of North Carolina, both Democrats, and Chris Christie of New Jersey and Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, two Republicans — issued a statement criticizing the Congressional impasse.

“Within 10 days of Hurricane Katrina, Congress passed and the president signed over $60 billion in aid for the Gulf Coast,” the governors wrote. “It’s been 28 days since Irene and Lee started battering our states. We urge this Congress to move swiftly to ensure that disaster aid through FEMA and other federal programs is sufficient to start rebuilding now.”

For the entire day, both Democrats and Republicans expressed outrage and confusion over events. Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the No. 2 Senate Republican, appeared to be instructing Senator Kelly Ayotte, a freshman New Hampshire Republican, on what precisely they were voting on the floor of the Senate. Spokesmen for various leaders of both parties exchanged Twitter barbs. News conferences in overly air-conditioned conference rooms were held, with Republicans and Democrats accusing one another of bad faith.

Speaker John A. Boehner said Friday that the only way to advance the legislation would be for the Senate to capitulate and accept the House bill. “With FEMA expected to run out of disaster funding as soon as Monday, the only path to getting assistance into the hands of American families immediately is for the Senate to approve the House bill,” he said. “This is no time for delay.”

As the spending bill stalled, a spokesman for President Obama expressed alarm at the inability of Congress to reach a deal.

“The members of Congress work for the American people,” said the spokesman, Jay Carney, in a briefing with reporters. “They work for the constituents who sent them here, in their districts and states. We are absolutely confident that the vast majority of those constituents are not asking very much when they insist that Congress perform the basic functions that they were sent here to perform, and that they do not let politics get in the way of what should be a relatively straightforward exercise of funding the government.”

Jan Schakowsky Announces New Budget Plan With Focus On Jobs

Thursday, August 11, 2011 by Huffington Post

by Jordan Howard 

 

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, announced on Wednesday that she will introduce a progressive-minded budget outline aimed at putting more than two million people to work.

Titled the Emergency Jobs to Restore the American Dream Act, the plan would cost $227 billion and would be implemented over two years. It would be financed by separate legislation introduced by Schakowsky called the Fairness in Taxation Act, which would raise taxes for Americans who earn more than $1 million and $1 billion. It would also eliminate subsidies for big oil companies while closing loopholes for corporations that send American jobs overseas.

The congresswoman said that her plan would create 2.2 million jobs and decrease the unemployment rate by 1.3 percent.

"If we want to create jobs, then create jobs," Schakowsky said in a press release. "I’m not talking about "incentivizing" companies in the hopes they’ll hire someone, or cutting taxes for the so-called job creators who have done nothing of the sort. My plan creates actual new jobs."

Schakowsky’s proposal reads more like a progressive wishlist than legislation likely to be signed into law. But it does provide a template of sorts to help Democrats frame their budget argument as lawmakers enter the high-stakes super committee negotiations.

Under her plan, the following policies would be implemented:

• The School Improvement Corps would create 400,000 construction and 250,000 maintenance jobs by funding positions created by public school districts to do needed school rehabilitation improvements.

• The Park Improvement Corps would create 100,000 jobs for youth between the ages of 16 and 25 through new funding to the Department of the Interior and the USDA Forest Service’s Public Lands Corps Act. Young people would work on conservation projects on public lands including the restoration and rehabilitation of natural, cultural, and historic resources.

• The Student Jobs Corps would create 250,000 more part-time work study jobs for eligible college students through new funding for the Federal Work Study Program.

• The Neighborhood Heroes Corps would hire 300,000 new teachers, 40,000 new police officers and 12,000 new firefighters.

• The Health Corps would hire at least 40,000 health care providers, including physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurses, and health care workers to expand access in underserved rural and urban areas.

• The Child Care Corps would create 100,000 jobs in early childhood care and education through additional funding for Early Head Start.

• The Community Corps would hire 750,000 individuals to do needed work in communities, including housing rehab, weatherization, recycling, and rural conservation.

In addition, the bill would give priority to the longterm unemployed -- the so-called "99ers" who have exhausted both their state and federal unemployment benefits. Federally extended unemployment benefits are set to expire this year, even though 24 million Americans remain out of work and it takes the average worker nine months to find a new job.

“The worst deficit this country faces isn’t the budget deficit," Schakowsky said. "It’s the jobs deficit. We need to get our people and our economy moving again.”

Krugman Slams Budget Deal: 'There's No Light at the End of This Tunnel'

08.01.11 - NYTimes
If I Were In The House...

Paul Krugman writes this morning:

I guess I have to be explicit at this point: yes, I would vote no.

What about the catastrophe that would result? Several thoughts.

First, what I keep hearing from people who should know is that Treasury won’t actually run out of cash tomorrow, that it still has a few more days.

Second, the people who claim that terrible things would immediately happen in the markets also claimed that there would be a big relief rally once a deal was struck. Not so much: the Dow is down 121 right now.

Third, the idea that a temporary disruption would permanently damage faith in US institutions now seems moot; if you haven’t already lost faith in US institutions, you’re not paying attention.

Fourth, those legal options are still there. Obama can move now; and even if he eventually loses in the courts, that gives him time.

Sure, it’s risky. But the whole situation is immensely risky, thanks to the extremism and bloody-mindedness of the right. There are no safe options, and trying to play it safe when there is no safety lands you, well, where Obama is right now.

Senate rejects both Ryan and Obama budget plans

By Eric W. Dolan - RAW Story
Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

The Senate on Wednesday overwhelming rejected a budget plan proposed by Republican House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (WI) and another budget proposed by President Barack Obama.

The Hill reported that every Democrat in the Senate voted against the Ryan budget, with the exception of Sen. Charles Schumer (NY), who did not vote. Five Republican senators also voted no.

Ryan's budget plan would cut spending by $5.8 trillion over the next ten years and end the public health program Medicare, which currently supports the well-being of more than 46 million Americans. Ryan's plan would convert Medicare into a coupon program over the next decade and force many seniors to seek care from the more costly private market. It would also lower the corporate and top individual tax rates from 35 to 25 percent.

The Ryan budget was rejected by a vote of 40 to 57.

A $3.8 trillion budget plan proposed by Obama in January was unanimously rejected by Senate. Democrats said they voted against the budget because it had been supplanted by a more ambitious plan proposed by the president in April to save $4 trillion over twelve years.

The Budget Mess: A Crisis in Legitimacy

by Sheldon Richman, April 26, 2011 - The Future of Freedom Foundation

Reality has finally caught up with the ruling elite, and its members inside and outside government are in a panic. They have freely spent the taxpayers’ money for generations building a corporatist warfare-welfare state, and when that wasn’t enough to finance their projects, they borrowed just as freely. For a long while it paid off handsomely in power and wealth, but now even they realize things can’t go on as they have for so long.

This fiscal year the government will spend $3.8 trillion, more than 40 percent of which will be borrowed. In the last full year before the current administration came to power, outlays were just under $3 trillion. Earlier this year, the Office of Management and Budget estimated that under President Obama’s budget, spending in 2016 will rise to $4.5 trillion. The FY 2008 deficit stood at less than half a trillion dollars — an astounding amount in its day. It hit a record $1.88 trillion in 2009. According to administration estimates, the deficit won’t fall below a trillion dollars until 2013, then will begin rising again 2016.

Deficit projections of course depend on assumptions about economic growth. When the public is clamoring for action on the deficit, officials have an incentive be unrealistically optimistic.

Also, budget discussions overflow with opportunities for deceit. As we saw with the recent compromise over the 2011 continuing resolution, in Orwellian Washington a spending cut is really an increase.

Deficit spending has had a deep structural effect on America’s political economy. In mid April the national debt was $14.3 trillion, about 98 percent of GDP. Last year the administration’s Mid-Session Budget Review projected the debt would hit 100 percent of GDP by 2012, and would double by 2020, exceeding 100 percent of GDP for the rest of the decade.

To see the yearly budget impact of that, in 2010 the U.S. government paid more than $400 billion in interest, a little less than the Medicare budget — the fourth largest budget item. This year the government is on track to exceed that amount. It is estimated that in 2019 the government will pay $700 billion in interest.

Obama’s profligate spending should not lead us to think he succeeded a budget hawk in office. On the contrary, the eight years of George W. Bush saw outlays go from $1.9 trillion to nearly $3 trillion and the debt go from $5.7 trillion to $10.7 trillion.

Virtually everyone agrees that the current situation is unsustainable. It’s easy to see why the ruling elite think so. They are concerned that if some control is not achieved over spending, by 2025 all revenues collected by the national government will be swallowed up by Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and interest on the debt. But then how will the politicians do all the other things they do: subsidizing pet projects (many of which are carried on by well-connected businesses); policing the globe for political and economic reasons (fighting overt and covert wars and channeling billions to the military-industrial complex); and generally centralizing power in Washington, D.C.?


The regime faces a double crisis. The first is fiscal: Unless it does something, it won’t have the money to maintain the gravy train. The other is a crisis in legitimacy. People are catching on that the borrowing power hides the cost of government, imposing burdens on future generations. If politicians don’t appear to fix things their careers are in jeopardy.

Hence, Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s House-backed meager “Path to Prosperity” and Obama’s expression of support for modest budget cuts (plus tax increases on the wealthy). But both approaches, whatever their differences in detail and style, have one overriding feature in common: Both aim to preserve the corporatist warfare-welfare state. Neither represents a serious rethinking of the role of government. In the end, there will be little change, no matter who prevails.

House Passes GOP Plan to Erase Medicare, Cripple Medicaid

Friday, April 15, 2011 by Agence France-Presse
US House Passes Republican Spending Plan

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's Republican foes in the US House of Representatives muscled their politically risky budget to passage Friday, calling it the cure to out-of-control government spending.

US Speaker of the House John Boehner. The GOP budget, put forth by Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, slashes taxes on the richest Americans and corporations while cutting the Medicare and Medicaid health programs for the elderly, poor, and disabled. In an almost perfectly party-line vote, lawmakers voted 235-193 to approve the non-binding spending blueprint crafted by Republican Representative Paul Ryan and roundly denounced by Democrats from Obama on down.

Ryan's budget aims to cut some $4.4 trillion from deficits over the next decade, slash taxes on the richest Americans and corporations, and cut the Medicare and Medicaid health programs for the elderly, poor, and disabled.

"It's a serious step in the right direction. And I'm really hopeful that the president will take his job as seriously as we're taking ours," Republican House Speaker John Boehner said ahead of the vote.

The measure seemed sure to die in the Democratic-held Senate.

Democrats have pounded away at the Medicare and Medicaid cuts, warning elderly voters who helped Republicans rout them in November elections that enacting the blueprint would destroy the popular health programs.

"Do you realize that your leadership is asking you to cast a vote today to abolish Medicare as we know it?" Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a speech on the House floor.

Ryan's plan aims to limit the potential political damage by keeping benefits intact for people currently 55 years old or over while selling younger voters on the idea that the cuts are the price of saving the popular programs.

Ryan's plan would privatize the Medicare health program for older Americans, providing payments directly to private insurance plans, and turn the Medicaid health program for the poor from a partnership between Washington and the states into block grants from the federal government.

Critics have charged that the Medicare approach is a recipe for cost controls by rationing care, and that the Medicaid plan would starve states of cash if an economic downturn forces more people to seek shelter in that program.

The two programs, enacted in 1965, reach nearly 100 million Americans and are critical parts of the fraying US social safety net, burdened by a surge in retirees and swollen by growing ranks of newly poor in the 2008 economic crisis.

House Progressives: End The Wars, Save The Economy

Wednesday, April 13, 2011 by TalkingPointsMemo
by Evan McMorris-Santoro

Representatives from the 77-member House Progressive Caucus gathered at the Capitol on Wednesday to roll out their plan to cut the deficit and put the budget back into balance. Their simple solution: pull the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, install a public option for health care, raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations and voila, America is fixed.

The caucus plan, known as The People's Budget, was explained in some detail by Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs last week.

Today, progressive members extolled the virtues of the plan as members sat waiting for President Obama to introduce a deficit reduction plan many Democrats worried would sacrifice necessary spending on the altar of a mistaken understanding of fiscal responsibility.

Sachs was on hand at Wednesday's presser. He called the progressive plan "the only budget proposal that makes sense in this country."

The Republican budget plan authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) "obviously would destroy our government and hit the poorest people in this country all for the sake, the obsessive sake, of lowering tax rates further for the richest people in this country."

"And unfortunately, the President goes halfway," Sachs added. "When he speaks today, he's also talking about freezing, cutting the civilian discretionary budget in this country."

The members said their budget fixes things the right way.

"We feel [our budget] is rooted in fairness, recognizing that if this country's going to work, it's got to work for everyone," Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), co-chair of the caucus, said.

Grijalva said the American people want a budget that will "preserve Social Security" and "enhance Medicare and Medicaid." Americans want "education to be invested in" and they want "policies that will create jobs."

The way to get there, Grijalva and the rest of the caucus members at the press event today said, is through an increase in taxes and ending the wars.

"We want to cut," Grijalva added. What's on the progressive caucus chopping block? "Eliminating unnecessary weapons systems from the Defense Department, eliminating huge tax credits for oil and gas industries, eliminating subsidies for new nuclear power plans," Grijalva said.

The plan would "eliminate the deficit," supporters say, and put the nation budget in surplus by 2021. Read the whole plan here.

"Budgets set priorities," Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the other chair of the caucus, explained. "You can look at any nation's budget, or any family's budget and you can determine what they value, what they think really matters."

"Now what we think in the progressive caucus matters...is equity," he continued. "That means we ask the most wealthy Americans to help us carry the load of the expense of this nation. Another key value we care about is peace. So we're getting out of these wars, they're not bringing peace to America and they're incredibly expensive, not only in dollars but in the lives of our American soldiers."

This is the fourth time the caucus has introduced its own budget, and Grijalva told reporters that though a budget predicated on tax increases and an end to the wars is a decided longshot on Capitol Hill, introducing it puts the progressive message into the debate over how to clean up the national budget mess.

"The motivation was to compare and contrast," he said. "We are trying with this budget to say that there are other choices out there for the American people. It's not always the choice of compromising in the middle or playing around the edges."

Rep. John Conyers (R-MI), a member of the caucus and a veteran of his share of longshot political fights, said that the only way plans like his caucus' budget will come to pass is if progressives fight for it in the way the tea party has fought for policies similar to the Ryan budget.

"It's about time we start joining with our allies and marching, and protesting and going to the White House," he said. "The rhetoric is beautiful, the speeches are great, but until we start protesting with thousands of people backing up the Progressive Caucus, we're just another group that issues press releases on Wednesday."

The Ryan Budget Plan and the Beltway Media

Tuesday, April 12, 2011 by Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)
Mr. Serious

NEW YORK - The budget proposal released last week by Rep. Paul Ryan (R.-Wisc.) includes tax cuts for the wealthy, tax hikes for the middle class, drastic cuts in spending and a radical restructuring of Medicare that would shift most of the cost of healthcare to seniors. Its dubious claims of deficit reduction rely on fatally flawed assumptions and inexplicable projections (Center for Budget & Policy Priorities, 4/7/11; CEPR, 4/11).

But much of the media coverage about the plan has presented Ryan's proposal as a serious solution to long-term budget problems, or at least the starting point of a serious conversation about the topic.

In Time magazine (4/18/11), readers learned that Paul Ryan--described as having "jet black hair and a touch of Eagle Scout to him"--has unveiled an ambitious package of huge budget cuts designed to dig the country out of its crippling debt crisis. For Ryan, reining in spending is nothing less than an act of patriotic valor.

The magazine also declared that he is "a PowerPoint fanatic with an almost unsettling fluency in the fine print of massive budget documents."

Deep into the article, readers get this parenthetical warning:

(He's also been criticized for peddling fuzzy math and rosy projections. A Washington Post factcheck deemed his budget full of "dubious assertions, questionable assumptions and fishy figures.")

So someone with "an almost unsettling fluency in the fine print of massive budget documents" has presented a budget plan full of obvious problems.

How can both things be true?

For too many media outlets, probing the details of the plan is less important than telling an appealing political story: that finally someone has presented a "serious" budget proposal. Lacking evidence to demonstrate the plan's seriousness, media cite Ryan's biography in order to supply the necessary credibility.

Thus the Washington Post (4/6/11) explained that Ryan is "wonky" and "an unlikely revolutionary." The Post added that "Ryan studied economics in college, and in Congress he has embraced the weedy issues of the federal budget." The Post's lead wondered if Ryan can "really manage the hardest sales job in U.S. politics." The paper seemed to think so:
So far, the sales pitch appears to be classic Ryan. He will make his case with earnestness and a hope that a quiet explanation of budget math can swing the country in a way that previous politicians could not.

Ryan's "budget math" relies on, among other things, wildly implausible estimates concerning unemployment and government spending (Conscience of a Liberal, 4/6/11). As salesman to the corporate media, it seems Ryan is largely succeeding.

He's been making the media swoon for months now, as the January 25 New York Times made clear:

He is the guy with the piercing blue eyes, love for heavy metal on his iPod and a reputation among Democrats, including President Obama, as a Republican who has put forward budget ideas that are thoughtful and serious, if not in sync with their own.

New York Times columnist David Brooks (4/4/11) called Ryan's budget plan "the most comprehensive and most courageous budget reform proposal any of us have seen in our lifetimes.... The Ryan budget will not be enacted this year, but it will immediately reframe the domestic policy debate." Brooks went on to declare that "the Ryan budget will put all future arguments in the proper context," closing with this: "Paul Ryan has grasped reality with both hands. He’s forcing everybody else to do the same."

Even those who disagreed with Ryan's plan found ways to praise it. In Time (4/18/11), Fareed Zakaria wrote that "Ryan's plan is deeply flawed, but it is courageous." Zakaria adds that "Ryan makes magical assumptions about growth--and thus tax revenues," and that other aspects are "highly unrealistic." But still he concludes that he applauds it as "a serious effort to tackle entitlement programs."

And on NBC's Chris Matthews Show (4/10/11), pundit Gloria Borger declared:"We have to give Paul Ryan an awful lot of credit because, as all of our august colleagues have said, yes, it does define the conversation for 2012."

In a piece for Time.com, reporter Michael Grunwald (4/7/11) noted the incongruity of such praise and wondered, "What's so brave about fuzzy math in the service of Tea Party ideology"?

The Washington Post factcheck of the Ryan plan by Glenn Kessler (4/6/11)--the one cited in passing by Time--represented a genuine attempt to assess Ryan's proposal. When Ryan claims that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found his plan would produce surpluses by 2040, most outlets report it as fact--like the April 5 Los Angeles Times, which explained that Ryan's budget, according to the CBO, "would dramatically improve the nation's overall fiscal picture, reducing deficits projected in President Obama's budget and moving the federal government into surplus by 2040."

The Post's Kessler, however, reports that this claim "seriously overstates the case," since the CBO analysis "reflects the scenarios that Ryan has concocted. There are, for instance, no real revenue estimates, just an assumption that federal revenues will remain at about 19 percent of GDP." The spending cuts imagined by Ryan are equally implausible--a "bare-bones government...not experienced since before the Great Depression."

Kessler also noted that Ryan claims substantial savings--$1.4 trillion, in fact--from a repeal of the new healthcare law--without any explanation for why he rejects the CBO's determination that a repeal would actually cost hundreds of billions. The verdict was, as Time parenthetically noted, that Ryan's plan was based on "dubious assertions, questionable assumptions and fishy figures."

This illustrates one of the awkward ironies of corporate media "factcheck" articles. If the essential claims made by a politician are in fact wildly misleading, then it's not nearly enough for that to be said one time in one brief article. That assessment should be part of every single report on Ryan's budget, if journalists intend to do their job.

Congress reaches agreement on budget

By Muriel Kane - RAW Story Friday, April 8th, 2011

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has announced that the Democrats and Republicans in Congress have reached a deal to avert a government shutdown.

President Obama has also delivered a brief message, saying that "some of the cuts we agreed to will be painful [but] we protected the investments we need." He thanked Reid and Speaker John Boehner for their cooperation and added, "Today we acted on behalf of our children's future."

According to USA Today, "Boehner said the House will now take up a short-term bill to keep the government operating for a few more days while the budget deal is finalized. The deal would cover government spending until fiscal year 2011 ends on Sept. 30."

Reports are that the budget deal will not include any attempt to defund Planned Parenthood but will include as much as $40 billion in spending cuts.

House Republicans had previously spent an hour discussing the budget negotiations in an unusual late-night session as rumors swirled outside. The Tea Party, at least, wasn't happy about what they were hearing. At about 9:30 EST, Judson Phillips of Tea Party Nation had tweeted, "Boehner is selling us out tonight. We will primary Boehner next year."

About ten minutes earlier, Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo had tweeted, "Whoops! Cat out of bag." His tweet included a link to the image of an apparently premature press release from Sen. Mike Johanns (R-NE), announcing a "three-day budget agreement reached by bipartisan negotiators in the Senate and House."

According to reports gathered by The Guardian, Politico was suggesting earlier in the evening that the negotiators had "reached agreement on controversial policy riders in the stalled government funding measure, and closed in on a final compromise on cuts around $40 billion." The National Journal was also specifying a deal in which the Republican would drop their attempt to defund Planned Parenthood in return for an additional $1 billion in cuts.

Losing a Party's Soul in Budget Fight

Thursday, April 7, 2011 by The Boston Globe
by Robert Kuttner

Republicans have unveiled drastic budget plans that will either crown their success as radical reformers — or prove a huge misreading of public opinion. President Obama will play no small role in determining which way this plays out.

In the jousting over whether small differences over the 2011 budget will force a government shutdown, Obama has emphasized the importance of compromise, pointedly avoiding the subject of the broad harm in the Republican grand design. In an impromptu Tuesday press conference after talks broke down, Obama said with both pride and petulance that he had already agreed to most of the Republicans’ demands.

But his pride is misplaced. Obama’s eagerness to conciliate only whets the right’s appetite. Consider their plans for next year.

The 2012 budget proposal released Tuesday by Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan, chair of the House Budget Committee, would cut projected spending over the next decade by $5.8 trillion and further cut taxes. The plan would eliminate Medicare and Medicaid as we know them — and Social Security is next.

Ryan’s proposal to turn Medicare from a government insurance program into a voucher is a stunning gamble. Seniors would get a fixed sum to shop for private insurance. If the money didn’t buy decent coverage, they would have to supplement it with their own resources — or do without.

Medicare is hugely popular. Last September, a Pew/National Journal poll asked about converting Medicare to a voucher. Among respondents 65 and older, just 14 percent supported the idea, while 69 percent opposed it. For all respondents, 33 percent were in favor, while 52 percent were opposed.

Indeed, Obama lost serious political ground when Republicans (inaccurately) characterized Obama’s health reform as weakening Medicare. Now the Republicans are explicitly proposing to dismantle government-operated insurance for the elderly.

The GOP budget would also convert Medicaid, which serves the poor, to a block grant. The federal cost would be capped, leaving states freer to cut already meager benefits. Beyond the poor, about 40 percent of Medicaid outlays finance long-term nursing home care, a benefit that supports the middle-class elderly and spares their families huge expense.

Republicans would slash a wide range of other popular programs from Pell Grants to cancer research. They would drastically reduce funding for public agencies that monitor everything from safe food and drinking water to abusive practices by banks of the kind that crashed the economy.

The Tea Party Republicans seem so besotted with the animated rage of their far-right political base that they are mistaking that narrow energy for a broad shift in public opinion. Yet, in the absence of more clarity and leadership on the Democratic side, they may yet prevail.

Though key Democratic legislators like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and White House press secretary Jay Carney in a little-noticed written release, have decried the extremism of the Republican cuts, the missing figure in this deeper debate is Obama.

On Monday, as Ryan’s budget was leaked, Obama formally announced his reelection campaign in a video and email. The announcement was about strategy, fundraising, and a call for volunteers. The president declined to address this epic national debate about the future of government in protecting the beleaguered middle class.

But what is the next election about? Anything close to the Ryan budget would destroy not only Obama’s own aspirations for America, but repeal core, Democratic-sponsored social insurance anchors dating back to the Great Society and the New Deal.

This Republican-led debate has often seemed like the sound of one hand clapping. You’d think the president would be out there, pointing out that most of the deficit crisis was created by recession and Republican tax cuts, costing $4 trillion over a decade; and emphasizing who gets hurt by these new budget cuts.

Public opinion largely sides with the Democrats’ defense of popular social programs. But that support will remain latent unless a national debate is focused on something that only presidential leadership can achieve. As long as the debate is about who will cut more, the definition of responsible budgeting shifts steadily right, and the Tea Party wins.

Maybe Obama is waiting for just the right moment to draw a bright line. Yet political capital increases most when it is spent, not when it is saved for a rainy day.

The president’s reelection campaign slogan is “Are You In?’’ A better question might be: Is Obama In?

Want to Cut the Deficit? Restore Fair Taxes on Corporations and the Wealthy (2 articles)

Friday, March 25, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
by Deborah Burger

If the deficit hawks in Congress are serious about righting our economic ship and reducing deficits in the federal budget and many state capitols, it would we worth listening to the voices rising from the streets suggesting a very different solution than more cuts in safety net programs, education, pensions, and worker’s rights.

Greed at the upper echelons of our society is bankrupting our governments at every level. "Suggesting corporations and the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share," writes Deborah Burger, "usually earns one the reproof of advocating class warfare. But class warfare when practiced by the elites is apparently perfectly acceptable. The average CEO who was paid $27 for every dollar earned by an employer 25 years ago – during which wages have mostly fallen or stagnated – now gets a ratio of about $275 to $1."

This is not a budget fight, it’s a fight for the future of an America in which everyone should be able to retire in dignity, not worry about whether they can go to the doctor when they get sick, or whether there will still be schools for their kids.

How will we pay for it? By increasing the revenues from those who can most afford it, not by punishing those who have the least. By requiring corporations and the wealthiest individuals to pay their fair share, and stop blaming working people for an economic crisis created by Wall Street and exploited by their politician acolytes.

We’ve all heard the arguments. Pass more corporate tax breaks because that’s what makes the economy grow. Except it doesn’t.

Corporate profits per employee are at record levels. At $1.6 trillion, third quarter 2009 corporate profits were the highest ever recorded. Yet official unemployment still hovers near 9 percent, and the real jobless number is probably double that. Whatever big corporations are doing with their record profits, they are not hiring more workers.

Or the argument that our 35 percent corporate tax rate is one of the highest in the world. Except few if any major corporations pay anywhere near that amount. Half of foreign companies and about 42 percent of U.S. companies paid no U.S. income taxes for two or more years from 1998 to 2005, according to a recent Government Accounting Office study.

How do they accomplish this? Pages of corporate tax loopholes that render the supposed tax rate meaningless, loopholes not available to the average working family.

Who are some of those tax scofflaws? Bank of America and Citigroup, two of the financial institutions that, unlike workers did actually create the financial meltdown, paid no taxes in 2009. Boeing, just awarded a new $35 billion contract by the federal government to build airplanes, also paid no taxes between 2008 and 2010 despite recording $10 billion in profits those year, reports Citizens for Tax Justice.

Where’s the shared sacrifice from these corporate giants? Not from General Electric which, as the New York Times reported March 24, made $14.2 billion in profits in 2010, but paid no U.S. taxes, and was rewarded with the appointment of their top executive to head President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Apparently paying no taxes is a model for how to be competitive.

Then there’s the wealthiest Americans who won a two year extension on tax breaks in December and also profited from the near elimination of estate taxes, at a time when the richest 5 percent of Americans control 23 percent of total income, compared to just 12 percent for the 40 percent at the bottom.

According to Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management and Capgemini Consulting, there were about 3 million high net worth individuals and ultra high net wealth individuals in the US in 2009, those with investable assets, excluding primary residences and consumables, of from $1 million to $30 million.

Calculations by the Institute for Health and Socio-Economic Policy, research arm of National Nurses United, shows that a one-time wealth surcharge of 14% on those assets would more than pay for the $1.6 trillion budget deficit projection for 2011. Or, it would support about 33.8 million households at the national real median income level for 2008, pay for a year’s worth of AIDS medication for about 142 million patients, or create 34 million jobs at $50,000 per year.

In other words, we could more than balance our federal and state budgets without cutting Social Security or slashing pensions for public servants or depriving students of access to a decent education or far too many Americans of access to healthcare.

Turn off the Fox News echo chamber and you can hear the sounds of those calling for economic justice and a more fair tax system every day in the streets of Madison, Columbus, Indianapolis, and other cities across America. They have opened a door that will not be closed, and their voices are getting louder.

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Friday, March 25, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
General Electric: King of the Tax Dodgers
by Chuck Collins

Congressional Republicans are about to cut the Tsunami Warning System from the National Weather Service budget. But if General Electric paid their fair share of taxes, we could reverse this and billions in additional budget cuts.

GE — best known for its light bulbs, refrigerators — and lately, its nuclear reactors — is one of the country's biggest tax dodgers.

Recent filings show that in 2010, General Electric reported global profits of $14.2 billion, claiming $5.1 billion from U.S. operations.

How much did it pay in U.S. corporate taxes? Zero. Actually, less than zero. We taxpayers paid G.E. $3.2 billion.

As David Kocieniewski reports in The New York Times, G.E. "has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than most multinational companies."

According to Citizens for Tax Justice, between 2006 and 2010, General Electric reported $26.3 billion in pretax profits to its shareholders but paid no U.S. taxes. In fact, they received $4.2 billion in refunds from Uncle Sam for an effective tax rate of negative 15.8 percent over these five years.

General Electric accomplishes this feat by using is political muscle in Congress and lobbying for special tax treatment and corporate welfare. It also aggressively moves is profits to offshore tax havens including Bermuda, Singapore, and Luxembourg.

While several divisions of GE have struggled over the last decade, GE's accountants think of themselves as a profit center. The company¹s 975-member tax division includes many former Treasury and IRS officials who never a met a loophole they didn¹t love.

Why do we tolerate the behavior of companies like General Electric? These Benedict Arnold corporations reap all the benefits of doing business in the U.S. ­yet avoid their responsibilities for paying. Next time they have a fire at one of their plants, they should call the Fire Department in Bermuda.

GE will only pay its fair share when enough citizens wake up and demand that our politicians crack down on tax dodgers. No politician should be allowed to propose a budget cut or moan about austerity until they crack down on the scofflaws such as General Electric.

The Human Cost of Slashonomics: "Recovery" Leaves Women Behind (2 articles)

Monday, March 21, 2011 by The Nation

by Katrina vanden Heuvel

 

An important new initiative from Half in Ten, a national campaign to reduce poverty by 50 percent over the next ten years, and the Coalition on Human Needs, is putting a face on irresponsible “slash and burn” deficit reduction by showing how it would damage real lives. The organizations are collecting people’s stories so that the cruel consequences of draconian cuts to key federal programs are plain to see.

Consider the story of Carolyn, who was in her 40s when her husband of 25 years left her with two daughters. She had never received any kind of assistance and describes turning to her local community action agency as “the hardest thing I had ever done.” Her fears were quickly allayed as she “was treated with respect and was never made to feel like a drain on society.” She enrolled in a workforce development program that helped her with tuition and books while she attended community college. 

“I went to college five days a week and spent the weekend working, so I never had a day off,” writes Carolyn. “When I graduated I became a Registered Nurse, able to support myself and my family. I couldn’t have done it without the Federal Workforce Development Program and the supportive services the local Community Action Agency provided.”

But the Boehner-led “so be it” Republicans would nearly eliminate funding for Community Service Block Grants (CSBG) for the remainder of 2011, and President Obama proposes cutting it in half in 2012. The cuts would disrupt the antipoverty services provided by 1,065 community action agencies nationwide to over 20 million low-income people, including 5 million children, 2.3 million seniors and 1.7 million people with disabilities. What makes the cuts even more insane is that the agencies generate $6.54 from state, local, and private sources for every federal dollar received, according to the Coalition on Human Needs.

People like Carolyn would be hit doubly hard—not only would the community action agencies reach fewer people, but the kind of workforce development programs that allowed her to change her life would also be slashed by Republicans. In fact, at a time when 14 million Americans are out of work, more than 8 million adults and youth would lose access to job training and other employment services. Job training under the Workforce Investment Act programs for adults, youths, and dislocated workers would essentially be shut down until July 2012.

But, hey, at least folks can turn to higher education, right? Actually, not really. At a time when the US is now 12^th in the world in the percentage of 25 to 34 year olds with a college degree, the GOP bill would result in 9.4 million low-income college students losing all or some of their Pell grant. It would reduce the maximum Pell grant by a whopping 17.4 percent! (Obama would increase Pell Grant funding by 20 percent.)

The GOP cuts would be a disaster for students like this senior at University of Missouri who anonymously writes, “I will be applying to medical school at the end of this year. I come from a single-parent household and my mother makes about $20,000/year; hardly enough to put me through college. Without federal aid such as the Pell Grant, I would not have enough money to attend college at all.”

The student also works as a medical assistant at Planned Parenthood, where the GOP would eliminate all federal funding. That means zero funding for 820 health centers that do 90 percent of their work on preventive, primary care.

“I know first-hand how important the services we provide to people really are,” writes the Mizzou student. “The majority of our patients literally cannot afford to go anywhere else, and without our care, they simply would not receive services such as cancer screenings, birth control, and so much more.”

Nor would many of them be able to heat their homes, if the Chainsaw Republicans have their way, and President Obama’s 2012 budget isn’t much better. Despite the fact that a record number of households are expected to need assistance to pay for heating or cooling, the cuts in the GOP bill would essentially wipe out the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance (LIHEAP) contingency fund for 2011. The contingency fund provides aid during periods of particularly severe weather or energy price increases. Obama’s cut of about $2.5 billion would deny assistance to more than three million households.

That doesn’t sit very well with Kimberly Thompson, who turned to her local community action agency when her 89 year old, very independent grandmother was facing “nursing home institutionalization.” Through the CSBG, the agency was able to purchase a walker for her, deliver a hot lunch daily, and “provide a home care worker to do light housekeeping and help her with personal care.” The agency also signed her up for LIHEAP and “weatherized her home which lowered her utility bills and gave her more money each month to buy food and medicine.”

“All of these services enabled my grandmother to stay at home for the rest of her life until she died at the age of 92, three years later,” writes Thompson. “If she didn’t have those community services, she would have had to move to a nursing home which would have been a much greater cost to the government—and therefore, the taxpayers—and also would have caused her much emotional distress.”

What is most maddening about the budget debate is that few legislators are talking about alternatives like increasing revenues by closing obscene tax loopholes and corporate giveaways and making the wealthy pay their fair share. Instead, the proposals hit the most vulnerable people the hardest—lower-income people, children, seniors, people with disabilities, unemployed workers, and others. (For a “Better Budget for All” check out this report.)

Kudos to Half in Ten and the Coalition on Human Needs for collecting these stories and making these budget cuts real. If you have a story to tell, please share it. The only way we win this budget battle is to show the very real consequences of these abstract numbers being thrown around Washington, DC, and then organize and demand alternatives.

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Monday, March 21, 2011 by The Baltimore Sun
Recession hurt male-dominated sectors, but hiring is lagging for women

by Lorraine Mirabella 

 

It became known as the "mancession" because the recent downturn battered industries dominated by men.


But the economic battle of the sexes has taken a turn. While the nation's nascent recovery has been slow and bumpy for just about everyone, it has been almost nonexistent for women.
Of the 1.3 million jobs gained in the U.S. in the past year, 1.1 million — nearly 90 percent — went to men, Department of Labor statistics show. Women gained just 149,000 jobs during that time. If you count jobs since the recovery officially started in July 2009, men gained more than 600,000 jobs while women lost 300,000, the figures show.

"The recovery is really not happening for women at all," said Joan Entmacher, vice president for family economic security at the National Women's Law Center in Washington. "It's a slow recovery overall, but it's really leaving women behind."

Some of the disproportionate gains by men were expected because women lost far fewer jobs during the recession, but economists say that doesn't fully explain the trend. Economists point out that public sector jobs more likely to be held by women are disappearing. And some hypothesize that jobless men have been making inroads in sectors traditionally dominated by women.

But for women who have struggled for their place in the American work force — from Rosie the Riveter to Carol Bartz, the Yahoo CEO ranked as the highest-paid woman in the U.S. — this is another painful chapter.

For Annie McLhinney-Cochran, 52, of Havre de Grace, the hunt for a new job has gone nowhere for three years. She recently left San Diego to relocate to Maryland with her husband, who had lost a construction job. She has years of marketing and public relations experience and was convinced her prospects would improve on the East Coast.

"Never has it been this tough," she said. "I think women our age, those 50 on up and getting ready to retire, are the ones getting hit the most."

In San Diego, "we were just kind of making it. Some friends and family have helped. My husband had a few odd jobs. I was one of those people hanging on and hanging on," said McLhinney-Cochran. "It's an awful situation, and I don't see a lot of relief."

While women account for roughly half of the work force, a White House report released this month showed persistent pay gaps between men and women at all levels of education, with women earning about 75 percent as much as their male colleagues. Older female workers face greater pay disparity than their younger counterparts — as 25- to 34-year-olds earn 89 percent as much as men, according to the 2009 statistics.

As the nation begins to crawl out of the deep recession, women are regaining jobs at a much slower pace than they lost them. Women accounted for one of every three lost jobs in the recession, but they're filling just one in every 10 jobs added. And unemployment for women is on the rise.

"It's very frightening because long-term unemployment has worsened," Entmacher said. "It's also alarming because women make up half the labor force and women's wages are so much bigger a piece of the family budget. This is a real crisis for families, especially those headed by women."

Click here to read the rest.

Senate fails to pass two budget bills, shutdown looms

By Sahil Kapur - RAW Story
Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

WASHINGTON – The Senate on Wednesday struck down two separate budget measures for fiscal 2012, raising the stakes of an ongoing stand-off as the government's solvency hangs in the balance.

The GOP House bill H.R. 1, which cuts spending by over $60 billion, was defeated by a vote of 44-56.
The other, a White House-backed measure that cuts $6.5 billion in spending, failed 42-58.

Both required a 60-vote threshold for approval. Neither was expected to pass.

Congress failed to pass a budget for fiscal 2011 last year and since then has approved three continuing resolutions to keep the government solvent. The latest one expires on March 18, and the signs of a deal appear increasingly grim.

The failed Senate votes mean a fourth stop-gap measure is perhaps Congress's best chance to avoid a shutdown, which leaders of both parties say they do not want.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), a member of the Republican leadership, predicted Tuesday that another continuing resolution was the most likely course of action.

The Great "Budget Repair" Swindle

Deficit Reduction and the War on the Working Class
By ANTHONY DiMAGGIO

It’s certainly clichéd to claim that “those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” This dictum, however, remains as relevant today as ever, particular with regard to the state budget “crises.” Conservative claims that tax cuts for the rich are the only way of ensuring economic recovery have been tested in the past; this policy approach has failed miserably. Sadly, in the United States of Amnesia, few are aware of their own country’s basic political-economic history. Furthermore, few possess the policy expertise or knowledge needed to challenge the specifics undergirding the bi-partisan attack on state unions – undertaken in the name of promoting “balanced budgets.”

On the one hand, the public (and protestors I’ve spoken with in Madison, Wisconsin) deserve credit for rejecting claims that the “repair” of state budgets can only be achieved by eviscerating unions, public pensions, and basic health care services. On the other hand, few throughout the country seem to be aware of the specific problems with the policy arguments made by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (and other political leaders) with regard to the economic crisis.

Most Americans seem to share a vague distrust of conservative public policies (and of the political system more generally), understanding that they, as members of the working class, serve to lose in the latest neoliberal policy wave that targets any programs serving the poor and middle class. A more thorough exploration of the absurdities of conservative propaganda, however, is clearly in order. I’m thinking most specifically of the claims that collective bargaining is bankrupting the states, and promises that tax cuts (targeted at business elites and the rich) are the only effective or acceptable means of promoting economic recovery. Neither claim is even remotely grounded in available empirical evidence.

During my multiple visits to Madison and my participation in the protests against Governor Walker (during the week of February 21st to 26th), I routinely engaged with protestors who rejected claims that the elimination of collective bargaining is necessary in order to reduce growing state deficits. Few I spoke with expressed any sort of thorough or all encompassing understanding of the exact causes of the economic crisis. They were, however, intimately familiar with the political context surrounding Governor Walker’s war on unions and public services, and I was thoroughly impressed with how well they understood the unfairness of conservative demands that they pay the price for an economic crisis that they did nothing to create. I was also impressed with their ability to recognize a manufactured crisis. These protesters were angry at Walker (among other reasons) because of his false sincerity with regard to “balancing budgets.” After all, why cut taxes for businesses by more than $100 million dollars in the middle of a budget crisis? Why contribute significantly to the size of the deficit if one is truly interested in cutting it?

What seemed to make most protestors so angry was their clear understanding that the question of short term concessions (with regard to health care and pension costs) could be separated from the larger issue of collective bargaining rights. They were outraged that Governor Walker was stubbornly refusing to do separate the issues, primarily due to his longstanding ideological commitment to dismantling public sector unions. Walker has a lot of contempt for the people of Wisconsin. He’s shown that contempt with his assumption that state workers can be fooled into thinking that collective bargaining is the cause of the contemporary economic crisis and growing budget deficits.

There is little merit to the claim that Americans can no longer “afford” basic union protections due to growing budget deficits. With regard to union rights, a close examination shows that there is no relationship between the presence or absence of collective bargaining and growing state deficits. Analyzing data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, one sees that those states without collective bargaining (Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas) actually have higher deficits than states with collective bargaining. These five states’ projected deficits for fiscal year 2011 averaged 19 percent of their budget, compared to states with collective bargaining, whose deficits averaged just 14 percent of their budget. If Governor Walker is right that Wisconsin (and other states) can no longer “afford” collective bargaining, one would expect to see the exact opposite of these findings. That states outlawing collective bargaining are actually in worse fiscal shape speaks poorly of Governor Walker’s claims.

Then, of course, there is the issue of the tax cuts for the rich, so widely celebrated by Republicans (and a growing number of Democrats) as the only means for promoting economic growth and widespread prosperity. These claims are entirely lacking in empirical validity. Previous data collected by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) clearly demonstrate that tax cuts for the rich are a poor means of promoting economic growth. Closely examining previous economic cycles (characterized by periods of recession and then by economic recovery/growth), EPI finds that the 2001 Bush tax cuts (passed during the 2001 recession) were followed by a weak economic recovery, in fact the weakest recovery, when compared to the recoveries seen in the previous four economic cycles. EPI concludes that “by virtually every measure, the economy (following the 2001 recession and tax cuts) has performed worse in this business cycle than was typical of past ones.” EPI does not stand alone in this conclusion. A recent study from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities finds that tax cuts (as directed at the rich) are actually the least effective means of economic stimulus, when compared to other means of stimulus such as the extension of unemployment benefits, cuts in payroll taxes (aimed at the working class), and national fiscal assistance to states (as seen in Obama’s 2009 stimulus). These alternative options are actually far more effective in promoting economic growth because they focus on a far larger segment of the American public – a segment that is much more likely to immediately pump any money it gets into the economy in order to provide their own basic needs. Tax cuts for the rich, in contrast, may be a boon for corporate elites, but they do little to promote widespread economic growth and prosperity.

Conservatives hold it as a religion that tax cuts for the rich promote growth. As the theory goes, such cuts allow businesses the extra reserves they need to invest in hiring additional workers, therefore increasing employment, and stimulating aggregate consumer demand, economic growth, and personal incomes. None of these claims withstand basic empirical testing. Data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) spanning back to the mid-1990s through the post-2000 period demonstrate the utter bankruptcy of conservative claims. This data documents the changing national and state economic conditions as the country emerged from recession during the early 1990s, and as a number of states decided to pursue large tax cuts in the name of “promoting economic growth.”

The data from the CBPP is illuminating. It shows that the sixteen states that pursued large tax cuts actually suffered the highest growth in unemployment, experienced the weakest growth in personal incomes, witnessed the greatest declines in spending on public services, and saw the largest growth in their deficits. The “top sixteen” tax cutting states saw an average growth in unemployment of 1.4 percent, compared to the other 34 states, which saw a growth in unemployment of just one percent. The top sixteen saw a growth in personal incomes of 4.4 percent, compared to the 5.8 percent growth in the other 34 states. In the case of public services, the top sixteen saw services decline by an average 2.5 percent, compared to the other 34 states, which saw a decline in services of just 1.1 percent. With regard to state deficits, the top sixteen saw their deficits increase by an average 14.9 percent, compared to the other 34 states, whose deficits grew by just 8.9 percent. This last finding is hardly surprising, considering that large and tax cuts remove vital funding needed to sustain state spending and budgets.

There’s little room for interpretation in the above figures. Those states pursuing a conservative policy of tax cuts see their economic situations and indebtedness become qualitatively worse. There’s little reason to think that the same won’t happen again if state governors follow Wisconsin’s path, cutting taxes for the rich, while gutting basic welfare services and worker protections for most Americans.

State and national attacks on social services will also harm working class Americans. Goldman Sachs caused quite a bit of anger among Republicans when it called them out for seeking to cut spending on social services. Goldman’s recent public policy report warns against the $61 billion in proposed Republican cuts in the national budget – those seeking to force cuts in the areas of education spending, nutritional programs, housing and heating subsidies for the poor, and environmental protection. Goldman predicted that the cuts would reduce growth by as much as two percentage points through the end of the year, cutting in half annual growth projections. As Moody Analytics reports, the cuts would reduce prospects for growth by eliminating an estimated 700,000 jobs, thereby reducing aggregate consumer demand and spending. Such cuts will inevitably exact a powerful toll on a public that has been left reeling due to massive declines in personal worth and savings, in addition to suffering under growing unemployment, stagnating wages, falling home prices, skyrocketing consumer debt, and lingering economic instability.

The data above paint a stark picture. The Republican state and national political agenda, if successful, will greatly harm the American people. Tax cuts for the rich (as passed by Obama and Congressional Republicans) will not ensure sufficient economic growth, although they will greatly benefit the wealthy. The pay freeze for federal workers recently declared by Obama functions like a tax increase on the American people (after taking into account the declining value of federal workers’ pay due to inflation). At a time when the Obama administration is hypocritically cutting taxes for the rich, the pay freeze looks like a classic example of class war. Attacks on public service workers will greatly reduce Americans’ standard of living, while doing nothing to “balance budgets” and “reduce deficits” at a time when Republicans are pushing massive, budget-busting tax cuts for the rich. Deep cuts in national spending will depress economic growth, while reducing personal income and eviscerating basic public services. It is difficult to see how these changes will in any way benefit the working class.

The assault on public unions, social welfare services and environmental protections, and the obsession with tax cuts for the rich are all part of a larger neoliberal class war, declared by both parties against the American people. The sooner we master the specifics of these reactionary policies, the better position we will be in not only combating them, but in demanding better policies that ensure prosperity for the American worker.

Most Americans know that their political officials are not working in favor of the common good. We need to move beyond such a vague distrust, however, and begin to grasp the specific policy problems that confront us. The protests in Wisconsin are a major step in the right direction, as those who are demonstrating against Walker have developed an impressive knowledge of the policy details at hand. Their success shows that the rest of the American public can, and must become better educated if they are to work toward democratic, progressive change.

The Spending Cut Fallacy

(...sigh...--jef)

Why Slashing the Budget Won't Help 25 Million Americans Looking for Work
By DEAN BAKER

The politicians in Washington and the media have been busy setting the scene for a great battle over the 2011 budget. The newly empowered congressional Republicans are demanding large cuts to get spending under control. President Obama and the Democrats in the Senate promise to defend important public programs. This heated political contest is taking place against a backdrop of a possible government shutdown, just like two soldiers crossing swords in a burning building.

Yes, this is exciting theater. Meanwhile, no one is paying attention to the fact that 25 million people are unemployed, underemployed or have given up looking for work altogether. The reason for so much unemployment is not a secret; we don't have enough demand in the economy. The housing bubble had been driving the economy until it collapsed beginning in 2007. When the bubble burst, the millions of jobs created by the bubble-driven construction boom disappeared. The plunge in house prices also brought an end to the consumption boom, which had been driven by housing wealth. Together, the drop in construction and consumption led to a falloff in annual demand of more than $1.2 trillion, almost 10% of the economy.

The private sector will not replace this demand any time soon. And that means we need additional government spending to generate jobs, or we are left with very high rates of unemployment. Note that this fact has nothing to do with whether we like the government or like the private sector more. Private businesses are not going to start expanding and hiring people because we cut government spending. Just go ask your nearest storeowner how many more people she will hire if the government cuts its spending.

Businesses will expand and hire people when they see that there is more demand for their products. The federal government is the only force with the ability to create enough demand to get the economy back on its feet right now. The stimulus package Congress enacted was a step in the right direction, but it was nowhere near large enough. When you cut through the hype, the size of the annual stimulus in 2009 and 2010 was about $300 billion a year. Roughly half of this was offset by cutbacks at the state and local level. Translation: We were trying to fill a $1.2 trillion hole with a net stimulus from the government sector of $150 billion. While research shows the stimulus was actually more effective than predicted, we need much more to get the unemployment rate down to normal levels. Unfortunately, the politicians in Washington are too scared to say the simple truth: We need more spending to get the economy back on its feet, not less.

This is why the public has already lost the budget debate. The elites who dominate the national political agenda have entirely written jobs out of the picture. They have created a bogeyman in the form of the national debt and told everyone that we have to worry about. Now we have both President Obama and Republican leadership telling us how concerned they are to control the debt and trying to score points with the media in the process. The public can only lose in this picture.

On the one side we may end up with status quo budgets, which will give us unemployment rates above 6 percent for the next five years, according to both Obama and the Congressional Budget Office. Or we get a Republican budget with large cuts that will slow growth further and lead to even higher rates of unemployment. In addition, this will reduce spending in areas like cancer research and make it harder for kids to go to college. This all could be entertaining if there weren't tens of millions of people having their lives ruined because the breadwinner(s) in the families can't find a job or can't work enough hours to pay the bills.

The only way the public wins in this sort of budget standoff is if we force both parties to stop playing games and start taking measures to boost the economy and create jobs.

The Phony Budget Crisis

Wednesday, March 2, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
Forget Austerity, Tax the Rich

by Ted Rall

 

Everywhere you look, from the federal government to the states to your hometown, budget crises abound. Services are being slashed. Politicians and pundits from both parties tell us that the good times are over, that we’ve got to start living within our means.
 
It’s a lie.

Two case studies have made news lately: California, where new/old governor Jerry Brown is trying to close a $25 billion shortfall with a combination of draconian cuts in public services and a series of regressive tax increases, and Wisconsin, where right-winger Scott Walker says getting rid of unions would eliminate the state’s $137 million deficit.

Never mind the economists, most of whom say an economic death spiral is exactly the worst possible time for government to cut spending. Pro-austerity propaganda has won the day with the American public. A new Rasmussen poll funds that 58 percent of likely voters would approve of a shutdown until Democrats and Republicans can agree on what spending to cut.

The budget “crisis” is a phony construction, the result of right-wing “starve the beast” ideology. There is plenty of money out there—but the pols don’t want it.

There is no need to lay off a single teacher, close a single library for an extra hour, or raise a single fee by one red cent.

Every government can not only balance its budget, but wind up with a surplus.

The solution is simple: tax the rich.

Over the last 50 years tax rates for the bottom 80 percent of wage earners have remained almost static. Meanwhile the rich have received tax cut after tax cut after tax cut. For example, the rate paid by the top 0.01 percent—people who currently get more than $6.5 million a year—fell by half (from 70 to 35 percent).

Times are tough. Someone has to pay. Why not start with those who can most afford it?
Europe has the world’s best food, its best healthcare system and its best vacation policy. It also has one of the fairest ways to generate revenue for government: a wealth tax. In Norway, for example, you pay one percent of your net worth in addition to income tax.

What if we imposed a Norwegian-style wealth tax on the top one percent of U.S.
households? We’re not talking upper middle class here: the poorest among them is worth a mere $8.3 million. This top one percent owns 35 percent of all wealth in the United States.
“Such a wealth tax…would raise $191.1 billion each year (one percent of $19.1 trillion), a significant attack on the deficit,” Leon Friedman writes in The Nation. “If we extended the tax to the top 5 percent, we could raise $338.5 billion a year (one percent of 62 percent of $54.6 trillion).”

But that’s just the beginning. Wealthy individuals are nothing next to America’s money-sucking corporations.

Business shills whine that America’s corporate tax rate—35 percent—is one of the world’s highest. But that’s pure theory. Our real corporate rate—the rate companies actually pay after taking advantages of loopholes and deductions—is among the world’s lowest.

According to The New York Times, Boeing paid a total tax rate of 4.5 percent over the last five years. (This includes federal, state, local and foreign taxes.) Yahoo paid seven percent. GE paid 14.3 percent. Southwest Airlines paid 6.3 percent. “GE is so good at avoiding taxes that some people consider its tax department to be the best in the world, even better than any law firm’s,” reports the Times‘ David Leonhardt. “One common strategy is maximizing the amount of profit that is officially earned in countries with low tax rates.”

America’s low effective corporate tax rates have left big business swimming in cash while the country goes bust. As of March 2010 non-financial corporations in the U.S. had $26.2 trillion in assets. Seven percent of that was in cash.

The national debt is $14.1 trillion.

Which is a lot. And, you see, entirely by choice.