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As long as the news media devotes massive amounts of space to a fantasy budget, why can’t they turn their attention for just a minute to a more legitimate one? Sure, the Congressional Progressive Caucus’ Budget for All isn’t likely to get much more than the 100 or so votes of its members, short of what would be needed to pass the House. But the Paul Ryan budget has about as much of a chance as the Budget for All from becoming law. And yet miles of paper and digital bits have been expended on Ryan’s plan. How about the CPC version?
Like last year’s CPC budget, which earned praise from the likes of Jeffrey Sachs, Paul Krugman and even The Economist, the Budget for All makes up-front investments while reducing the deficit over time by making the tax code more progressive and scaling back on defense. The video introducing the budget begins with John F. Kennedy’s dictum, “If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”
There are over $2.4 trillion in public investments in the Budget for All, including direct job creation programs that would create jobs to improve schools and parks, and a focus on infrastructure investment, including a $556 billion surface transportation bill and an ongoing infrastructure bank to identify long-term projects. In addition, the budget would come into balance under the Budget for All much faster than under Paul Ryan’s (which isn’t balanced as of 2030), by ending wars and reducing military expenditures, and increasing revenue through ending the Bush tax cuts. The budget actually extends a lot of middle class tax cuts, but in exchange, it creates new tax brackets for millionaires, raises capital gains and dividends to the corresponding income rates, eliminates corporate welfare for the oil and gas industry and incorporates the Buffett rule, mandating a minimum tax payment for millionaires and billionaires. There’s also a minimum rate for corporate taxation. To account for the end of the payroll tax cut, the Budget for All swaps back in the Making Work Pay tax credit from 2013-2015, which would reduce the tax burden for the middle class and working poor without threatening Social Security. In fact the entire budget protects Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits.
There’s also a nod to investing in “programs to stave off further foreclosures to keep families in their homes,” though the biggest program there would simply be to enforce the law. Finally, the Budget for All institutes public financing of elections, which in terms of political economy, would probably do as much as anything to end corporate welfare and giveaways for the wealthy and well-connected.
The Budget for All isn’t realistic, I can hear the wags on Capitol Hill say now. It can’t get the votes. Neither can Paul Ryan’s and that didn’t stop anybody, present company included, from profiling it. So let these budgets serve as a test of priorities among these wings of the parties. I have a strong belief that, if put side-by-side, the voters would make the right choice. The problem is they never get to make that choice. Paul Ryan gets rock star treatment and full writeups everywhere for his plans. The CPC budget gets a passing mention. It’s this constraint of choices, as well as the forces inside the Democratic Party who are not aligned with this value system and try to squash it, that leads to the outcomes we get in our politics.
UPDATE: Right now there’s just a one-page summary out of the Budget for All, but I sincerely hope that the CPC writes up the language and gets it scored, so we can make an apples-for-apples comparison.
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This budget is the sort of thing I’d expect from a conserva-Dem like Jimmy Carter, not from a progressive.
— They seem to be talking about a 10 year budget, which is absolutely meaningless. The budget needs to change from year to year depending on economic circumstances, and no one can predict what the economy will be like 10 years from now. The ONLY budget that matters is 2013.
— no numbers, so it’s meaningless — Jeffrey Sachs is a Neoliberal. Paul Krugman is a “recovering Neoliberal.” I’m more interested in what a Keynsian or an MMT economist thinks. MMT does approve this budget, because it reduces the deficit. The deficit needs to be bigger, not smaller. http://strubelim.com/wp/the-problem-with-the-deficit-its-not-big-enough/
– I agree with ending wars and cutting the military, but those savings should go to domestic spending, not to deficit reduction. Ditto on taxing the rich — those revenues should go to domestic spending, not to deficit reduction.
– it fails to address the regressive FICA tax. No progressive should support regressive taxation.
In sum, the CPC budget is a kinder, gentler Neoliberal budget, but it is Neoliberal nevertheless. Whatever happened to Democrats being the party of Keynesian deficit spending ? I’d gladly trade these faux progressives for Nixon. At least Nixon was a Keynesian.
If all that matters in budgeting is the current fiscal year – you’d have to change Congressional rules to get that to fly on an official budget in Congress, but there’s a lot of support for the idea that CBO forecasts are flawed – then this budget should please you, as the $2.4 trillion in mostly up-front investments would surely increase the deficit over the fiscal year 2013. Ending the wars immediately and tax reform would not cover that cost.
Seeing Obama’s track record, I wouldn’t count on that…just waits until he starts negotiating. I would not give equal odds when it comes down to doing corporate-benefiting privatization or not – Obama will come out for the corporations to the point of taking it to the Supreme Court, like’s doing for the individual mandate.
Go to the Budget Hero link then try and find any mention of this budget on the link. Chances are you won’t but you will find a Tea Bagger badge you can try and earn while playing the budget hero budget simulation game.
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/economy/budget-hero
I thought NPR was going to be more balanced from now on?
Agreed but will Obama cave before or after the election?
Both before and after. He has to cover all bets.
Where might that be, outside hippie blogs?
You must pay the media to get something published. And it must be sensational, jaw-dropping and appear to have come from the saviour himself. And certainly not “her”self. We are all being played like a cheap harmonica.
how about – raise corp & personal taxes to the levels they were in the vaunted good ‘ol days in America (50s&60s tax rates) and, just say it and then act upon it .. the frickin banks are insolvent .. no more bail-outs or obama-stealth bail outs. now that would generate some cash -
is there anyone out there that is as sick as I am of Democrats who are too scared to raise the revenue they have to to run our government (read : raise taxes on the greedy unpatriotic rich and corporations) but brave enough to take medicine from poor children and food out of the mouths of the elderly?
we still call these neo-fascist water carriers for corporate vultures ‘democrats’? what can possibly be gained from using their self-serving definition which conveniently describes them as the ‘alternative’ to the corporate asskissing party? Those Dem lips are permanently puckered too folks -
FICA is not a tax. It is a pension premium. You don’t want it to become funded and managed as welfare.
It’s not very intelligent to base a budget on spending worthless money.
Any money we borrow from the FED is utterly worthless. The money they loan out is valued on the worth of the assets they hold to back the money and all they have is paper that isn’t worth a dime. All their “assets” that back their money is washed up, or spent, paid out in bonuses to CEO’s and hedge fund managers etc. Their investments are all in speculative instruments that usually don’t pan out, which is why all the banks keep on asking for more and more bailouts. How can Paul Ryan keep a straight face when he presents a budget, and this applies to anyone who thinks they can operate a successful republic with money that is not invested in decent projects. Wars are not good bets. Bad insolvent bankers and thie r lousy banks are not a good bet. We need to reinstate the Glass Steagall Act, and shut down the insolvent banks and their Wall Street comrades. We need to open a National Federal Bank that will have Credit issued through it for decent projects, Credit which should be uttered by Congress as per the constitutional mandate they have to do so. We need to invest in projects that will improve the quality of civilization, and put all our people to productive work. We need to engage ourselves in projects that encompass water management, agriculture, infrastructure of all sorts that will increase our productive powers, we need better sources of energy, nuclear fusion and fission power, we need to reinstate NASA and explore the possibilities in our Galaxy, on other planets. We need to help the rest of the world to develop water systems, to increase food production and transportation methods, such as mag lev world wide railroad systems. We need to open up the Arctic and Antarctic regions, and learn how to survive in these environments as a preparation for living on other planets We need to be creative as God made us to be, we are made in his image.