Shared sacrifice? Bernie Sanders asks us to ACT

Dear Mr. President,

This is a pivotal moment in the history of our country. Decisions are being made about the national budget that will impact the lives of virtually every American for decades to come. As we address the issue of deficit reduction we must not ignore the painful economic reality of today - which is that the wealthiest people in our country and the largest corporations are doing phenomenally well while the middle class is collapsing and poverty is increasing.  In fact, the United States today has, by far, the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on earth.

Everyone understands that over the long-term we have got to reduce the deficit - a deficit that was caused mainly by Wall Street greed, tax breaks for the rich, two wars, and a prescription drug program written by the drug and insurance companies. It is absolutely imperative, however, that as we go forward with deficit reduction we completely reject the Republican approach that demands savage cuts in desperately-needed programs for working families, the elderly, the sick, our children and the poor, while not asking the wealthiest among us to contribute one penny.

Mr. President, please listen to the overwhelming majority of the American people who believe that deficit reduction must be about shared sacrifice. The wealthiest Americans and the most profitable corporations in this country must pay their fair share.  At least 50 percent of any deficit reduction package must come from revenue raised by ending tax breaks for the wealthy and eliminating tax loopholes that benefit large, profitable corporations and Wall Street financial institutions.  A sensible deficit reduction package must also include significant cuts to unnecessary and wasteful Pentagon spending.

Please do not yield to outrageous Republican demands that would greatly increase suffering for the weakest and most vulnerable members of our society.  Now is the time to stand with the tens of millions of Americans who are struggling to survive economically, not with the millionaires and billionaires who have never had it so good.    

Respectfully,

Sen. Bernie Sanders;
and Co-signers

Cutting Kids’ Health Care Will Make Deficits Bigger: David Sirota

Posted on Jun 2, 2011

"It requires us to take the longer view of our deficit challenges, to see certain expenditures as investments in future savings and to remember that adage about “cutting off your nose to spite your face.”

By David Sirota

In the name of curtailing deficits, politicians across the country are hacking away at programs that aim to make children healthier. In Congress, for example, House Republicans are spearheading a budget that eviscerates funding for food assistance and effectively defunds the wildly successful Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Similarly, from Texas to California, state lawmakers are chopping children’s health programs in the face of budget shortfalls. In all these initiatives, the rhetorical leitmotif is “fiscal responsibility.”

Like clockwork, this has set off the now-standard ideological debate over values, with liberals arguing that it’s immoral to deny health care to today’s kids and conservatives countering that it’s even more immoral to saddle the next generation with debt. But as highlighted by a new National Bureau of Economic Research report, both sides are ignoring the most important non-ideological fact: Any so-called “deficit reduction” plan that cuts child health programs is almost certain to increase deficits.

The NBER study compared British and American illness rates, controlling for both demographic differences and risk factors like smoking and drinking. It found that (a) we have “much higher” childhood illness rates than our British counterparts, (b) the transmission rate of childhood illnesses into poor health in adults is greater in America than in Britain, and therefore (c) “the origins of poorer adult health among older Americans compared to the English traces back right into the childhood years.” 

In other words, America’s broken private health care system allows kids’ medical afflictions to become far worse in adulthood than they become in Britain—a nation with a government-sponsored universal health care system. 

Remembering that experts say diabetes alone could be a $3 trillion health-cost time bomb in the United States, the NBER study’s underlying message should be clear: If we reduce our country’s minimal efforts to make kids healthier, we will be all but guaranteeing even more deficit-exploding medical problems down the line. 

Those problems, of course, are often more expensive to therapeutically treat in adults than to pre-emptively address in kids. That means any short-term savings achieved by cuts to children’s health care will likely be wiped out by much bigger costs as those less-healthy kids enter adulthood. And don’t forget: Those additional marginal costs are everyone’s concern because they often end up being paid by Medicare (aka taxpayers). 

The NBER study is quick to point out that access to children’s health insurance—universal in Britain, but not in America—may not be the “primary” factor in the discrepancy between our two nations’ health stats. However, it’s possible that health services for pregnant women are acutely involved. 

It’s also possible the results reflect not just differences in health services, but also larger incongruities in everything from food safety regulation to consumer products safety laws to environmental protection. This would suggest that it’s not only ignorant for self-described deficit hawks to cut children’s health programs, but also absurd for them to cite deficits as reason to cut enforcement of public-interest laws.

As obvious as these lessons may seem, appreciating their significance requires a serious attitudinal shift in America. It requires us to take the longer view of our deficit challenges, to see certain expenditures as investments in future savings and to remember that adage about “cutting off your nose to spite your face.” Because while we certainly can get the deficit under control, we cannot achieve such a goal by denying kids health care. 

Doing that will spite the whole country—and make the budget picture far worse.

David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book “Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now.” He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com.

41 problems with the [MN] Health and Human Services bill

by: The Big E Wed Apr 27, 2011 at 18:00:00 PM CDT

Republicans think it is important that the wealthy don't pay the same tax percentage as we do.  They believe that the wealthy are magical job creators who create more jobs when they don't pay as much in taxes.  To make sure that the wealthy don't pay their fair share, Republicans are proposing deep cuts in the Health and Human Services budget. Lucinda Jesson is the Commissioner of the Department of Human Services and today she outlined 41 concerns she has with the bill.  Here are a few of the highlights (or low-lights) of the damage Republicans want to do: Repeal of the expansion of Medical Assistance to adults without children. Prevent health care waivers and reforms from being implemented. Higher costs for enrollees in state health care programs. Eliminate "optional" services, including therapies, eyeglasses and prosthetics. Kick 7,600 people off of MinnCare. Stop complying with the Affordable Care Act. Eliminate waivers which provide a safety net for 5,800 disabled Minnesotans. Cuts to General Assistance. Eliminates tribal child welfare grants. Slashes grants for adults with mental illness. Slashes children's mental health grants. No funding for Minnesota sex offender program growth. Here is the letter concerning the disputed numbers. Here is the letter from Commissioner Jesson spelling out the 41 major concerns the department has with the HHS bill

The Big E :: 41 problems with the Health and Human Services bill

Tags: welfare, lucinda jesson, Affordable Care Act, minncare, disabled, general assistance, Poor, medicaid, Cuts, health and human services, HHS, deficit, budget, 2011 legislature, legislature,

Cost Of Tax Cuts For America's Rich Exceeds Value Of Budget Cuts

First Posted: 04/18/11 08:26 AM ET Updated: 04/18/11 10:16 AM ET

NEW YORK -- Today, as Americans submit their tax returns, the wealthiest earners will each reap hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax savings.

As part of a law passed late last year, the Bush-era tax cuts for the richest Americans were extended for two years. The estimated cost to the government of that portion of the tax deal, $42 billion this fiscal year, exceeds the stated $38 billion value of the savings from the federal budget cuts lawmakers approved last week.

Those budget cuts, which will affect many services for poor Americans, add more strain to a still weak economy, leading some economists to lament that this allocation of federal resources is not the most efficient way to promote economic growth.

"I don't think it's a good time to be trimming federal outlays if you're interested in the vulnerability of the economy," said economist Gary Burtless, formerly with the Labor Department and now at the Brookings Institution. "I'm not quite sure where the theories come from that this is going to strengthen economic growth over the next 12 to 18 months. It's going to have the reverse effect. It's going to slow it down."

In the wake of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, the economic recovery has been uneven. The financial sector, which employs some of the country's wealthiest citizens as its executives, has seen profits rebound. Pay at top financial firms has multiplied, while wages for most Americans have stagnated.

Between January 2008 and January 2010, the private sector lost nearly 8 million jobs. Last year, payrolls began to expand, but the pace of the recovery has been slow. With companies reluctant to spend their reserve cash on hiring, the unemployment rate remains high. Last month, 8.8 percent of the workforce was unemployed, a figure that would be significantly greater if it included the millions of jobless Americans who have entirely given up looking for work.

Thanks to the tax cut extension passed last year, struggling Americans will get to keep a few thousand dollars that otherwise would have gone to the government. A family making between $50,000 and $75,000, for instance, saves just over $2,000 on average, according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center. From a broad economic perspective, that's money Americans can spend on themselves, theoretically boosting demand, stimulating business activity and generally helping promote a recovery.

But the extension of the tax breaks for the wealthy have proven more controversial, especially as job-creation has remained slow. Under the extension, a family that earns between $500,000 and $1 million gets an average $25,000 tax break, according to the Tax Policy Center. A household earning more than $1 million gets more than $130,000.

Over two years, tax cuts for the wealthy will cost the government about $120 billion and will create or save about 290,000 jobs, according to analysis by the White House-aligned research group Center for American Progress. That's a cost of about $400,000 per job, many of which will likely yield salaries far below that value.

The tax extension seems especially hard for critics to swallow in light of last week's federal budget deal, which calls for spending cuts of about $38 billion. In comparison, tax breaks for the wealthy will cost the government $42 billion during this fiscal year, according to Michael Linden, director for tax and budget policy at the Center for American Progress.

The cuts come at a period of economic weakness, when those who most rely on government services struggle to put food on the table. Last week, the International Monetary Fund cut its forecast for U.S. economic growth -- by the same degree as it cut its forecast for Japan, whose economy faces a major strain as the country attempts to rebuild after a devastating earthquake and tsunami.

But some fiscal restraint is necessary for supporting long-term economic growth, said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics. In theory, government spending cuts encourage private businesses to boost their own spending, thereby helping stimulate economic activity. A reduction of public spending might also help stem inflationary pressures and boost investors' confidence.

While these proposed cuts represent only a small percentage of the year's budget, they are an important first step, said Zandi, who has advised lawmakers from both parties.

"I think it's entirely appropriate to focus on discretionary spending, and how we can reduce it going forward," Zandi said. "My druthers would not have been to cut as deeply right now, until the economy is off and running."

The deficit-reduction plan put forth by President Barack Obama in a speech on Wednesday includes a combination of cutting spending and ending tax breaks for the wealthy when those naturally expire. He laid out a strategy for reducing the deficit by $4 trillion over 12 years, calling for additional cuts across the board.

"If they make serious cuts over time, that's actually going to be quite good for the economy," said Andrew Lo, professor of finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management. "It's bitter medicine, but we've got to take it."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/18/tax-cuts-rich_n_848933.html

Schumer’s Deficit Reduction Steps: Millionaires Tax, Prevent Corporate Tax Dodging, Cut Wasteful Subsidies

http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/09/schumer-deficit/

The Senate will vote today on H.R. 1, the House Republican spending plan for the remainder of 2011 that guts vital funding for education, job creation, infrastructure, anti-poverty programs, housing assistance, and more. The plan is not expected to pass the Senate, but neither is a version supported by Senate Democrats.

So the question of federal spending levels for the remainder of the fiscal year will remain unanswered. But today, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) presented an alternative to the House Republicans’ slash-and-burn approach to budgeting in a speech at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Noting that “today, we have to solve both our growth problem and our deficit problem together,” Schumer laid out a progressive plan to reduce the deficit.

First, Schumer revived his proposal from last year to institute a surtax on millionaires and billionaires. “I must say I noted with interest that in last week’s Wall Street Journal-NBC poll, the most popular proposal to reduce the deficit — out of 23 options surveyed — was a surtax on millionaires and billionaires,” he said.

Schumer also promoted closing the tax gap by cracking down on tax dodging and income sheltering by big corporations. “There is much we can do in the tax code to crack down on cheaters and vastly improve compliance,” he said. “Any credible deficit plan should tackle the so-called ‘tax gap’ — the gap between taxes owed and taxes paid — which has gotten as high as over $300 billion a year this past decade.”

He also advocated cutting the wasteful subsidies that are handed out every year to industries, including the oil and gas industries, that don’t need them. Schumer expanded on these ideas in an interview today with ThinkProgress:

All these kinds of subsidies should be on the table, but the one that sticks out like a sore thumb is oil and gas because the entire rationale for it is gone. It was passed, I think, when the price of oil was $17 a barrel, we had low production, and now of course, the price of oil is $100 a barrel.The subsidy, in economic terms, doesn’t mean anything other than to make some people wealthy who are already wealthy.

Watch it:

Schumer also pushed back hard on the notion that Social Security cuts should be a part of deficit reduction. In response to a reporter’s question, he said “Social Security doesn’t have any problems until 20 years from now,” adding that the deficit needs to be reduced long before then.