Grand Bargain or Grand Sell-out

BERNIE SANDERS, U.S. Senator (VT)

The media appear fixated about when and if a so-called “grand bargain” on our economy will be reached. Wrong question! The question we should be asking is: What should be in a “grand bargain” that works for the average American?

At a time when the middle class is disappearing, 46 million Americans are living in poverty and the gap between the very rich and everyone else is growing wider, we need a “grand bargain” that protects struggling working families, not billionaires.

With corporate profits at record-breaking levels while the effective corporate tax is at its lowest level since 1972, and 1 out of 4 profitable corporations pays nothing in federal income taxes, we need a grand bargain that ends corporate loopholes and demands that corporate America starts helping us with deficit reduction. We must not balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor. We must not cut Social Security, disabled veterans’ benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, education and other programs that provide opportunity and dignity to millions of struggling American families.

Before we pass a grand bargain, we have got to take a hard and sober look at what’s happening economically in our country today. In doing so, we must acknowledge that the United States has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on earth and that inequality is worse today than at any time since the late 1920s. Today, the wealthiest 400 individuals in this country own more wealth than the bottom half of America — 150 million Americans. The top 1 percent owns 38 percent of all financial wealth, while the bottom 60 percent owns just 2.3 percent. Incredibly, the Federal Reserve reported last year that median net worth for middle-class families dropped by nearly 40 percent from 2007-2010. That’s the equivalent of wiping out 18 years of savings for the average middle-class family.

The distribution of income is even worse. If you can believe it, the last study on the subject showed that all of the new income gained from 2009-2011 went to the top 1 percent. ALL of the new income!

In America today, the average middle-class family has seen its income go down by nearly $5,000 since 1999, adjusting for inflation. Real unemployment is not 7.7 percent, it is 14.3 percent, counting those workers who have given up looking for work or who are working part time when they want to be working full time. While youth unemployment is exceptionally high, millions of young people are struggling with student loans they can’t afford to pay back. While we talk about the need to strengthen the middle class, we have to understand that more than half of the new jobs that have been created since 2010 are low-wage jobs paying people between $7.80 and $13.80 an hour.

That’s the economic reality facing a large majority of our people, and that’s what has to be taken into consideration when we discuss deficit reduction and a “grand bargain.”

As a member of the Senate Budget Committee, here are my priorities:

We need a budget that puts millions of Americans back to work in decent-paying jobs by rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and transforming our energy sector away from fossil fuels and into renewable energy and energy efficiency.

We need a budget that keeps the promises we have made to our seniors, veterans and the most vulnerable by protecting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits.

We need a budget that makes sure that the wealthiest Americans and most profitable corporations pay their fair share of taxes. We must end corporate loopholes that allow Wall Street banks, large corporations and the wealthy to avoid more than $100 billion a year in federal taxes by stashing their profits in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens.

A federal budget is not just a set of numbers. It is a value statement of what we, as a nation, stand for. We must fight for a grand bargain that stands for justice, opportunity and the needs of our middle class. We must reject any approach that continues the economic assault on working families.

CBC Releases Its Budget

We’ve previously noted that the Congressional Progressive Caucus has offered a reasonable budget which both reduces the deficit and retains programming for the poor, seniors, the disabled and children. The Congressional Black Caucus, which does share some membership with the Progressive Caucus, has also made such a proposal. One notices however that while the Paul Ryan budget has received neverending coverage in the media although it does not reduce the deficit and provides even more funding via tax boonies for the 1%, the Budgets submitted by over 100 members of Congress are ignored.

An overview of the Black Caucus follows —

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FACT SHEET
CONGRESSIONAL BLACK CAUCUS ALTERNATIVE BUDGET

FY 2014
PRO-GROWTH. PRO-PEOPLE. PRO-AMERICA.

America is at a fiscal crossroads.   As Congress debates the budget for Fiscal Year 2014, many difficult but necessary choices will have to be made. But the proposals put forth by the Republicans highlight the wrong priorities by deeply cutting vital programs like Medicare, Medicaid, education, job training, and transportation to pay for tax cuts that greatly benefit the wealthy.  The most vulnerable in our nation have been hit hardest by the Great Recession and the House Republican Majority’s proposals do little to address this problem.

The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) has a long history of submitting fiscally sound and morally responsible alternatives to budgets proposed by both Republican and Democratic presidents and House majorities. The CBC Alternative Budget for Fiscal Year 2014 continues this tradition by putting forth a plan that reduces the deficit and alleviates harm inflicted by austerity measures in a responsible and fiscally sound manner. Furthermore, this budget increases economic opportunities by investing in education, infrastructure, housing, job training and through modernization of our military. In addition, the CBC Budget protects and enhances the social safety net that continues to save millions from poverty. The CBC Budget proposes significant investments in these functions to accelerate our economic recovery and to ensure our recovery is felt in every community in America.

The CBC Alternative Budget for Fiscal Year 2014 puts forth a plan that reduces the deficit and alleviates harm inflicted by austerity measures in a responsible and fiscally sound manner. Furthermore, it proposes significant investments to accelerate our economic recovery and ensure that our recovery is felt in every community in America.

The CBC Budget raises $1 trillion in new revenue to avoid sequestration, the self-inflicted economic disaster will needlessly threaten our recovery.

The CBC budget protects and enhances Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, TANF and other vital safety net programs that save millions of families from poverty.

The CBC Budget enacts tax reform measures to pay for the needs of our nation, raising over $4 trillion in new revenue over the next decade by:

o Ending special tax breaks and close tax loopholes ( $1 Trillion over 10 years)
o Limiting tax preferences for Corporate Debt ( $1.151 Trillion over 10 years)
o Enacting the “Buffet Rule” and millionaires surcharge ($460 Billion over 10 years)
o Reduce the “tax gap” through better tax enforcement ($107 Billion over 10-years)
o Ending the mortgage deduction for vacation homes and yachts ($10 billion over 10 years)

The CBC Budget creates jobs and opportunity by increasing funds for:

o Maintenance and repair for public transit, highways, airports, ports, railroads, bridges and other infrastructure investments. ($230 billion)
o Workforce development programs such as the Workforce Investment Act Adult Program, the Dislocated Workers Program, Job Corps and other employment and training services. ($13 Billion)
o Providing relief to states to preserve teacher, law enforcement and first responder jobs ($50 Billion)
o Neighborhood stabilization programs that provide affordable housing development, infrastructure improvements and other community development needs. ($50 Billion)
o Veterans programs that honor our commitment to help our nation’s soldiers after they come back from serving our country. (Increased by $50 Billion)

The CBC budget addresses health disparities by fully funding the Affordable Care Act and providing strong support of the National Institute of Health.

The CBC Budget helps keep college affordable by increasing funds for the Pell Grant program so that federal assistance can keep pace with increasing tuition costs.

Budget Proposals, the Silly and the Serious

As Paul Krugman explains in the following excerpt there are several budget proposals afloat in Washington, the Ryan proposal which is just plain silly and that of the Senate Democrats and the House Progressives which are both serious. Unfortunately, the Progressive budget, which is the best, has very little chance of passage.

Unless you’re a very careful news reader, you’ve probably heard about only one of these proposals, the one released by Senate Democrats. And let’s be clear: By comparison with the Ryan plan, and for that matter with a lot of what passes for wisdom in our nation’s capital, this is a very reasonable plan indeed.

As many observers have pointed out, conservative with a small “c”: It avoids any drastic policy changes. In particular, it steers away from draconian austerity, which is simply not needed given ultralow U.S. borrowing costs and relatively benign medium-term fiscal projections.

True, the Senate plan calls for further deficit reduction, through a mix of modest tax increases and spending cuts. (Incidentally, the tax increases still fall well short of those called for in the Bowles-Simpson plan, which Washington, for some reason, treats as something close to holy scripture.) But it avoids large short-run spending cuts, which would hobble our recovery at a time when unemployment is still disastrously high, and it even includes a modest amount of stimulus spending.

So we could definitely do worse than the Senate Democratic plan, and we probably will. It is, however, an extremely cautious proposal, one that doesn’t follow through on its own analysis. After all, if sharp spending cuts are a bad thing in a depressed economy ­ which they are ­ then the plan really should be calling for substantial though temporary spending increases. It doesn’t.

But there’s a plan that does: the proposal of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, titled “Back to Work,” which calls for substantial new spending now, temporarily widening the deficit, offset by major deficit reduction later in the next decade, largely though not entirely through higher taxes on the wealthy, corporations and pollution.

I’ve seen some people describe the caucus proposal as a “Ryan plan of the left,” but that’s unfair. There are no Ryan-style magic asterisks, trillion-dollar savings that are assumed to come from unspecified sources; this is an honest proposal. And “Back to Work” rests on solid macroeconomic analysis, not the fantasy “expansionary austerity”economics ­ the claim that slashing spending in a depressed economy somehow promotes job growth rather than deepening the depression ­ that Mr. Ryan continues to espouse despite the doctrine’s total failure in Europe.

No, the only thing the progressive caucus and Mr. Ryan share is audacity. And it’s refreshing to see someone break with the usual Washington notion that political “courage” means proposing that we hurt the poor while sparing the rich. No doubt the caucus plan is too audacious to have any chance of becoming law; but the same can be said of the Ryan plan.

SOURCE: Paul Krugman, “After the Flim Flam”,  NEW YORK TIMES (March 15, 2013)

And These Are the Progressives

From COMMON DREAMS (February 27, 2013) in a commentary by Norman Solomon:

While still on the caucus roster, three-quarters of the 70-member caucus seem lost in political smog. Those 54 members of the Progressive Caucus haven’t signed the current letter that makes a vital commitment: “we will vote against any and every cut to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security benefits — including raising the retirement age or cutting the cost of living adjustments that our constituents earned and need.”

More than 10 days ago, Congressmen Alan Grayson and Mark Takano initiated the forthright letter, circulating it among House colleagues. Addressed to President Obama, the letter has enabled members of Congress to take a historic stand: joining together in a public pledge not to vote for any cuts in Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.

The Grayson-Takano letter is a breath of fresh progressive air, blowing away the customary fog that hangs over such matters on Capitol Hill.

The Progressive Caucus co-chairs, Raul Grijalva and Keith Ellison, signed the letter. So did Barbara Lee, the caucus whip. But no signer can be found among the five vice chairs of the Progressive Caucus: Judy Chu, David Cicilline, Michael Honda, Sheila Jackson-Lee and Jan Schakowsky. The letter’s current list of signers includes just 16 members of the Progressive Caucus (along with five other House signers who aren’t part of the caucus).

What about the other 54 members of the Progressive Caucus? Their absence from the letter is a clear message to the Obama White House, which has repeatedly declared its desire to cut the Social Security cost of living adjustment as well as Medicare. In effect, those 54 non-signers are signaling: Mr. President, we call ourselves “progressive” but we are unwilling to stick our necks out by challenging you in defense of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; we want some wiggle room that you can exploit.

The Power Elite have targeted Social Security for dismantling and the Republicans are anxious to please. We know too that so-called “liberals” would compromise their grandmothers if it would please Jamie Dimon et alia. It is sad to learn that even Progressives may be willing to sacrifice the major accomplishment of the New Deal if it will put them in good with the bankster gang and their austerity agenda. I wonder if it may be a further indication that we need a Progressive PROGRESSIVE Party rather than relying of “Progressive” Democrats.

Obama Willing to Sacrifice Social Security

Obama offers to cut Social Security benefits* if Repugnanticans give way on the sequester — Do you get the feeling that the budget negotiations are between rival Republicans

President Barack Obama raised anew the issue of cutting entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security as a way out of damaging budget cuts, a White House official said on Sunday, as both sides in Washington tried to limit a fiscal crisis that may soon hit millions of Americans.

Signaling he might be ready to explore a compromise to end automatic spending cuts that began late Friday, Obama mentioned reforming these entitlement programs in calls with lawmakers from both parties on Saturday afternoon.

“He’s reaching out to Democrats who understand we have to make serious progress on long-term entitlement reform and Republicans who realize that if we had that type of entitlement reform, they’d be willing to have tax reform that raises revenues to lower the deficit,” White House senior economic official Gene Sperling said on Sunday on the CNN program “State of the Union.”

Republicans have argued that the only way to tame budget deficits over the long haul is by slowing the cost of sprawling social safety net programs.

These include the Social Security retirement program and Medicare and Medicaid healthcare programs for the elderly, disabled and poor that are becoming more expensive as a large segment of the U.S. population hits retirement age.

While Obama also has proposed some savings on these programs, he has insisted that significant new tax revenues be part of the deficit-reduction formula, an idea Republicans so far reject.

Budget fights in Congress took their most serious turn in years on Friday when $85 billion in indiscriminate spending cuts known as “sequestration” began to kick in after both parties failed to agree on how to stop them.

Democrats predict the automatic cuts could soon cause air-traffic delays, meat shortages as food safety inspections slow down, and hundreds of thousands of furloughs for federal workers.

As the budget battles rage on in Washington, sources said Obama plans to nominate on Monday Sylvia Mathews Burwell to head to White House Office of Management and Budget. A veteran of the Bill Clinton White House, Burwell is president of the Walmart Foundation, which handles the corporation’s charitable efforts.

Neither Sperling nor White House spokesmen would provide further details on Obama’s conversations on Saturday with members of Congress, and they did not identify the lawmakers to whom the president spoke.

Obama’s mention of entitlement reform may help bring Republicans to the table to halt the cuts. Republican leaders also made soothing noises on Sunday about the need to avoid a government shutdown on March 27, when funding runs out for most federal programs.

Robert Kuttner had this to say, “Next to come is the long awaited grand bargain of the austerity lobby, in which Republicans agree to close some tax loopholes and Democrats agree to breach the previously sacrosanct fortresses of Social Security and Medicare. At stake are not just the programs that progressives care deeply about but also the recovery itself and the success of the Obama presidency. The automated reductions of the sequester are only the prologue to a decade long drama, in which the economy faces one budget squeeze after another, all but guaranteeing a prolonged slump.”

SOURCE: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100515721 and additional information gathered from COMMON DREAMS ________________________________________________________

* It doesn’t seem to matter that cutting Social Security does nothing with the deficit. The General Fund does not pay out Social Security benefits and the Social Security is in surplus and will continue to be so for the next 15 years

 

We’re Not Out of Money, We’ve Got a Deficit of Common Sense

CARL GIBSON  Occupy.com/Oped

Back in the days when I used to be a legislative reporter for Mississippi’s NPR affiliate, I was covering a story where Gov. Haley Barbour refused to stop cuts to mental health programs and schools in Mississippi with money from the rainy day fund. My favorite Southern legislator, Rep. Steve Holland of Plantersville, had this to say:

“There’s hay in the barn, but we’re not feeding the horses.”

Likewise in Washington, there’s plenty of money to avoid the $85 billion in sequester cuts that will be coming in March. Some of the worst cuts will be to programs like the Low-Income Heating Assistance Program, early childhood education, and federal funding for immunizations and vaccinations for children.

Congress would like to have us believe that there’s no money to pay for those programs, even though the Senate unanimously approved a $700 billion military budget in December on a 98-0 vote. And in the last ten years, we’ve spent $ 800 billion on “homeland security,” but there’s no help for hungry families who will be losing food assistance thanks to the sequester.The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program has cost us approximately $ 400 billionto date, and was recently grounded indefinitely due to faulty construction. If it becomes operational, the program would have a whopping $ 1 trillion budget. Even John McCain has called the program a “sandal and tragedy”.

But for some reason, we can’t find the money to keep federal meat inspectors employed, who will lose their jobs after the sequester cuts take hold in March. And even though “Too Big to Fail” banks are still getting their $83 billion annual subsidy, there’s somehow not enough money to keep federal air traffic controllers employed when the FAA is forced to absorb $ 600 million in cuts from the sequester.

Corporate tax loopholes bleed out at least $ 100 billion a year in lost revenue, and simply closing them would be more than enough to offset the sequester. A 1% sales tax on all Wall Street transactions, like the kind introduced in new legislation by Peter DeFazio and  Sen Bernie Sanders, would generate at least $100 billion in new revenue every year.

Cutting our military budget in half, from approximately $700 billion to $350 billion, would provide plenty of tax dollars to pay for job creation and social safety nets, which would reduce the deficit by default and still mean the U.S. is #1 in global military spending. Given all of these options, none of us should believe our congressmen for a second when they try to sell us the lie that our country is broke.

Austerity economics have never improved an economy in history, ever. We were recovering from the Great Depression until FDR took the advice of neoliberal economists and focused his efforts on cutting deficits instead of creating jobs, which led to the Recession of 1937. Austerity in Greece and Spain has caused unemployment levels to skyrocket, and their economies to sink further into depression.

Austerity in the United States won’t have any effect on the economy, except cost us more tax dollars as more unemployed people are forced to depend on the shrinking safety net for survival. The sequester is simply more proof that our government is putting bank bailouts, military contracts and corporate tax loopholes above the needs of their constituents. And it will only get worse until we throw them out.

SOURCE: WammToday Newsletter (March 2, 2013)

 

Who’s IN FAVOR of Violence Against Women?

Unfair? If you vote against the Act intending to prevent violence against women doesn’t it follow that you FAVOR violence against women?

Grand Bargain

“Keep in mind that these folks spent millions and millions of dollars – and played just as many dirty tricks – to defeat Obama and a host of other Democratic candidates, and that money wasn’t spent, nor were those dirty tricks played, in the hope that Republicans might emerge victorious,’ wrote Detroit Monster on The Black Liberal Boomer Blog on the eve of the vote. “This was an all-out, go-for-broke campaign that was not supposed to lose. They had successfully cleared the decks in 2010 to make way for a flood of rightwing Tea Party affiliated candidates, they had engaged in massive demonstrations of voter suppression right up to the day of the vote, they had a bought-and-paid-for Supreme Court majority who had handed a stolen presidency to George W. Bush in 2000 come to the rescue once again when they gave the thumbs-up to Citizens United, enabling super wealthy individuals and the corporations who love them to swallow America whole.”

Alas, for the most part it didn’t come to pass. The divisiveness, the smears, the racism, the attempted voter suppression, the obscurantism, and outright lying didn’t work. The reactionary rightwing suffered a clear setback and for that the nation and the world can be thankful.

But danger lurks from another quarter.

The “bipartisan” financial elite has always been determined to get its way no matter who was headed for the White House next year. While the nation has been preoccupied with who would run the government for the next four years, the austerity lobby has been quietly mobilizing its forces. It has been augmented by powerful corporate interests who are prepared to spend as much a $100 million on a campaign to make the 99 percent of us pay the major costs of overcoming capitalism’s latest crisis. They are intent on making sure that the greatest sacrifices are borne by working people, retirees and the poor.

This is how it goes down.

If a proposal to undermine Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid comes before the new Congress, all the members of that body will have to show where they stand. Although it will be easier now that the election is over, that will still be a political problem. And so, under the banner of “deficit reduction,” and a threatened “fiscal cliff,” a drive is underway to cut a backroom legislative deal. When the secret horse-trading is over, a package will be presented for approval and for which no one will take responsibility for any of its individual parts. It’s called a “grand bargain.”

— From Carl Bloice at The Black Commentator.com

Democrats Give In . . . . . Again

We heard encouraging noises from Senate Democrats that they were going to change the rules and return the filibuster to its traditional status: requiring those who filibuster to actually talk on their feet for hours. Ain’t happening. Harry Reid and the Senate Dems gave in, again.

“After these small changes the Senate will operate much the same way as it did yesterday,” a Democratic aide told TPM. Republicans agree: “Rules change doesn’t really do a lot,” Senator Johnny Isakson told TPM. “It preserves the filibuster.”

Another silly argument is that, even though there were 51 votes to push through stronger reforms using the nuclear option, doing so would have angered Republicans and created more gridlock. This is a nicer approach that will encourage more comity. “It’ll give great momentum to working on a bipartisan basis here in the Senate,” Carl Levin told reporters. Anyone who actually believes that has a wildly undue faith in Mitch McConnell.

Yet another argument, channeled here by Ezra Klein, is that a massive filibuster fight is pointless with a Republican House, which will kill any liberal Senate bills anyhow. Putting aside any consideration of a long-term strategy, this would still only be true if the House had a say in nominations—which of course it does not. If a conservative Supreme Court justice retires or dies in the next four years, and the GOP filibusters Obama’s liberal appointee, let’s check back in on this theory.

[SOURCE: THE NATION http://www.thenation.com/blog/172424/there-was-no-reason-surrender-filibuster-reform%5D

The Dems didn’t want to make the Republicans mad. Oh, heavens, can’t we all just get along? The Republicans are in the minority but will continue to run the Senate because Reid and his woosies are afraid of taking action. We’d like to see a politician with the ideals of a Democrat and the cojones of a Republican.

A Well Regulated Militia Being Necessary to the Security of a Free State

Lawrence A Winans

I am a gun-owner and have been for years. I’ve been a member of the local Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP). The CMP was established by the Defense Department to promote the training of civilians in the proper use of firearms in case of a national emergency. Although not a hunter I enjoy the sport of marksmanship. I’ve also read case law developing the meaning and application of the Second Amendment.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) does not represent me.

President Obama and Vice President Biden have developed a reasonable set of proposals which do not violate the rights of gunowners but do make an effort to reduce the sort of violence we repeatedly see on the news. The NRA’s irrational rejection of anything in the nature of gun regulation does not protect the constitutional rights of lawful gunowners but rather violates the rights to life and liberty held by schoolchildren and the other victims of gun violence.

The key word here is “regulation”. The Second Amendment* does not grant an absolute right to own and use firearms. It recognizes the need to maintain an armed populace which may be assembled as a militia for the defense of the country. The Amendment states clearly that there is a need for a “well regulated militia” and the right of gunownership is predicated upon that need.

The Constitution does not protect any would-be right to kill people, to buy guns secretly and without recordation, to maintain firepower exceeding that of many small nations, to load “cop-killing” bullets, or to possess weaponry of mass destruction.

We here at the DISSENTING DEMOCRAT are not in the tank for Obama but on this issue he speaks for the Nation. This is not a conservative or liberal issue, it is sanity versus insanity. We hope Congress chooses sanity.

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* The Second Amendment reads as follows:

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”