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Monday, September 17, 2012

7 Ways to End the Deficit (Without Throwing Grandma Under the Bus)






7 Ways to End the Deficit (Without Throwing Grandma Under the Bus)

A new study suggests that ending the deficit doesn’t have to hurt, just as long as we cut in the right places. John Cavanagh finds seven places where budget cuts can create a more just, more secure, and more sustainable country.


money on hook by tax credits
Photo by taxcredits.net
This fall, the U.S. Congress is going to wage a pitched, dragged-out battle over cutting roughly $120 billion a year to solve the so-called deficit crisis. Vital things like teachers’ jobs and Medicare could well get cut.

The Right is already launching new coalitions to push for an austerity budget, calling for cuts in “wasteful government spending,” including key safety-net programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and food stamps. America has overspent, they say. America is broke. But at the same time, they are calling for an extension of the Bush tax cuts and ruling out cuts in military spending—both policies that will increase the deficit.

America has overspent, they say. America is broke. But at the same time, they are calling for an extension of the Bush tax cuts and ruling out cuts in military spending.
It doesn’t have to be this way. My colleagues at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) have identified seven steps that, together, more than eliminate the deficit while making the country more equitable, green, and secure.

These proposals, from the IPS study called “America is Not Broke,” would also address the two deficits that author David Korten says do more to erode our society than the fiscal deficit does: our social deficits (rising poverty and inequality) and environmental deficits (starting with the climate crisis).

More Fairness, Less Deficit

Our first three proposals could bring in $329 billion a year; this alone would solve the deficit problem while helping to close the yawning inequality gap.
  • 1.  Tax Wall Street: $150 billion per year. A tiny tax on stock and derivatives transactions, which several European countries are on track to adopt, would discourage Wall Street speculation, fill the hole in the deficit left by the Bush tax cuts, and leave plenty left over to fund lots of programs. The National Nurses Union and many other allies are fighting hard for this.
  • 2.  Tax Corporations and Stop Tax Haven Abuse: $100 billion per year. The Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency coalition has pointed out that one of the main ways that corporations avoid paying taxes is by declaring their profits in overseas tax havens like the Cayman Islands.  
  • 3.  Tax the Wealthy Fairly: $79 billion per year. Our rigged tax code lets CEOs pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries do (as Warren Buffett keeps pointing out). The proposed Fairness in Taxation Act (HR 1124) would address this by adding five additional tax brackets for incomes over $1 million.
The United States is now off the charts in terms of wealth and income inequality. It doesn’t have to be that way.
These three policy changes would go a long way toward making our society more equal, and that means better health, too. There is a terrific body of global evidence, a lot of it compiled by British researchers Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, that more equal societies are much healthier. People at all income levels live longer; they are more fulfilled; and there is less violence. The United States, a relatively equal society as recently as the 1970s, is now off the charts in terms of wealth and income inequality. It doesn’t have to be that way. Just as we created a more just and vibrant economy and a strong middle class through fair taxes between 1940 and 1980, we can do it again through progressive taxation.

More Green, Less Pollution

The second source of revenue would make the economy more green, a key imperative in a world where the environmental crisis is now as deep as the economic one. We found two simple ways to raise revenues and help save the environment.
  • 4.  Tax Pollution: $75 billion per year. A tax on the carbon content of fossil fuels would reduce our dependence on oil while cutting air pollution and emissions of greenhouse gases. And, as economist Robert Frank pointed out on August 25 in The New York Times, “News that a carbon tax was coming would create a stampede to develop energy-saving technologies.”
  • 5.   End Fossil Fuel Subsidies: $12 billion per year. This call should unite left and right. Why would anyone want to maintain a giant government subsidy to an industry that is the world’s major contributor to fossil-fuel emissions? 350.org has made this a centerpiece of their work. We should be able to win this.

More Savings, Less War

Finally, there are simple ways to cut the military while making the country and the world more secure. More than half of government discretionary spending now goes to the military. Congress has long avoided cuts, in part because they equate military spending with jobs, but IPS has pointed out that almost every other industry employs more workers per dollar than the military. Plus, there is now bipartisan support for two sets of significant cuts.
  • 6.  End Military Waste: $109 billion per year. A broad spectrum of experts has found over $100 billion a year in waste that could be eliminated with no sacrifice in security. Three recent commissions, two of them bi-partisan, have recommended roughly $1 trillion in military cuts over 10 years.
  • 7.  Close a third of our overseas bases and our Iraq operations: $21 billion per year. Over two decades after the Cold War ended, the United States still maintains roughly 1,000 military installations in other countries. A majority of the President’s own deficit commission, which includes three Republican senators—the National Commission on Financial Responsibility and Reform—backed a proposal to close one third of our overseas military bases.
This plan could help erase the nation’s dangerous social and environmental deficits.
These seven simple steps would raise close to $550 billion a year. They would quickly erase the fiscal deficit  and return the country to a healthy budget surplus. There would be hundreds of billions left to invest in key sectors that could make the country more secure, more green, and more equitable: care jobs, green jobs, infrastructure jobs.

In other words, this plan could help erase the nation’s dangerous social and environmental deficits.

Many groups—from Jobs with Justice to National People’s Action to the AFL-CIO—are organizing to counter a push by the Right to use the deficit crisis to shred social programs and our nation’s safety net. Let’s up the ante and spread the message. America is not broke. We have plenty of resources to rebuild shared prosperity in the U.S.

John CavanaghJohn Cavanagh wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas and practical actions. John is director of the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies, co-chair of the New Economy Working Group, and a co-author of IPS’s study: America Is Not Broke, where citations for this article can be found.
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Monday, September 3, 2012

7 Scenarios of Progressive Change if Obama Wins are Nightmares for Right Wingers





A future that freaks out prominent conservatives, and the stuff of progressive dreams.

 
 
 
The Right’s propaganda machine has been on overdrive during the Republican National Convention trying desperately to repackage the Romney-Ryan team as "compassionate conservatives." But there is a curious counterpoint to the nonsense we’ve heard from the podium coming from another slice of the Right’s noise machine—an emphasis on how scary a second Obama term would be.
Some right-wing authors and filmmakers are making the argument that Obama would be a modern-day Moses, coming down from the mountain and commanding government to institute every imaginable liberal or progressive good idea—regardless of who controls Congress. Let’s forget for a few minutes how disappointed many liberals have been with Obama, and we sadly know better.

Instead, let’s indulge in their fantasy, as put forth in a new movie, 2016,  by Dinesh D’Souza and authors Aaron Klein (who doesn’t even live in the U.S.) and Brenda J. Elliott. Let’s hope they’re correct for just this once. Just for a moment, forget everything you know about Obama’s centrism and imagine that a second Obama term would deliver these simply terrible results.

1. Drastically Reduce U.S. Nuclear Weapons 

According to D’Souza’s new film, 2016: Obama's America, Obama is planning to reduce the nuclear stockpile to a few hundred missiles. This is utter foolery, he posits, because Iran, China, Russia, Pakistan and North Korea are feverishly working to become new or even bigger military powers and they wouldn't feel threatened by us anymore. Worse, our nuclear weapons stockpile is aging and the president is not seeking to replace it, he says.

All this supposedly would leave America and its allies, meaning Israel, vulnerable to nuclear attack, we are told, and undermine the Cold War doctrine of mutually assured destruction. The president is working toward a “world without nuclear weapons.” (Too bad that’s actually not the case.)

2. Reorient the Military Toward Global Solutions

According to Klein and Elliott’s new book, the vastly downsized Pentagon would be ordered to help in international peacekeeping, fighting global poverty, combating global warming and remedying injustice. That’s all part of a strategy where the U.S. is not first among nations, but where economic, political and military power is shared—which is surely a reprehensible development (leading to, for example, operations such as the overthrow of Kadaffi in Libya). Never mind that Obama has been severely criticized by civil libertarians for his unilateral drone strikes, targeted assassinations and expansion of the Bush era war on terrorism. Another term, they say, will give peace a chance.

3. Move U.S. To Single-Payer Healthcare

Of course, if Obama is reelected then Obamacare will be impossible to reverse, we are told. But what’s even worse than what they call “government-controled healthcare” is that Obama will open up Medicare for anyone who wants to get coverage that way. And it’s not only Medicare, but other state-run healthcare too. Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program also will be made available—all without a private insurer standing between you and your doctors. All this would move us toward a single-payer system. The horrors!

4. Resurrect New Deal Programs That Actually Create Jobs

Apparently progressive calls for more federal economic stimulus spending will be answered after all. In Obama’s second term, not only will there be a 21st-century version of FDR’s Works Progress Administration, but, according to Klein and Elliott’s book, the Department of Labor would oversee this effort to potentially create millions of new jobs. They also believe that Obama would impose wage controls industry by industry, which would force employers to pay their employees more than they otherwise might.

5. Make It Easier To Join Unions 

Now here is a truly dangerous idea—make it easier for people to join unions. Apparently some progressive think-tanks have suggested that tax breaks be given to businesses that don’t fight unionization. The Obama administration is not just on board with that, we’re told, but would bar some current forms of union busting.

And Obama's pro-labor policies would not stop there. We would see a higher minimum wage, and all employers would be required to pay a living wage, which might be higher still. Worse yet, employers might be forced to grant longer paid family leaves for the absolutely flimsy excuse of caring for newborns, a sick family member or even themselves! It’s just a small step away from tyranny.

6. Grant Immigration Amnesty

The right also believes that Obama will use his executive authority in a second term to decree that all illegal immigrants become documented and be granted legal presence rights. Never mind that the executive has no such power. In addition to doing this, Obama would order federal agencies to stop policing America’s borders, stop deportations that split up families and open up public healthcare and schools to formerly undocumented immigrants. All of this would soon be followed by granting formerly undocumented individuals voting rights—to ensure a permanent Democratic majority.

7. Break the Fossil Fuel Addiction

Only a president like Obama cares that the planet’s climate is changing when there’s still big money to be made in gas and oil, we’re told. Obama will use federal funds to help businesses develop alternatives to fossil fuels, including getting the Treasury Department to lend money for this purpose. Similarly, a second term would see the administration seeking to improve the nation’s clean water supply, and energy and telecommunications infrastructure. For conservatives, this is the stuff of nightmares.

We are told that Obama is a master in circumventing Congress to get whatever he wants, purely by executive orders. America would never be the same nation that it now is, these flag-waving Republicans declare. Imagine that! Fewer nukes, a smaller military, different international posture, single-payer healthcare, community-creating federal jobs, new workplace and employee rights, humane immigration policies, and a new energy and infrastructure strategy to foster local self-reliance. If only this wasn’t a dream!

Steven Rosenfeld covers democracy issues for AlterNet and is the author of "Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting" (AlterNet Books, 2008).