Congressional Progressive Caucus People’s Budget beats Ryan’s corporatist budget by a long shot
by Linda Beale
Congressional Progressive Caucus People’s Budget beats Ryan’s corporatist budget by a long shot, but doesn’t get media coverage
FAIR has a good point on the way the media have covered the US budget debates.
Fact is, the radical right wing budget proposed by radical right Ryan gets lots of coverage. FAIR noted that he was on Meet the Press 4/10, Face the Nation 4/17, ABC’sThis Week 5/1, PBS News Hour (one on one) 5/1, ABC Good Morning America 4/13, and he’s been profiled personally, showing that he has learned the key to Reagan’s success–you can say the most absurd things that are ultimately extraordinarily dangerous for ordinary people, and get ordinary people to think you are great, just by smiling and coming across as “genuine” and acting like you believe the lies you are spreading. Be a good actor, that is, and you can move the corporatist agenda forward at huge cost to ordinary Americans, because they will (regrettably) trust in your (fake) genuineness that you will do right by them. The budget plan has been covered in nightly news shows many times–though not with the kind of piercing analysis that would expose its corporatist bones for what it is. Instead, in the segments I’ve watched, it is almost always treated as though it is what it claims to be, an attempt to put the US on sound fiscal footing. That’s simply bullshit. It’s an attempt to eliminate the New Deal and move the US back to the pre-New Deal period when regulators were weak-kneed and Business could pretty much do whatever it wanted, and the military would serve Big Business interests around the globe.
Fact is, a very reasonable budget proposed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, “The People’s Budget”, that is based on sound economics, has gotten almost no coverage at all. What does it do? It increases tax on the wealthy (after a decade of their enjoying super-rich tax cuts), cuts military spending (after decades of enormous investments in the military, with the base budget for Defense doubling between 2000 and 2009 under George W. Bush), and imposes on a tax on Wall Street speculation (the kind of speculation that got us into a Great Recession that the rich have eased through and ordinary Americans are still suffering enormously from). The Budget proposes investments in public infrastructure that would spur economic growth, create jobs and ensure that the US does not continue to move towards third-world status in terms of its infrastructure. It includes a new public health insurance option as part of the national exchanges for health care plans, providing economies of scale and lower premiums. It also preserves Social Security benefits by raising the taxable amount of income.
Under the current system, income above a taxable maximum is not subject to any Social Security tax, meaning that high-income individuals pay less as a share of their income than everyone else. As income inequality has widened, a greater share of income has fallen outside of the taxable maximum, with the percent of earnings covered by the program slipping from 91% in 1983 to just 83% in 2009.
See the Economic Policy Institute for a technical analysis of the proposals, here.
Why is it that media covers the obscene Ryan plan and ignores the reasonable Progressive Caucus proposal? Probably because the radical right budget proposed by Ryan satisfies all the points of the corporatist agenda–cutting funds to support Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the social programs that blunt the edge of brute capitalism while keeping the gravy train going for the military-industrial-financial complex. Also, the Ryan budget is built on the same ideas of reagonomics that get touted as wonder workers even while they have wreaked economies from ours to Argentinas. Free marketarianism doesn’t work, never has, never will–it is brute capitalism that allows big business, and especially multinational corporations, to exploit little people at will while the few elite at the top (managers and owners) reap all the benefits.l That’s the Ryan budget in short. Instead of restoring the taxes on the wealthy to where they were before the George W. Bush regime in which economic idiocy reigned supreme along with neoliberal warmongering thinking that led us into two huge neverending wars that feed the military-industrial business machine, the Ryan budget would cut programs that make the difference between a decent life and a miserable one for aged and sick and poor Americans, while handing big business every gift it asks for.
And maybe because the corporate owners of corporate media are support the corporatist agenda to keep ordinary people from having real information about options that are in their interest, so that it will be easier to pass legislation (and issue court rulings) that favor multinational corporations over people.
crossposted with ataxingmatter
If you read the original documents from FDR’s Social Security Commission, FDR wanted to adhere to both vertical and horizontal equity in order to garner broad support from the population.
This is why there are limits on the amount of income taxed.
Who wants to mess with FDR?
It is all ideology.
According to Fox News, America was made great by the “character of its people”.
Americans with “character” do not need SS. Americans with “character” do not need medicare, they would just as soon buy insurance from profit generating insurance companies after they retire like other Americans with “character”. Americans with “character” do not accept unemployment or welfare, or food stamps.
Americans with “character” will fund empire with their grandkids’ futures.
Americans with “character” supported their states’ rights to let rich folk own slave, who bbviously had no “character”.
Amercians with “character” do not like FDR.
Sorry, I was in a little pizza joint a few miles outside of the woods last night and all they had on was Fox News talking about a “christian conference” where Romney and Santorem spoke…………
No, it’s because we have a Punditocracy. Of the pundits, by the pundits and for the pundits. (By the way, if Lincoln were alive today he would have been a member of the Progressive Caucus.)
Linda,
Maybe it’s not being taken seriously because “The People’s Caucus” opted NOT to have their plan scored by the CBO. Why not? Because it’s all so much clap trap?
sammy,
Do you read the CBO stuff?
I do and find it is lacking, it is not obviously partisan, but it is willfully ignorant in a charmingly subtle manner.
Like it cannot figure out the impact of cutting on a 300 billion buck a year support outlay for the militray industry congress complex, because it is too complex…….
How could they miss the waste fraud and abuse? The fact that a few trillion buck in assets cannot get on a balance sheet? The answer is because none of it matches the specifications ignored to pay off the MICC.
CBO is par for the congress.
I think it is less nefarious than the post makes it out to be. The reason the FAIR proposal has not received equal attention to the Ryna plan is simply because it is not even endorsed widely wihin the democratic party. If the president endorsed it, or if Harry Reid brought it to a vote, it would get the media’s attention.
The real problem is the democratic party is deathly afraid of committing on paper to raising taxes and looking soft on defense
Yes. As someone else pointed out both parties have their must nots:
Republicans must not ever be seen actively supporting or collaborating with overt racists.
Democrats must not ever be seen actively supporting or helping poor working people.
Needs to be CBO scored to be taken seriously. At least.
In fairness to the general news media, the main reason they’ve given the Ryan Plan so much press is that Ryan is chair of the House Budget Committee and it was clear from the outset that the House would vote to pass this plan. Why the Plan got such rave reviews in the first two or three days after its release—before Paul Krugman’s and a few others’ dissections of it gained attention is another matter, though. The media did pick up immediately on the turn-Medicare-into-a-voucher-program part, but apparently completely missed that the Plan would require the reduction of federal spending to 3% of GDP, and that it would reduce taxes for the wealthy even further than they’ve already been reduced, and so reduce federal revenues well beyond what they are now.
Had they picked up on that, they would have been sort of obliged to note that this would effectively eliminate the federal government except for national defense purposes, and that even such basics as upkeep of the interstate highway system and the air traffic system, and running the fda, would become problematic.
You’re spot-on, Linda, that the complete absence of any news coverage of the Progress Caucus’s plan is appalling, but it’s typical of the way the news media works. What’s mystifying, although by now just par for the course, is our Democratic president’s failure to pick the parts of it he likes—presumably, there are some parts he likes; he is, after all, at least nominally a progressive—and present them to the public.
More specifically, what’s mystifying is the generally weird role this president has decided to play in the budget/debt-ceiling debate. An eloquent editorial on May 29 criticized the absurdly passive role the Senate Democrats have decided to play in this critical debate, but noted that Obama “has not given the chamber much political cover, acting more as a high-level conciliator than a forceful advocate for increased revenues and against ideologically driven cuts.”
The only Democrat who could command the attention of the news and opinion media is Obama. He’s the only one who actually has the power to win this debate legislatively, not in secret negotiations but by explaining the specifics to the public. That the debt ceiling it has nothing to do with future expenditures and concerns only authorization to pay for the expenditures Congress has already authorized during the past decade. That federal taxes relative to GDP are lower now than they have been in—what?—more than 50 years? That taxes on the wealthy are lower than they have been since—when?—the 1920? Etc.
He won’t do it, […]
interesting story
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/06/corporate-police-state-cisco-enlists-prosecutors-to-impede-whistleblower-law-suit.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29
Hey, isn’t this the Democrat’s budget plan that CoRev is always asking for? BTW, why doesn’t CoRev have a comment on this structer and well thought out plan?
Dan emailed me this morning with a link to the Sirota article in Salon, and asked for my thoughts. Here’s what I wrote back:
One thing this is symbolic of is the scorched-earth mode of litigation that has been standard practice for U.S. corporate attorneys since the mid-1980s. Filing counter-lawsuits is a common tactic these days. I don’t know how common it is for these folks to contact prosecutors and allege criminality as part of their litigation strategy, and I don’t know how successful they are, on average, once they do.
Another thing this case illustrates is the routine overkill by prosecutors, especially federal prosecutors, including treating something that most people would view as a single act instead as multiple separate acts; stretching and straining the meanings of words beyond all recognition; interpreting a clause or sentence in a statute literally, although that literal interpretation is clearly beyond what Congress intended the statute to mean; and charging the same conduct under separate counts as violations of separate laws. Almost all federal indictments have a zillion counts.
One thing that strikes me about this case is the use of the same type of tactics against this guy that the Justice Dept. regularly uses against foreign nationals whom they suspect are affiliated with al Qaeda (or whatever) in keeping them in custody: basically, lying. In most of the terrorist-suspect incidents, the detained person turned out to have had no tie whatsoever with any terrorist group.
I think this incident may be a watershed in that this high-level Canadian judge held up a mirror to the Justice Dept.’s tactics and exposed them for what they were. I do disagree with the judge that the absence of monetary loss to Cisco from this guy’s unauthorized access to Cisco’s computer records means that there was no criminal violation. Unauthorized access to computer records is a per se violation of the criminal law. But I agree with the judge’s assessment of Cisco’s conduct and of the Justice Dept.’s.