Tag Archives: deficit

Don’t Pass Tax Cuts For The Rich And Then Tell Me About Deficits

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
Congress passed tax cuts for the rich and cut the estate tax way down, adding $800 billion to the deficit and placing Social Security on the chopping block. No one will have predicted what’s coming next year in the name of deficit reduction: they are going after Social Security and everything else that benefits the middle class, and will hold the full faith and credit of our country hostage to get that. Choice: Gut the programs or kill the country. Action: get ready now for the coming fight.
Where We’ve Been
The Congress passed tax cuts for the rich and a huge cut in the estate tax at a time of worries about deficits and intense concentration of wealth. This act just puts the name on what has occurred since Reagan: it formalizes the collapse of We, the People democracy, replaced by plutocracy. And that was with the big Democratic majorities that we all worked so hard to elect. Next year is when it starts getting bad. Action: get ready now for the coming fight.
Here is my message to Republicans: Tax cuts for the rich were so important to you that you took the country hostage, you refused to help the unemployed, you obstructed everything to get them. You blocked unemployment checks, DADT, the DREAM Act, the START Treaty, everything. So don’t come back to me and complain about deficits, and say you need to cut the budget.
My message to the President and Democrats: Rewarding obstruction just makes things worse. You caved on, well, everything in the last two years. You pre-negotiated away things the country needs, only to have Republicans respond by increasing their demands, and then you caved on that. They filibustered something like 420 bills, not to mention judges and appointees, and you only brought the cots out once. So they just did it more. And they will do it more and more, until you stop rewarding them. Action: get ready now for the coming fight.
Worse Fights Coming
There are already signs of the start of the next fight. The big fight is when the debt ceiling has to be raised, and they can hold the country’s and world’s economy hostage to their demands. Before that, though, will be an omnibus spending bill.
Giving in to hostage takers has only solidified this kind of hostage-taking as a successful tactic. For example, last night, even while the House was capitulating to the last hostage-taking, Republicans again used the tactic to kill the omnibus spending bill. Republicans took the spending bill hostage and threatened to shut down the government if Dems didn’t accept their new demands. And Dems again gave in. As TPM puts it today,

Late last night, Harry Reid’s plan to get the federal government funded through the end of the fiscal year went up in flames, burning months and months of work by Senate appropriators and their staffs. To avert a government shutdown, Reid agreed to work out a federal funding plan with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — Congress will agree to continue funding the government at its current levels through some yet-to-be-determined point next year.
… Next year, though, this arrangement will come back to haunt Dems. … Whatever date they decide will be the deadline for resolving the next spending fight, which will occur in a dramatically different, and more conservative political environment. Republicans will demand spending cuts. And if they’re successful, the stimulative impact of the just-passed tax package will be clawed back.

If they win every time, why would they stop using the tactic? Again and again rewarded for obstruction, Republicans take new hostages. Essentially they say, again and again, “Agree to our demands or we will blow everything up.” Again and again the President and Dems cave. Rinse and repeat.
Action: get ready now for the coming fight.
How Far Will They Take This?
Just how far will they take this? Look at just how far they have taken it. Look what they have already done to the country. As CAF’s Robert Borosage put it in Top End Tax Cuts and a Collapsing Infrastructure

America is literally falling apart. Collapsing bridges, exploding water mains, crumbling levees are a deadly clear and present danger. Children go to schools that are dangerous to their health. Our declining infrastructure is also costly economically, with outmoded transport, crowded highways, slow and inadequate broadband impeding our ability to compete. As President Obama has suggested, we need to make significant investments in building a 21st-century infrastructure, in education and training, in research and development as a foundation for a revived American economy.

The new batch of conservatives is very different from anything this country is used to, and that even includes the conservatives who shut down the government in the 90s, and relentlessly investigated President Clinton and literally anyone who ever knew him. Don’t forget impeachment. They do not care about governing, they care about winning. And they now see absolute obstruction — no matter the cost to the country — as a wining tactic.
People haven’t come to grips yet with what it means when one party can just block everything, and has no interest in governing at all. The corporate right intends to use the debt ceiling and the threat of literally ruining the country to get their way. They will refuse to provide funding for anything they don’t like and threaten to kill the government if they don’t get their way. At risk: Social Security, Medicare, alternative energy programs, infrastructure funding, the Department of Education, certainly NPR, anthing to do with science, reason, civility …
They see this as their moment. They intend to reform the government in their far-right image or destroy it. If you think I am being extreme to say this, watch Fox for a while, listen to their radio shows, read their magazines and blogs. They intend to destroy the government.
Limbaugh: “We won the election, we shut it down.”

Limbaugh was talking about last night’s hostage-taking on the omnibus spending bill, but reflects what I am hearing on the radio and blogs about their attitude in general. They really, really mean it, they see this as their moment to get everything they want or just destroy the government. They don’t really care which.
Former Senator Alan Simpson recently gave a preview of conservative thinking. From Politico,

“I can’t wait for the bloodbath in April,” Simpson said, relishing the prospect of political turmoil. “When debt limit time comes, they’re going to look around and say, ‘What in the hell do we do now? We’ve got guys who will not approve the debt limit extension unless we give ‘em a piece of meat, real meat” in the form of spending cuts.
“And boy, the bloodbath will be extraordinary,” he said.

They want that “bloodbath.” They just can’t wait.
Actions:
First we have to bolster our own leaders, ask them to stop rewarding obstruction and fight for us and let them know you will fight for them if they do. We need an absolute commitment that Social Security will not be touched! Especially now that the just-passed payroll tax cut threatens Social Security’s financing.
Tell The President: Stand Up To The Hostage-Takers! Defend Social Security And Medicare.
Action: get ready now for the coming fight.
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Prevent Hostage-Taking: Add Debt Ceiling To Tax Deal!

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
If you like your Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, courts, roads, trains and the rest of what government does for We, the People, then you should pay attention to this. Early next year the Republicans will demand severe cuts to everything or they will allow the country to default on its debt. They mean it and they are planning for it. The coming “debt ceiling” fight can be averted by increasing the debt ceiling as part of this tax-cut deal.
A week ago, in Stop The Next Bad Deal: The Debt Ceiling Fight, I wrote about this,

If you think the tax cut fight led to a bad deal… it may also lead to an expectation by conservatives they will finally be able to cut, gut or shut the government in the coming fight over raising the debt ceiling. The President and Democrats in Congress should take steps now to keep them from thinking they can win that.
Early next year the country’s debt ceiling has to be raised – or else. Conservatives are likely to push for “or else” and hold the “full faith and credit of the United States” hostage to their demands to gut the middle class and democratic government.

Here is what Democrats can do: add the debt ceiling increase to this tax-cut deal or say no deal. Adding huge amounts to the deficit in this tax-cut bill is setting the Republicans up to take hostages again. But adding the debt ceiling increase to this deal prevents them from doing that.
Democrats in the House, at the maximum point of leverage, should add this to their demands for passing this tax-cut deal.
The Next Hostage-Taking Opportunity
It’s coming for sure. Conservatives see the debt ceiling fight as an opportunity to cut, gut or shut the government and are planning for it. They are planning to create a crisis — possibly the worst the country has faced — to force panic and then impose severe “Shock Doctrine” reforms. Here’s what The Hill is reporting:

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said Tuesday he’s hoping to assemble a bloc of senators who will demand tax and spending reforms before agreeing to vote to raise the U.S. debt ceiling next year.

The very idea that they might not vote to increase the debt ceiling — and allow the US government to default — tells you what is coming. But if you want more proof:

“The debt ceiling, obviously, is going to have to be increased if we’re not going to default, so the question is, what do we get in exchange for that, and what kind of fiscal controls?” said Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the incoming chairman of the House budget panel, last week on Bloomberg Television.

They are going to do this. They are going to take the biggest hostage ever. You can stop this. Democrats in the House are at the maximum leverage point. You can stop this. You can literally save the country by demanding the debt ceiling be increased in exchange for this tax-cut deal and the huge amount of debt it adds.
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It’s (Still) The Economic Paradigm, Stupid!

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

Yesterday I wrote that the President may have sacrificed his long-term vision on trade and economic/industrial policy to day-to-day concerns and politics. The tax-cut deal is another indicator that a big-picture vision has been sacrificed. But however much smoke gets thrown up to mask the real problem it’s still all about the economic paradigm.

There is still a lot of forward-thinking work to do on our economy. The big picture is, of course, jobs. It is balance of trade, a coherent and especially comprehensive economic/industrial policy, education, infrastructure. But even more than those, fixing the real economic mess is about finding a sustainable and equitable formula, and changing the equations of who gets what for what. It is a bigger picture.

But now we are totally caught in the day-to-day fights over tax cuts for the rich, giving forever more and more to the big financial institutions, letting the big corporations get away with more and more while delivering less and less and making us work harder and harder. It seems that all we do now is just react to corporate/conservative assaults. We are trying to fight off attacks on everything, everything and on every, every front.

Instead of job-creation programs we are fighting over just giving unemployed people the same unemployment benefits that American workers have always gotten. Instead of doing something about climate change we are fighting to keep the big oil companies from killing rail projects and green energy initiatives.

The corporate/conservatives are using their “Overton Window” tactics to push the discourse ever further to the right and away from addressing the real problems. (I don’t mean Glenn Beck’s book. More info here and here.) And we are now living the result.

Step back, remember how we got here. Thirty years ago the corporate conservatives launched their assault on We, the People. They elected Ronald Reagan, who declared that “We, the People are the problem,” and that decision-making by We the People (government) had gotten too big. Now the Reagan Revolution has come home to roost and we are living in the conservative dream. The rich ever richer with more and more power, the rest of us are “the help,” just trying to get by, and our minds are under continual assault from a sophisticated propaganda barrage designed to keep us from doing something about it.

The basics have not changed. The fundamental changes we need are still needed. The corporate conservatives have all the money in the world and are so well organized but they can’t fight off reality forever. The planet really is warming and the climate really is changing and it really is because of carbon. The conservative economic model really does not work and is draining the people and the planet for the benefit of just a few.

In my first post for the Campaign for America’s Future, It’s The Economic Paradigm, Stupid!, I wrote,

It is not just the economy out of whack. The business practices that brought us here — overextraction, overextension, overleveraging, overconsumption — have also whacked the planet’s resources. The fisheries are increasingly depleted. The aquifers are increasingly drained. The forests are increasingly logged. The landfills are increasingly full. And, of course, the planet is increasingly hotter.

Our economic system has also taken a toll on the people. Too many hours at a stressful workplace with too little sleep have burned many of us out. Our thinking and identity are about our jobs, not our spirit and character. Our values are devoted to markets with many of us placing making money over loving and caring for families and others. And there’s no time for that stuff anyway. We have become consumers instead of citizens and humans. Decades of falling wages, decreasing savings and increasing debt have tapped us out. Consumption has used us up. And we’re fed up.

The problems are still the problems, only more so. And we’re still fed up, only more so.
(*Please click the links)

(*Please click the links)

Previous: It’s The Economic Paradigm, Stupid!
Overton Windows links: Here, here and here.
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Tax Cuts Now Force Terrible Budget Cuts Later

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. I am a Fellow with CAF.
Deal or No Deal? OurFuture.org’s Bill Scher and Dave Johnson make their cases for and against the preliminary tax cut deal between the President and Republican leaders. Dave Johnson’s case against the deal is below. Click here for Bill Scher’s case for the deal.
The White House has announced a deal on extending tax cuts for the rich, in exchange for restoring unemployment benefit extensions for those out of work more than 26 weeks. They are also going to cut the Social Security tax and give more tax breaks to businesses. I think this is a mistake.

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9.8%: The Number That The Deficit Commission Left Out

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. I am a Fellow with CAF.
9.8%! It’s still all about jobs. It’s still an emergency. And the DC elite still don’t get it — or don’t care. They give us a “deficit commission” not a jobs commission. They’ve got it nice while the rest of us have it not-so-nice. Maybe we should move the Congress out of DC so they can see for themselves what is happening to America.
If you visit DC (and don’t go to the “wrong” areas) you see nice buildings, nice stores, nice houses, nice hotels, nice trains, nice cars and lots and lots of nice and very expensive restaurants. You see lots of nice nicely-dressed people walking in a hurry to their nice jobs. Lots of nice jobs. Nice, very expensive houses. Nice cars. Nice life. Nice fantasy.

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Tax The Rich: A Deficit Plan That Doesn’t Hit We, The People

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
Here is MY deficit-reduction plan. This plan does not reflect the views of anyone but myself — and maybe half the population. Unlike deficit plans from the “serious people” in DC, this one doesn’t annihilate the poor and gut Social Security and the middle class while passing even more of the benefits of our society up to a few at the top.
1) Restore pre-Reagan top tax rates. We didn’t have massive deficits until we reduced the top tax rates.
2) Income is income. No more reduced capital gains tax rate. The incentive to invest should be to make a bunch of money from a good investment. The reason there is a low capital gains tax rate is that the wealthy get most of their income from capital gains. And the reason they get most of their income from capital gains is there is a low capital gains rate. The resulting income shifting schemes are a drag on the rest of us. (Also applies to dividends.)
3) Income is income. Inheritance income should be taxed as income, except there should be a “democracy cap” on how much someone can inherit. We decided not to have an aristocracy when we founded this country so we shouldn’t have one.
4) Businesses should be taxed or not taxed, but not taxed AND not taxed. They shouldn’t be able to use “double Irish” or “Dutch sandwich” or operate out of PO boxes in Bermuda or the Cayman Islands. (Bonus, this also helps reduce incentives to send our jobs and factories out of the country.)
5) If you don’t pay your taxes We, the People won’t pay to provide you with services. We can start by not allowing you to have a driveway that connects to public streets, or water/sewer hookups or mail. Also we won’t enforce any contracts for you, including the one that says you “own” your house(s). And no government-developed Internet for you.
If companies like Google want to “double Irish” and “Dutch Sandwich” us or operate out of PO boxes in tax havens, we shouldn’t let them use government services like courts, or the government-developed Internet. See how well they operate without access to roads (that includes for employees to get to go to work.) How about withdrawing the limited liability protection that investors in corporations receive? And of course no protection for “intellectual property” or trademarks. Oh, yeah, no access to anyone who went to a school that used tax dollars. And no government services means no sea-lane protection for your products shipping from Chinese factories, by the way.
6) Speaking of sea-lane protection, why do we have a military budget comparable to when we faced nuclear annihilation by the Soviet empire? Bases in Germany and Japan? And why can I go to this website, pick a DC-area zip code, say 22314, and learn that “Dollar Amount of Defense Contracts Awarded to Contractors in this Zip Code from 2000 to 2009: $7,086,397,848.” Seriously, scroll down the page and look at some of the contracts and amounts awarded. I suspect there’s some serious deficit reduction to be found in the military budget. A comprehensive and very public audit of where all that money has been going since, say, 1981 might take a chunk out of the debt problem all by itself
7) I could start listing all the corporate subsidies, tax breaks, monopoly grants, schemes, contracts, etc. that we pay for, but I think you get the idea. How about calling bribery by its name: bribery, and doing something about it?
8) To the extent that implementing this plan does not clear up the deficit and start paying off the debt, how about a yearly national property tax on all individual holdings above, say, $5 million, with the tax rate progressively increasing as total wealth increases, and keep doing this each year until the debt is paid off. Perhaps start at 1% on $5 million, 2.5% at $10 million, 5% at $50 million, etc. (Hedge fund managers and investment bankers start at 50% and go up, just for the heck of it. We can call this the “get the money from where the money went tax.”)
So there is MY deficit-reduction plan. Or, instead, we could do what the “serious people” deficit-reduction plans do: cut services for We, the People, cut Social Security, cut health care, cut education, cut infrastructure, cut the things that make life better for people, and give all the money to a few at the top. Take your pick.
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The Shock Doctrine Push To Gut Social Security And Middle Class

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
Today’s Washington Post has punch two of a one-two punch. Punch one was the Simpson/Bowles “plan” to cut Social Security, cut middle-class tax breaks and programs (and dramatically cut taxes on the rich.) Punch two is pushing this plan hard with headlines claiming this solution is actually popular, while shutting out voices who explain why we shouldn’t do this. This is full-on Shock Doctrine, wait for an emergency like the terrible recession so people are in shock and want solutions, and then change everything so fast they can’t respond while telling them how this is good for them.
This is how they do it, folks, demonstrated by this story in today’s Washington Post: Consensus is forming on what steps to take in cutting the deficit,

After an election dominated by vague demands for less debt and smaller government, the sacrifices necessary to achieve those goals are coming into sharp focus. … Smaller Social Security checks and higher Medicare premiums. [. . .] the plan unveiled this month by co-chairmen Erskine B. Bowles … and Alan K. Simpson … has been respectfully received with a few exceptions by both parties. Its major elements are also winning support from a striking line-up of commentators. [. . .] The strange bedfellows are a “testament to the moderate nature” of the ideas under discussion.

Consensus? Sharp focus? Here’s your “sharp focus”: The public hates this!
That headline is the manufactured reality. The real reality is that the public just hates this, and has voted against and will vote against politicians who push it.
Last month you saw campaign ad after ad hitting Democrats who “cut $500 billion from Medicare,” and Democrats lost the senior vote and the midterms. The public hates this.
A recent Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research report showed that an overwhelming 69% of voters agreed that “politicians should keep their hands off Social Security and Medicare” when they address the deficit. The public hates this.
Only 6% of the public says the government’s priority should be deficits now. The public hates this.
An AARP poll finds that 90% of people aged 18 to 29 say Social Security is important. The public hates this.
An NBC/WSJ poll finds that 57% are against cutting Social Security no matter how bad the deficit is. The public hates this.
A USA Today poll finds that the public by 66/31 says don’t cut benefits to fix the deficit. The public hates this.
I can continue citing poll after poll; there are no polls that show the public is in any way behind this.
It’s Clear: The public hates this and will vote out any politician who does this. If you think the public didn’t like the bailouts and the politicians who voted for them, this “Deficit Commission” plan to cut Social Security is the other shoe dropping. Bailouts helped Wall Street and not Main Street and people certainly didn’t like that. But this is paying for bailing out Wall Street by hitting Main Street in the gut. And the public understands this.
But here is today’s reality: the public hates this, and the corporate media tells you how much you love it. This is how it’s done. You have heard the stories of FDR and LBJ saying “make me do it,” meaning create the public pressure that forces politicians to do act. This is a story of manufacturing consent where the elites, the Peterson Foundation, the President and the corporate right are setting up an appearance of making them do it. (We have a jobs emergency, but we get deficit commissions instead of jobs commissions?)
The public hates it but the elites are pushing ahead with their campaign anyway. If you remember the “run up” to the Iraq War, opposing voices were simply shut out of the discussion. All the “serious people” were explaining why we had no choice but to invade Iraq. And all the headlines were about the terrible threat that Iraq posed to our very existence. Seriously, it wasn’t just stories about how Iraq was going to drop a nuke on us any second now. Do you remember the smallpox scare?, where you couldn’t listen to the radio, read a newspaper or watch TV without hearing about all the terrible ways Iraq was going to attack us?
The Simpson/Bowles plan is part of a pre-arranged agenda to gut the middle class and further enrich the wealthy. The media machine is working to convince DC politicians that the public wants this done. They scare people with headlines about the terrifying things that will happen because of deficits. The only viewpoints you hear are the cutters and gutters. Those presenting the ideas the public favors – like the plan offered by Deficit Commission member Rep. Jan Schakowsky that cuts the deficit but actually strengthens Social Security — are not heard. And keep telling people how popular and necessary this is.
Result? If you are a politician in DC, you really have no way to know how the pubic feels because all you see are headlines like today’s Washington Post, telling you a consensus is forming.
This is why YOU have to respond and let YOUR members of Congress and Senators know that you are NOT going to go along with this.
Take Action
There are things YOU can do! November 30 is a national call-in day to save Social Security.
Do this: Click here and sign this petition: Tell President Obama to Reject Social Security Cuts “We must send an urgent message to President Obama – to tell him to reject the proposal to slash Social Security benefits coming from the co-chairs of his deficit commission. If President Obama tries to cut Social Security, it would spell political disaster in 2012.”
Do this: November 30 National Call Congress Day: Hands Off Social Security,

The Co-Chairs of the National Fiscal Commission have proposed carving up Social Security like a Thanksgiving turkey. They want to increase the retirement age to 69 – making us work longer, deeply cut benefits for middle-class workers and reduce annual Cost of Living Adjustments. We need your help to stop them!
Join thousands of Americans in a National Call Congress Day on Tuesday, November 30—CAN WE COUNT ON YOU?
We need your voice to be heard!
Click here to make the “Count on Me” pledge to add your voice on Tuesday, November 30 and TELL CONGRESS – DON’T CUT OUR SOCIAL SECURITY!

Please, please click these links and add your voice.
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Vote For Jobs

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture I am a Fellow with CAF.

Should you vote? Does your vote matter? If you care about jobs, your vote really, really matters this time. If the Tea Party wave does manage to take over the House and/or Senate the plans they have announced will mean a jobs crisis far beyond anything we are seeing now.
Republicans say that cutting government spending to reduce deficits (and cutting taxes on the rich to bring them back) will create jobs by lowering interest rates. While they refuse to say what they will cut, they pledge to cut a lot. What will be the effect of cuts on jobs? Lowering interest rates is not going to happen because interest rates are already zero, but the cuts will clearly cost jobs. We know this for sure because in the last two years state budget cuts caused layoffs that simply overwhelmed job creation elsewhere — so many people were laid off by states that jobs created by the stimulus and private sector just didn’t register. So we can expect more of this.
Will their tax cuts for the rich create jobs? Bush cut taxes for the rich, and his two terms created a net of … wait for it … zero jobs. So don’t hold your breath waiting for jobs to come out of that plan. Businesses need customers, not tax cuts.
So what about ideas to get customers to businesses? Don’t get your hopes up there, either. Republicans want to get rid of any remaining stimulus designed to take up the slack in demand in our economy.
How about jobs from maintaining and modernizing our infrastructure — and the long-term job creation that comes from making our economy more competitive? Republicans call maintaining and modernizing the infrastructure “government spending” and since government spending is bad, ain’t gonna happen.
What about doing something about companies that send jobs out of the country? Well just a few weeks ago Democrats voted to repeal the tax break that encourages job outsourcing. Every single Republican voted to keep it. So don’t get your hopes up there, either.
So what about working with the other side to come up with new ways to create jobs? Republicans blocked everything for the last two years — something like 420 bills were filibustered, plus many nominees to agencies and the courts. So expect more stalemate – which means no action on jobs, unemployment or anything else.
If You Care About Jobs
If you care about jobs you had best get out and vote. The change that is coming if you don’t vote is not the change you want.
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Eight False Things The Public “Knows” Prior To Election Day

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture I am a Fellow with CAF.

There are a number things the public “knows” as we head into the election that are just false. If people elect leaders based on false information, the things those leaders do in office will not be what the public expects or needs.
Here are eight of the biggest myths that are out there:

1) President Obama tripled the deficit.

Reality: Bush’s last budget had a $1.416 trillion deficit. Obama’s first budget reduced that to $1.29 trillion.
2) President Obama raised taxes, which hurt the economy.

Reality: Obama cut taxes. 40% of the “stimulus” was wasted on tax cuts which only create debt, which is why it was so much less effective than it could have been.

3) President Obama bailed out the banks.

Reality: While many people conflate the “stimulus” with the bank bailouts, the bank bailouts were requested by President Bush and his Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson. (Paulson also wanted the bailouts to be “non-reviewable by any court or any agency.”) The bailouts passed and began before the 2008 election of President Obama.

4) The stimulus didn’t work.

Reality: The stimulus worked, but was not enough. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus raised employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs.

5) Businesses will hire if they get tax cuts.

Reality: A business hires the right number of employees to meet demand. Having extra cash does not cause a business to hire, but a business that has a demand for what it does will find the money to hire. Businesses want customers, not tax cuts.

6) Health care reform costs $1 trillion.

Reality: The health care reform reduces government deficits by $138 billion.

7) Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, is “going broke,” people live longer, fewer workers per retiree, etc.

Reality: Social Security has run a surplus since it began, has a trust fund in the trillions, is completely sound for at least 25 more years and cannot legally borrow so cannot contribute to the deficit (compare that to the military budget!) Life expectancy is only longer because fewer babies die; people who reach 65 live about the same number of years as they used to.

8) Government spending takes money out of the economy.

Reality: Government is We, the People and the money it spends is on We, the People. Many people do not know that it is government that builds the roads, airports, ports, courts, schools and other things that are the soil in which business thrives. Many people think that all government spending is on “welfare” and “foreign aid” when that is only a small part of the government’s budget.

This stuff really matters.

If the public votes in a new Congress because a majority of voters think this one tripled the deficit, and as a result the new people follow the policies that actually tripled the deficit, the country could go broke.

If the public votes in a new Congress that rejects the idea of helping to create demand in the economy because they think it didn’t work, then the new Congress could do things that cause a depression.

If the public votes in a new Congress because they think the health care reform will increase the deficit when it is actually projected to reduce the deficit, then the new Congress could repeal health care reform and thereby make the deficit worse. And on it goes.

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Social Security – A Divide Between DC And The Rest Of Us

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
The DC-elite think that “the responsible thing to do” is to cut Social Security benefits. The public who they are supposed to represent overwhelmingly thinks that Social Security is one of the few remaining lifelines and must not be cut. The public strongly favors investing in rebuilding the country’s infrastructure, returning to taxation of the wealthy and corporations — especially Wall Street, and cutting back the enormous military budget as the key ways to address the budget deficit.
This morning the results of a new poll were announced, and politicians would do well to take note. The poll, A Research Study On Investment and Deficit Reduction, By Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, Democracy Corps, Campaign for Amerca’s Future is described as follows:

Politicians will face major voter backlash if they advocate cuts in Social Security benefits or choose deficit reduction over job creation, according to a poll by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner commissioned by the Campaign for America’s Future and Democracy Corps, with support from MoveOn.org; the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and the Service Employees International Union.

I’l like to bring that first sentence out and repeat it so that it is clear: Politicians will face major voter backlash if they advocate cuts in Social Security benefits or choose deficit reduction over job creation.
And again: Politicians will face major voter backlash if they advocate cuts in Social Security benefits or choose deficit reduction over job creation.
There is a brief slide show of the results here, a comprehensive Powerpoint presentation is online here, and full poll results are available here.
Key findings of the poll:

  • 68 percent said they would oppose making major spending cuts in Social Security and Medicare to reduce the deficit, while 28 percent said they would favor cutting those programs. That included 61 percent of Republicans and 56 percent of independents.
  • Strong majorities support progressive solutions for addressing the federal deficit: 63 percent back lifting the Social Security cap on incomes higher than $107,000 a year; 64 percent would favor eliminating tax breaks for corporations that outsource jobs; 62 percent would support a tax on excessive Wall Street bank profits.
  • Strong majorities also oppose common conservative proposals for addressing the budget deficit: 65 percent oppose raising the Social Security retirement age to 70; 65 percent oppose replacing Medicare with a private sector voucher; 62 percent oppose a 3 percent federal sales tax; 60 percent oppose raising the Medicare age from 65 to 67.
  • More people support a message that embraces the need for both investments in our future and reduce the deficit over time (52 percent) than a message that only stresses cuts in spending (42 percent). Also, almost equal percentages of respondents were favorable toward “a plan to invest in new industries and rebuild the country over the next five years” (60 percent) and “a plan to dramatically reduce the deficit over five years” (61 percent).
  • 62 percent of respondents support more federal to states once they understand that the aid comes in the context of states laying off teachers, first responders and other essential workers due to the recession. That includes 55 percent of independents and 48 percent of Republicans.
  • 60 percent of those surveyed responded positively to an economic message that said that “we have a budget deficit, but … we also have a massive public investment deficit” that requires us to “rebuild the infrastructure that is vital to our economy” and to the economic growth that will “generate revenues to help pay down the budget deficit.” This message tests better than any other progressive message on investment as well as more conservative messages focused on spending cuts.

    • Click here for more on the poll.
    Click here to see which members of Congress have signed the “Hands Off Social Security!” pledge
    Click here to sign the petition: Hands Off Social Security!
    Click here to visit Strengthen Social Security … don’t cut it.
    One more time: Politicians will face major voter backlash if they advocate cuts in Social Security benefits or choose deficit reduction over job creation.
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    Is It A Social Security OR A Deficit Commission?

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    This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
    Ever since President Obama set up the Deficit Commission all the talk has been about Social Security? Why?
    Social Security is separate from the rest of the US budget, is separately funded, has a huge trust fund and, most important: Social. Security. Does. Not. Contribute. To. The. Deficit. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said it best at Netroots Nation last month, calling it “apples and oranges,”

    To change Social Security in order to balance the budget, they aren’t the same thing in my view,” the Democrat said today at the Netroots Nation conference in Las Vegas. “When you talk about reducing the deficit and Social Security, you’re talking about apples and oranges.”

    So is it a DEFICIT commission or is it a SOCIAL SECURITY commission? If it is a deficit commission, then stop all of this talk about cutting Social Security, please, and start talking about the deficit. Everyone knows the deficit was caused by tax cuts for the rich and the huge increases in military spending that occurred under Reagan and then again under Bush II. (Note – there is no more Soviet Union.)
    If you want to fix the deficit then get the money from where the money went. If you decide that it IS a deficit commission, it isn’t hard to know what to do. (Please, click through, it’s not hard.)
    But instead, every day now, there is another round of attacks on Social Security. For example, this just in: Social Security, the trust fund and funny money, in today’s Washington Post, talks about the Social Security Trust Fund as “funny money.” The Trust Fund is all T-Bills. I would worry that the Chinese, Japanese and other major T-Bill holders are very, very nervous about talk like this. The Social Security T-Bills are the same T-Bills as theirs.
    And this just in: Opposing view on retirement income: Let’s upend Social Security, in today’s USA Today by Dick Armey, who was one of the corporate-funded astroturf organizers of the Tea Party “movement.” Let’s take a closer look at some of Armey’s arguments. He writes,

    The nation’s largest entitlement program is officially in the red.

    No it is not. Not if you count the huge trust fund and the interest it receives from that. It is not “in the red” officially or even when you just make things up.

    In less than 20 years, just two workers will be forced to pay the benefits of every one retiree.

    This is not how Social Security works, and has nothing to do with anything. It’s one of those made-up arguments that is designed to bamboozle people.

    President Obama’s deficit commission is considering an increase in both the retirement age and payroll taxes to “fix” the compulsory Social Security system.

    True. But why? Social. Security. Does. Not. Contribute. To. The. Deficit.

    Americans should ask, if Social Security is such a great program, why is it mandatory?

    Because otherwise too many people wouldn’t put anything away and would have to live on welfare, which the rest of us pay, instead of a good program that people pay into themselves.

    Workers should have the choice about whether they want to remain in the current system or invest in a personal saving retirement account, which would allow them to have complete control over their retirements funds and pass the remaining balance to family members.

    Because then you would have to know in advance how long you will live, which no one can do, in order to know how much to pay yourself each month from your savings. And, the money from people who die is used to give more to the people who live. Anyway, everyone already has the option to save outside of the Social Security program.
    Anyway, it goes on like that, with trick after smooth trick being used to try to bamboozle people. Slick Wall Street salespeople like Dick Armey, Pete Peterson, and the rest are after our savings, and are using every trick in the book to fool us.
    Here is the root of the attacks on Social Security: Social Security is the primary symbol of government of, by and, mostly, for the people. This is because it is a government program that works, works well, is solid, and has helped a lot of people! People who don’t like government really, really don’t like Social Security — because it works.
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    Tax Cuts Leave Nothing Behind — Infrastructure Investment Leaves Behind Infrastructure

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    This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture as part of the Making It In America project. I am a Fellow with CAF.
    Actually, the title kind of says it all, no?
    If we spend money on tax cuts, the next year we only have debt and pay interest on the debt. For a clear example, just look at the damage the Bush tax cuts have done to the country. They left behind worse than nothing — we had years of slow growth, and the cuts caused a massive deficit and debt that plagues us now. And, because we didn’t have the money to use to maintain the infrastructure we are that much further behind on that task now.
    If we spend money on improving the country’s infrastructure, we get all the job creation that comes from that work, and the next year you have that infrastructure there to help drive the economy. For a clear example, how did all that government spending on the Interstate Highway System work out for the economy? For a clear example, look at China’s investment in high-speed rail. They can now move people and goods so much more efficiently and faster between their cities, and they developed an industry that is now selling its expertise to the rest of the world.
    Our country has a huge, huge infrastructure deficit. After the Reagan tax cuts started draining the government’s ability to be a government we slowed down or stopped maintenance of the country’s roads, bridges, water and sewer systems, transit systems, schools, dams & levees and everything else that didn’t blow someone up. Our rail system is not last-century, it is century-before-last! The American Society of Civil Engineers calculates that we are $2.2 trillion behind where we need to be. As a result we have fallen behind the rest of the world in competitiveness, efficiency, and of course job creation.
    Connect the dots: We have about 10% unemployment and we have a huge, huge backlog of work that needs doing. And after that work gets done the economy will run much more smoothly and will be much more competitive.
    To me it’s a no-brainer. Everyone benefits when we invest in jobs and infrastructure. We can see all around us that tax cuts leave nothing behind, and in fact make our problems worse.
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