Study: Romney Plan Increases Taxes On 95% Of Americans 1AUG12 & Study Says Romney's Tax Plan Would Most Benefit Wealthy Americans 2AUG12

HERE is an analysis of mitt romney's tax plan for America, which will grant tax relief to the suffering rich and corporations by increasing taxes on 95% of all Americans. See more on the tax trials and tribulations of the rich in my earlier post Charts: America Has the World's Luckiest Billionaires 30JUL12
From Mother Jones and PBS News Hour...

—By Josh Harkinson

Mitt Romney has been on the defensive today over a new study that found his tax plan would most likely increase taxes on the middle class in order to pay for a hefty tax cut for the wealthiest Americans. The study (pdf) by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center scrutinizes Romney's plan to pay for a variety of tax cuts by closing tax loopholes. It concludes that under the most progressive approach possible, Romney's plan would give an $87,000 tax cut to people making more than $1 million a year but require 95 percent of Americans to pay more taxes—on average, $500 more per year.
"He's asking you to pay more so that people like him can get a big tax cut," Obama said from the campaign trail in Ohio today.
Romney has pushed back against the study, claiming that the Tax Policy Center (a wing of the Brookings Institution) is a "liberal" group. But as ThinkProgress points out, Romney praised the Tax Policy Center's analysis of Gov. Rick Perry's tax plan during the GOP primaries, calling it an "objective, third-party analysis."
Here's TPC's chart illustrating who will win and lose from Romney's tax plan:
Tax Policy Center and Brookings Institution

Josh Harkinson

Reporter

Josh Harkinson is a staff reporter at Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. Email him with tips at jharkinson (at) motherjones (dot) com. To follow him on Twitter, click here. RSS | Twitter

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  http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/08/study-romney-plan-increases-taxes-95-americans 

  Study Says Romney's Tax Plan Would Most Benefit Wealthy Americans 2AUG12

   

  SUMMARY

  Romney's campaign is trying to win over middle class voters by promoting Mitt Romney's tax plan, which would lower individual tax rates. Judy Woodruff talks to Tax Policy Center's Bill Gale and Tax Foundation's Scott Hodge about a new study that states the rich, not the middle class, stand to benefit most from Romney's plan.

  
  

  Listen: MP3
  

  Transcript

  JUDY WOODRUFF: With fewer than 100 days to go until the November election, President Obama and Governor Romney spent today campaigning in battleground states, trading barbs on taxes and the economy.
  For the president and his Republican challenger, the day's stage was a pair of key states, and the intended audience, the middle class.
  

  Mitt Romney stumped in Golden, Colo., his first campaign event since returning from a weeklong overseas trip. Romney argued again that the president's policies have failed the middle class.
  MITT ROMNEY (R): Now, I know he will be able to speak eloquently and describe all the great things he's doing and what he's going to do, but look at the results.
  And you look at the results, and it's been a disappointment. His policies have not worked. They have not got America back to work again. I understand that it's small businesses that create jobs in America, that people create jobs, not government, and I'm going to get America working again.
  (CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
  JUDY WOODRUFF: The Romney campaign also went up with a new television ad highlighting economic troubles in Florida, ahead of the president's visit there today.
  NARRATOR: But under President Obama, 8.6 percent unemployment, record foreclosures, 600,000 more Floridians in poverty. He focused on Obamacare, instead of jobs. Barack Obama, what a disappointment.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: The Obama campaign countered with its own new ad. It attacked Romney for paying just 14 percent of his income in taxes in 2010, and charged his tax reform proposal favors the rich.
  NARRATOR: Now he has a plan that would give millionaires another tax break and raises taxes on middle-class families by up to $2,000 a year. Mitt Romney's middle-class tax increase -- he pays less, you pay more.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: The president hit that same theme during an event this afternoon in Orlando.
  PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: They have tried to sell us this trickle-down tax cut fairy dust before.
  (LAUGHTER)
  PRESIDENT OBAMA: And guess what? It didn't work then. It will not work now. It is not a plan to create jobs. It is not a plan to reduce the deficit. It is not a plan to build our middle class. It is not a plan to move our economy forward.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: Mr. Obama again highlighted a study by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center that concluded Romney's proposal would provide large tax cuts to high-income households and increase the tax burdens on middle- and/or lower-income taxpayers.
  But Eric Fehrnstrom, a top Romney adviser, called the report -- quote -- "a joke" and raised questions about its impartiality and methodology. The sharpened debate on tax fairness underscores the importance both campaigns have placed on middle-class voters.
  A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll gave Mr. Obama a 16-point lead on Romney when it comes to who would better look out for the middle class.
  For a closer look at what exactly is in the Romney tax proposal at the heart of this political fight, we turn to Bill Gale of the Tax Policy Center. He is a co-author of the report in question. And Scott Hodge of the also nonpartisan Tax Foundation, he has a different read on the Romney plan.
  And, gentlemen, we thank you both for being with us.
  BILL GALE, Tax Policy Center: Thank you.
  SCOTT HODGE, Tax Foundation: Thank you.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Bill Gale, to you first.
  Just quickly, how do you respond to the Romney adviser who called this assessment a joke and he questioned its impartiality and methodology?
  BILL GALE: Well, first thing, let's be clear. That's a shoot-the-messenger kind of answer.
  If they had a substantive response to our analysis, I presume that they would make a substantive response. Last fall, when we put out analysis of the other Republican candidates' tax options, the Romney campaign liked our analysis a lot and said very nice things about us. So it seems like their opinion of us depends on whether we're reporting on what they do or what someone else does.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, Bill Gale, let me ask you what in a nutshell did the Tax Policy Center conclude about where the tax burden falls, assuming the Romney plan were enacted -- tax plan?
  BILL GALE: Well -- thank you.
  We did a very straightforward exercise. We said, Governor Romney wants to cut rates by 20 percent. He doesn't want to raise the rate on capital gains or dividends or other saving investments. But he wants his reform to be revenue-neutral.
  That means you have to raise the revenue somewhere else. We took the most optimistic way, the most progressive way to raise that revenue. And we showed that, even under those circumstances, there would be a big tax cut for high-income households and a tax increase for middle-income households.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: That's boiling it down to a great degree. But...
  BILL GALE: Yes, and what I want to emphasize is it's a matter of arithmetic. It is not some incredibly fancy calculation.
  It's simply that, if you cut tax rates for high-income households, you lose so much revenue there, that you can't make it up by shutting down the tax exemptions that high-income tax households have.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Scott Hodge, what do you make of this analysis from the Tax Center?
  SCOTT HODGE: Well, I think you have to be fair and what Bill and the Brookings have done is, I think, a pretty reasonable assessment.
  But you have to understand that it is not an analysis of the Romney plan. The -- Romney has only set out some very, very broad parameters in terms of tax policy, in terms of cutting the individual rates, all of them by 20 percent, cutting the corporate rate by 10 percentage points.
  But what Brookings did was actually fill in a lot of this unknowns with their own assumptions and then analyzed it. So this is not technically an analysis of the Romney plan. It is one option for how to get from here to there.
  There are many ways in which Romney could fill out the details of his plan. They of course are not forthcoming with that, because they would like to keep to a big-picture approach. So we have to be very careful about reading too much into this, because it really is not the Romney plan.
  (CROSSTALK)
  JUDY WOODRUFF: All right, so filling in a lot of assumptions, what about that?
  BILL GALE: Let me respond to that.
  It's correct that Governor Romney has not specified all the details of his tax reform plan. He has specified the goodies, the tax cuts, but he's not specified how he will pay for them. If he would do so...
  (CROSSTALK)
  SCOTT HODGE: He may not even pay for them. He may decide that we are going to scrap revenue neutrality.
  BILL GALE: No. Well, he has said he wants it to be revenue-neutral.
  (CROSSTALK)
  JUDY WOODRUFF: Revenue-neutral, meaning money is not raised -- that taxes are not raised.
  BILL GALE: Exactly, meaning, on net, the average tax cut is zero.
  So we took the options that he said he wanted. And then, when we filled in how to pay for that, we did that in a way that -- that fills it in most by taxing high-income households, OK? So if Romney wants to finance his tax cuts with spending cuts, that's going to be even more regressive, because spending cuts go largely to low- and middle-income households.
  So we -- we made what is the most optimistic assumptions in the filling-in part, and still came out to the conclusion that I mentioned.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: What about that explanation?
  SCOTT HODGE: Well, one of the most interesting aspects of the study is that it really confirms how progressive our current income tax system is.
  And what the study unfortunately doesn't show is that about half of all Americans pay no income taxes whatsoever. And the vast majority of income taxes are paid by the top. In fact, a recent CBO study shows that the top 20 percent of taxpayers pays 94 percent of all income taxes.
  And so, they are correct. It's mathematically impossible to cut all tax rates without somewhat benefiting the rich, because the rich are the only ones paying income taxes. Meanwhile, we have half of all Americans paying no income taxes whatsoever and benefiting from about $100 billion of refundable tax credits, even though they pay no income taxes.
  So, we're going to have to have a big decision here on tax reform. Do we put some of those non-payers back on the tax rolls, and how many should avoid paying taxes?
  JUDY WOODRUFF: What other -- what more information would you have needed, Bill Gale, in order to make a fuller, a more complete analysis of the Romney plan?
  BILL GALE: Well, he -- the governor would simply have to specify how he wanted to pay for the rate cuts that he wants.
  He had specified that he doesn't want to raise dividend and capital gains tax rates. But he hasn't specified any other way of paying for the tax cuts.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: And what's your sense of why he hasn't done that?
  SCOTT HODGE: Well, because, the more details you put out there, the more room that you have for others to shoot holes in it.
  And I think what wants to do -- and I'm not a surrogate for the Romney camp, by any means -- I think what they are trying to do is stay to the big picture and talk about the bigger issues here and that their belief is that when you cut marginal tax rates, you see economic growth.
  And they have a lot of research behind their belief in that. And I think that that is the message that they are trying to...
  (CROSSTALK)
  JUDY WOODRUFF: Does that show up in your analysis, that there's more...
  (CROSSTALK)
  BILL GALE: We do have some behavioral responses. And we did analysis allowing a growth effect.
  
  The growth effects of revenue-neutral tax reform can be vastly overstated. Congressional Budget Office, Joint Committee on Taxation has done analysis showing relatively small effects. In 1986, we had a big revenue-neutral tax reform. We didn't get a big growth effect out of that.
  And the answer is because the net -- the reason why is that the -- essentially, the average marginal tax rate doesn't end up changing that much in a revenue-neutral reform.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: Respond to that.
  SCOTT HODGE: Well, there are lots of ways to get from here to there.
  And if you designed it in one way, you are going to get poorer results. If you design it in a more pro-growth manner, you can get vastly better outcomes.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: Bill Gale, do you at the Tax Policy Center plan to do an assessment of the Obama tax reform plan?
  BILL GALE: We have done assessments of the president's budget every year when it comes out, in fact, assessments that are much more detailed than and extensive than this particular paper that came out yesterday.
  We have done estimates of the Republican candidates' tax reform plans. We will continue to estimate anything we can get our hands on, basically.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: All right, we are going leave it there.
  Scott Hodge, we thank you very much with the Tax Foundation.
  SCOTT HODGE: Thank you very much.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: Bill Gale with the Tax Policy Center.
  Gentlemen, thank you.
  BILL GALE: Thank you.
  JUDY WOODRUFF: And you can watch both candidates in action on the campaign trail today. We have posted their full speeches on our Politics page.
  http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec12/campaign_08-02.html
   

The invisible welfare state of the top one percent 2MAR12

CLASS warfare in the U.S. is real, the 1% does benefit at the expense of the 99%.....

By Ezra Klein

Pop quiz: What is a government program? And are you on one right now?
Those are the questions Cornell University political scientist Suzanne Mettler has been posing. For her book “The Submerged State,” she asked a scientifically selected sample of 1,400 Americans whether they had ever used a government social program. Only 43 percent copped to having done so. Then she read off 21 social programs, such as Medicare and the home-mortgage interest deduction, and asked the same question again: Have you ever used a government social program? This time, 96 percent said yes, in fact, they had.

Alamy
Most of the welfare state for rich and upper-middle class Americans is, in Suzanne Mettler’s words, “submerged.”
According to Mettler’s survey, 60 percent of those who benefit from the home-mortgage interest deduction didn’t think they had ever used a government social program. Fifty-three percent of those with student loans didn’t think they had used one. Among Social Security beneficiaries, 44 percent thought themselves unsullied by the touch of government, and among Medicare beneficiaries, 39 percent said the same. Twenty-seven percent of those in public housing answered in the negative, as did 25 percent of those on food stamps.The implication seemed to be that Americans are hypocrites, or at least woefully uninformed. But in forthcoming research, Mettler and co-author Julianna Koch dig deeper, and find the reality is more complicated.
Their new paper argues that “policy design” is an important determinant of whether people recognize they’re using a government program or not. Some programs, like food stamps and Medicaid, force recipients to go to a government office and apply for them. Those are the programs that beneficiaries are most likely to recognize as government social programs.
Other programs, like Medicare, are provided by the government, but eligibility is mostly automatic, and recipients have paid into them. Beneficiaries of such programs are somewhat less likely to realize they’re on a government dole than beneficiaries of means-tested programs.
Then there’s what Mettler calls “the submerged state.” These policies are mostly, though not exclusively, tax breaks. They include the much-beloved home-mortgage interest deduction and the tax exclusion for employer-provided health care. Recipients of these policies — and there are tens of millions of them — are rarely cognizant that they’re benefiting from a government program.
But they are. “Indirect social policies offer benefits that are comparable to direct social benefits both in their purposes and in their costs,” Mettler and Koch write. “Both are targeted to specific groups of people, aimed to reward some kind of activity or some class of persons whom policymakers deem worthy of public support. From an accounting perspective, as well, both types have the same effect: They impose costs on the federal budget, whether incurred through fiscal obligations or lost revenues.”
The costs are significant. Huge, in fact. Tax expenditures now cost the federal government $1 trillion annually — more than Medicare and Medicaid combined. And they’re regressive.
There is also a pattern to these programs: The more a government social program benefits wealthier Americans, the less obtrusive it is. We design policies for the poor in ways that make it hard to escape the knowledge that the government is providing help. But richer Americans rely on programs that are “submerged.”
The Tax Policy Center estimates that eliminating all individual income tax expenditures would raise levies on the bottom 20 percent by $931. For the top 1 percent, the tax increase would be almost $280,000. (Notably, both President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney have talked about cutting back on tax expenditures for the wealthy, but neither has provided details.) Even so, many middle class and wealthy beneficiaries have no idea that they’re receiving any government assistance at all.
Not surprisingly, this influences Americans’ attitudes toward government. Mettler and Koch find that the more likely you are to know you have used a government program, the more likely you are to have a positive opinion of them. “These results point to an important but previously overlooked form of stratification in American politics,” they write, “in which some citizens are made cognizant of governments’ role, but others — although they too benefit from it — are not.”
Other factors influence whether people think they’ve used a government social program. All else being equal, a 75-year-old is 28 percent more likely than a 30-year-old to say he has never used a government program; a conservative is 50 percent more likely than a liberal to say the same.
Mettler hypothesizes that such differences could play a role in the nation’s growing political divide. “I think one of the drivers of the kind of polarization we have today is policy design and delivery, because we have these policies where people can benefit a lot from the government but become more anti- government because they’re paying higher taxes and don’t think they’re getting benefits.”
I’m more worried about the role submerged policies play in the budget and in good policy. We’re funneling an enormous amount of money to people who, in many cases, don’t need it and don’t even know they’re receiving it. We’re designing programs to be hidden in the annual budget — tax expenditures don’t show up as spending, even though that’s what they are — and invisible to taxpayers. That’s economically inefficient and politically problematic.
If Americans who either rent or own their homes outright were asked to accept a tax increase of $150 billion in order to subsidize the mortgage payments of their indebted friends, it seems unlikely they would find that appealing. The same goes for asking Americans who don’t get health insurance through their work to spend $100 billion or so annually subsidizing the benefits for those who do. Of course, that’s exactly what’s happening right now, but it’s hidden in the tax code, so most Americans don’t know it and can’t protest it.
It is in part because these policies aren’t visible that they’re so difficult to change. That’s the thing about submerging a large part of your welfare state. Sink it deep enough, and it becomes almost impossible to dredge up.

Five Progressive Deficit Reduction Ideas That Both Obama And The House Republicans Failed To Endorse from THINKPROGRESS 15FEB11

HERE are 5 proposals for cutting the deficit, not on the backs of the poor, the working class and the middle class but by making those who brought about the worst recession since the great depression pay and by cutting the grossly bloated, wasteful military budget......from ThinkProgress....

In the past week, House Republicans unveiled their fiscal year 2011 Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund the operations of the federal government while President Obama announced his 2012 budget request.
Both of the economic plans contained within these documents take aim at the budget deficit in different ways. The House GOP’s CR has far deeper cuts to public investments and social services, including terminating $5 billion in high speed rail funding, $86 million in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and $40 million from the Green Jobs Investment Fund.
While the Obama budget does far more to maintain public investment and does endorse some progressive means of deficit reduction — like ending billions of dollars of taxpayer support for the oil industry — it also includes a number of cuts to social services that assist working class and low-income Americans. Included among these cuts is a $100 billion reduction in the Pell Grant program that involves ending grants for summer classes and terminating federal subsidies “that pay the interest on graduate students’ federal loans while they’re in school” and cutting billions of dollars from the LIHEAP program, which funds energy assistance for low-income Americans.
Yet there are a number of progressive ways to reduce the deficit that both President Obama and the House Republicans failed to endorse. These policies, unlike deep cuts to public investment, education, and social services, would have a minimal impact on employment and job growth, and would go much further in actually closing the budget deficit. Here are five such ideas:

1. Rein In The Military Budget: Neither the president’s budget or the House CR cuts the overall level of defense spending. In fact, Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s request for the Pentagon budget is a whopping $553 billion — “the largest request ever” by the Pentagon and the largest adjusted for inflation since World War II. CAP Senior Fellow Lawrence Korb has laid out $1 trillion in defense reductions that can be made over the next 10 years by phasing out outdated programs and resizing our military. This comes out to roughly $100 billion a year, which is approximately how much funding is being proposed to be cut from the Pell Grant program.
2. Reduce Or Eliminate Subsidies To Big Agribusiness: The federal government “paid out a quarter of a trillion dollars in federal farm subsidies between 1995 and 2009.” “Just ten percent of America’s largest and richest farms collect almost three-fourths” of these subsidies. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) has proposed — as a part of her progressive deficit reduction plan — a fifty percent cut in federal direct support for agriculture, which would save $7.5 billion in 2015.
3. Reduce Or Eliminate Wasteful Tax Expenditures: The CAP paper “Cracking the Code: A Closer Look at Tax Expenditure Spending” notes that “special credits, deductions, exclusions, exemptions, and preferential tax rates provide more than $1 trillion in subsidies intended to support public objectives,” yet are ineffective and should be reduced or eliminated. Eliminating this tax expenditure could save $100 billion, for example.
4. Enact A Financial Transactions Tax: A “0.25 percent tax on trades of stocks, bonds, derivatives, and other Wall Street financial instruments” would do little to nothing to reduce commerce or productivity but would generate “between $50 billion and $150 billion annually,” according to a CAP analysis.
5. Empower Medicare To Negotiate For Lower Drug Prices: One of the main drivers of the growing U.S. budget deficit is health care costs. While there are a number of things that can be done to streamline the efficiency of our health care system, like introducing a public option or even moving towards a Medicare-for-all system, one policy option that would be very simple to enact and would not require any sort of increased spending or expansion of government would be to simply allow Medicare to use its bulk purchasing power to negotiate with drugmakers for lower prices. Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) estimates that doing this could save as much as $156 billion over 10 years.

While gradually reducing the U.S. budget deficit over time is a worthwhile goal, it’s important to remember that the deficit was not caused by funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, students taking summer Pell Grants, or the LIHEAP program. Rather, the U.S. budget deficit is largely a result of massive tax cuts for the wealthy, two prolonged wars, an ever-expanding Pentagon budget, and a recession caused by Wall Street. It is only fair that those who caused the problem are those who have to pay to fix it.

Deficit Commission Slashes Taxes For Wealthy, Corporations, While Raising Retirement Age And Cutting Spending 1DEZ10

IT is no surprise the deficit commission's plan favors corporate America and the wealthy......look who the members are. I fear most of it will be adopted by congress because they are to cowardly to stand up for the poor, the working class and the middle class of America. Where is the morality in this proposal, where is the Christian influence, since a vast majority of the members of congress claim to be Christians? What Christian principles advocate protection of the wealth and power of the rich at the expense of the poor and the workers? It is also extremely disturbing that these Christian legislators and members of the commission have deliberately lied to the American people about Social Security and it's roll in the nation's deficit problems.....Social Security is not part of the deficit problem, Social Security is forbidden by law to contribute to the deficit, and it doesn't, yet these Christian's have been waging a propaganda campaign deceiving the nation, conniving and convincing too many Social Security is a major part of the deficit problem. God Bless America......with our current Christian leadership we will need God's blessings to help us survive.
Click the header to go to the commissions report.....

WASHINGTON — The president's deficit-commission report, scheduled for a vote by the full panel on Friday, proposes to slash tax rates for corporations and for high earners.
The top tax rate is currently 35 percent and is scheduled to rise to 39.6 percent in 2011. The commission would cut that rate to between 23 and 28 percent, while shaving between seven and nine points off the corporate rate.
The commission does propose taxing capital gains and dividends as ordinary income, a move that would result in a higher liability for the wealthy. It also eliminates some corporate tax breaks. But those losses for top earners would be more than offset by their tax cuts.

The commission also addresses Social Security, though the program does not contribute to the deficit and, in fact, is running a multi-trillion dollar surplus. The commissioners would raise the full retirement age to 69 gradually and the early retirement age to 64.

Social Security would be tilted toward a welfare program rather than a social insurance system if the commission's recommendation to provide poorer seniors with a "special minimum benefit" is enacted into the law.
The commission also proposes medical malpractice reform, a long-term goal of the GOP.

The commission had been scheduled to vote on the proposal as required by law on Wednesday, but the vote has been pushed to Friday, suggesting that the commissioners lack the 14 of 18 votes needed to approve it. Some conservatives intend to oppose the bill, including Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), who is widely respected on fiscal issues by his House colleagues.
Sources close to members of the commission say that the proposal is virtually certain to be voted down and that President Obama has not been engaged with the process or deliberations.
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said Wednesday that he doesn't agree with everything in the report but will vote to support it. "I don't like everything in this package, but I like even less where our country is headed without it. It would be much easier to say no and to oppose this plan. I certainly would have done some things differently if I were writing it myself. But you can't have everything you want," he said.
House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt (D-S.C.), who lost election in November, indicated in his comments to the commission that he'd also support it, but didn't come flat-out and say he would vote yes. "I think we should keep this process moving forward," he said, suggesting that if it failed the issue wouldn't be dealt with for years to come.

Story continues below

Commission member Alice Rivlin told the commission Wednesday she would be voting yes and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), often a reliable Obama ally, said she would vote no. David Cote, the CEO of Honeywell -- yes, the CEO of Honeywell is on the commission -- said that he'd be voting in support; businesswoman Ann Fudge also said she supported the final product.

Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), meanwhile, told HuffPost on Tuesday that if the plan kept the same "anemic" revenue approach - cutting taxes for the wealthy - he and other progressives would oppose it. The plan released today differs little in that respect from the one offered recently. "Their proposal on the revenue side was anemic. I've said that to both Alan and to Erskine," he said, referring to the co-chairs, Republican Alan Simpson and Democrat Erskine Bowles. At the commission's meeting Wednesday, he said that he was staying at the table, but was critical of the report. "To me, you punted," he said, charging that the plan didn't sufficiently tackle corporate tax breaks.

The proposal would also slash spending across the board. Becerra said he objected to what he called "this meat-axe approach of just making across the board cuts and assigning the pain 50-50 to schools and environmental clean up and senior housing, along with defense programs or wasteful security programs that are very expensive."

"I have a real difficult time saying that, DOD, unknown to us where their problems are, should have to pay X amount for its wasteful spending and our schools will pay the price at this commensurate rate, even though there may not have been any sign of wasteful spending on the part of our schools. Now, maybe there is, but I say target that instead of using the meat-axe. That's the biggest concern I have with their approach on the discretionary side," he said.

The commission meets Wednesday to discuss the proposal.
One key vote is former Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern, who is still on the SEIU's payroll in an emeritus capacity. The SEIU on Wednesday scorched the report, putting Stern in a difficult position if he intends to support it. "This proposal is a jobs killer at a time when our number one priority must be putting America back to work. The American people expect real solutions to create good jobs that support a family and bring fairness to our economy," said SEIU President Mary Kay Henry. "It's time for our policies to move beyond the Beltway to reflect the real world. For too long, we've forced the American people to pay the price for the failed economic policies that plunged our economy into crisis and racked up our debt. We need to reduce the deficit - and we can do so without breaking the back of American workers. We can do so without cutting the jobs of nurses, educators, first responders, fire fighters, and millions of other Americans."
Even as the deficit hyperbole hits a fever pitch in Washington, leading progressives are strenuously warning of the devastating effects a turn to austerity would have on the economy in both the short and long term.
There's a high road and a low road when it comes to deficit reduction, they argue. The high road approach includes robust job-creation measures in the short run and long-term investments in infrastructure, education, and other public goods. Sustained economic growth, after all, is the best way to reduce deficit spending.
The low road approach, by contrast, could stifle the economic recovery and accelerate the decline of the American middle class.
Progressives in recent weeks have introduced three of their own deficit-reduction plans, all of which call for increased spending until unemployment falls to manageable levels, and major public investments going forward, paid for through tax hikes for the rich and
for financial speculators.
One progressive member of Obama's deficit panel, Rep. Jan Schakowsky
(D-Ill.), drafted a comprehensive proposal that starkly contrasts with the one from the group's chairmen.
Demos, the Economic Policy Institute and The Century Foundation have produced a "Blueprint for Economic Recovery and Fiscal Responsibility."
And a Citizens' Commission On Jobs, Deficits And America's Economic Future, organized by the Campaign for America's Future, released its proposal on Tuesday.
One of the few areas of agreement between deficit hawks and progressives, interestingly enough, is that the once inviolable defense budget must take a massive hit -- somewhere on the order of $1 trillion over 10 years.
"What the proposals by Representative Schakowsky, EPI, Demos and the Century Foundation, and the Citizens' Commission all demonstrate is that we can reduce the deficit without cutting jobs or undermining the safety nets of Social Security and Medicare," said Mary Kay Henry. "These proposals offer real solutions to move our economy forward, reject the failed policies that created our current crisis, and respond to the demands of the American people to create good jobs."
The AFL-CIO is also out in opposition to the plan. "With this report the Deficit Commission once again tells working Americans to 'Drop Dead,'" said AFL head Richard Trumka. "No proposal on fiscal issues is serious that leaves the Bush tax cuts for the rich in place while raising taxes on the middle class and slashing Social Security and Medicare. All commission members should vote no on this misguided plan."

BIG OIL BRIBERY IN THE U.S. SENATE 19AUG10

FIND OUT HOW MUCH IT HAS COST BIG OIL TO BUY YOUR SENATOR...BUT DON'T FEEL TOO BAD FOR THE OIL COMPANIES...THE SENATE GAVE THEM A $35 BILLION TAX BREAK IN RETURN!

Dear Craig,

How much money has your Senator taken from Big Oil?

Ever wonder why we give $35 billion of our tax dollars to oil companies?

Follow the money.

This year alone, Big Oil companies like BP and ExxonMobil gave over $11 million to candidates for Congress and a staggering $8 million to sitting members. In fact, Big Oil has given an average of $34,647 to each U.S. senator.¹ VA Sen Mark Warner has received $25,650 and VA Sen Jim Webb has received $81,650. Click the link below to see who is buying your senator and let them know what you think.

And, like clockwork, the Senate voted in favor of those $35 billion in tax breaks and subsidies to Big Oil, even during the world's most disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. They sided with Big Oil, not with the voters. They took the money and ran.²

We're tired of the greasy, dirty politics of Washington. It's time to clean up the Senate. 

We've launched an effort to stop the subsidies. Already more than 65,000 of you have signed our Stop the Big Oil Bailout petition. Now we're asking you to help clean up by focusing on your own senators.

This issue isn't about party politics. Democrats and Republicans take money from Big Oil. Over her career, Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.) has taken more than $666,000. Senator Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) has taken more than $740,000 since he got to the Senate.

This is about the right kind of public policies being hijacked by rich corporations like BP and ExxonMobil.

If we want to stop polluting good policy with dirty money, we need to first stop the Big Oil Bailout. You can help by seeing how much your senators have taken from oil companies and spreading the word. 

http://www.truemajority.org/site/oilspill/money.php?state=

1 - http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary.php?ind=E01&cycle=2010&recipdetail=A&sortorder=U
2 - http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2010/06/-liberal-senators-target-big-oils-tax-breaks.html

Alan Greenspan: Extending Bush Tax Cuts Without Paying For Them Could Be 'Disastrous'

Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan said that the push by congressional Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts without offsetting the costs elsewhere could end up being "disastrous" for the economy.
In an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," Greenspan expressed his disagreement with the conservative argument that tax cuts essentially pay for themselves by generating revenue and productivity among recipients.
"They do not," said Greenspan.
"I'm very much in favor of tax cuts but not with borrowed money and the problem that we have gotten into in recent years is spending programs with borrowed money, tax cuts with borrowed money," he said. "And at the end of the day that proves disastrous. My view is I don't think we can play subtle policy here."
The comments from the former Fed chief were an elaboration of a position he outlined in an interview earlier in the week. Speaking with PBS' Judy Woodruff, Greenspan expressed his opposition to passing legislation that would hold tax rates steady (under law the tax cuts Bush passed ten years ago are going to expire, thereby bringing rates back to Clinton-era levels). President Obama has pledged to continue the tax breaks for those individuals making under $200,000 and those families earning less than $250,000.
But Republicans want the entire package kept in place. Even so, they have declined to say how they would pay for it, saying, in part, that keeping the Bush tax cuts in place will pay for itself.
In addition to throwing cold water on that theory, Greenspan also weighed in on broader economic issues and trends. The former Fed Chairman relayed some sobering economic predictions, saying he expected the nation's unemployment rate to remain at its current level, mainly because there were few tools left to change it.

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"I see it [as] we just stay where we are," he said. "There is a gradual increase in employment but not enough to reduce the level of unemployment ...There is nothing out there that I can see which will alter the trend or the level of unemployment in this country.

Geithner says GOP wrong, ending tax cuts for wealthy won't hurt small business 4AUG10

THE gop continues it's propaganda war against middle class and working class and poor Americans by spreading lies concerning ending the bush era tax cuts for the wealthy. It is hard to understand how a party that claims so many of faith in their leadership, so many Christians, can deliberately deceive their members and the nation with the notion that the wealthy should be able to get away with not paying their fair share and that ending these tax cuts will hurt the entire nation. They worship money and power, lust for it, with total disregard of the effect of their policies on the nation and the average citizen. 



Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner pushed back hard Wednesday against GOP criticism that allowing tax cuts to expire for the wealthiest Americans could harm small businesses.
Senate Republicans held a news conference Wednesday afternoon with a trio of small-business owners to blast the Obama administration's plan to allow Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans to expire at the end of the year, while extending only those that apply to middle-class families. They argued that more than half of all small-business income would be hit by the increase, potentially imperiling businesses that employ as many as 30 million workers.
"The impact of all this taxation, regulation and, yes, litigation as well, has a deterrent effect on what we all would like to do, and that is to create jobs," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
Hours later, in a speech at the Center for American Progress, Geithner called the GOP effort "a political argument masquerading as substance." He said letting the top-level tax cuts expire would affect fewer than 3 percent of small businesses, leaving the vast majority untouched. He also suggested that Republicans are using a misleading definition of "small business." According to the GOP's definition, Geithner said, a small business could include partners in a major law firm and directors of a large financial company.
"If you actually want to help small businesses get needed tax relief as opposed to using them as a cover for supporting tax cuts for the most well-off," he said, "those people should be supporting Senate passage of the Small Business Jobs Act this week." The bill is stalled, and aides said it may not pass until after the August break.
Geithner reiterated the administration's case for extending tax cuts for families making less than $250,000 a year while allowing the upper-class cuts to expire. "There is no credible argument to be made that the purpose of government is to borrow from future generations of Americans to finance an extension of tax cuts for the top 2 percent," Geithner said., saying such a move would amount to "a $700 billion fiscal mistake."
"It's not the prescription the economy needs right now, and the country can't afford it," he said.

The GOP Plot to Screw the Economy and the Middle Class 28JUL10

IT is hard for me to understand how so many Americans buy into the lies and deception of the republican party. They claim to be pro life and then support slashing social programs that benefit life. They claim to be pro family and then support social programs that support the poor and unemployed. They claim to be pro free market and then support tax breaks for the wealthy and corporate America and in doing so end up paying more in taxes to help make up the loss. AND I do not understand how religious politicians and some religious leaders, men and women of faith, mostly Christians, can reconcile advocating this greed and participating in these lies and deception with the teachings of Jesus Christ and the scriptures! GOD IS NOT A DEMOCRAT OR A REPUBLICAN, but I can not imagine He is pleased with the fear mongering, greed and lies and deception being spread by the republicans, with the help of some Democrats. People have to WAKE UP or BOHICA!

We're only three months away from the midterm election when a shockingly large number of American voters will inexplicably vote for Republican candidates. I have no idea if this will mean a Republican takeover of the House or Senate or both, but there will definitely be enough voter support for Republicans to significantly reduce the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.
Why? Because too many voters tend to be low-information, knee-jerk Springfield-from-The-Simpsons types, and the Republicans have lashed their crazy trains to this new wave of inchoate roid-rage to help sweep them into more congressional seats.
Here are a few of the ongoing economic conditions facing a vast majority of Americans, many of whom are all revved up to vote Republican in November. According to Michael Snyder of the Business Insider:

• 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1 percent of all Americans.
• Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation's wealth.
• In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
• More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
• Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.

Oh, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that wages for the highest 20 percent of earners rose by nearly 300 percent since 1979, while wages for the bottom and middle 20 percent increased only by 41 percent -- combined. Plotted on a graph, middle and working class wages have flatlined for 30 years. Roll all of these tragic figures into a slow growth recovery and here we are. Most of us in the middle class are screwed.
And thanks to an alliance between the Republicans (which includes the tea party), the increasingly dominant far-right media, a traditional "old media" that panders to the far-right, and right-of-center "conservadems" who pander to the Republicans, too many voters have decided that the Republican Party might be better suited to turn all of this around.
The big lie here is that if Congress stops spending, cuts the deficit and makes permanent the Bush tax cuts, especially the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, our problems will be solved -- even though these concepts are in direct conflict with each other. Not surprising given the ever-lengthening Republican syllabus of contradictions.
Here's how this new batch of contradictions plays out.
According to Republicans and their conservadem enablers, we have to cut the deficit and pay for every program Congress passes or else we're all doomed. We're stealing from our children, they say. This has manifested itself in Republican filibusters of both unemployment benefits ($34 billion) and a new jobs bill ($33 billion over ten years). A Republican filibuster killed the jobs bill, and, after many failed cloture votes, the filibuster of the unemployment benefits was finally defeated and the Senate Democrats passed the extensions. Throughout the past year and a half, it's been the same story. Any effort made by the Democrats to stimulate the economy has been filibustered by the Republicans. They say it's because of the deficit and debt.
And yet they want to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, which would add $678 billion dollars to the deficit -- and that's just the cost of the tax cuts going to the top two percent of earners. In other words, the Republicans want to spend $678 billion in further giveaways for the wealthiest two percent, and they don't care whether it increases the deficit.
By the way, the Republicans also recently voted against and defeated an amendment to strip Big Oil of its $25 billion in subsidies. Just thought I'd pass that along. Put another way, $678 billion in tax cuts for the wealthy? No problem. Deficit-shmeficit! But $34 billion in unemployment benefits for an out-of-work middle class at a time when companies aren't hiring (say nothing of the aforementioned bullet-points)? Evil! Instead, the Republicans want to give almost as much money to Big Oil in the form of corporate welfare during the worst oil spill in American history while telling unemployed middle class families to piss off.
Do we have a clear picture in terms of who and what the Republicans care about?
It surely isn't fiscal discipline or the deficit. And it surely isn't the middle class. The Bush tax cuts, if extended, would add $2 trillion to debt, so it's not that either. Throw in another policy started by the Republicans -- the war spending (more of which was passed yesterday without any worries about CBO scoring or making sure it's deficit neutral) -- and there's the vast majority of your deficit and debt for the next ten years. Not the stimulus or the bailouts. The long term budget impact of the wars and the Bush tax cuts literally dwarf the stimulus. Here's the CBPP evidence in colorful graph form:

That big blue chunk represents the Bush tax cut portion of the deficit. The yellow represents the wars. The light blue is the tax revenue lost to the recession. And those really narrow tan and red strata are TARP and the stimulus. Clearly we need to elect more Republicans so they can make permanent the big thick deficit hogs and kill that thin section for the stimulus.
Now, if you're a Republican, you might be clinging to the idea that extending the Bush tax cuts would have a stimulative effect on the economy (somehow) even though this hasn't been the case for the last ten years other than for the wealthiest Americans who have once again disproved the trickle-down theories at the heart of Reaganomics by pocketing their share of the trickle instead of reinvesting in jobs and wages for the middle class.
The Bush tax cuts will not stimulate the economy.
According to Moody's Analytics (hardly a left-wing apparatchik), for every dollar of government money spent on extending the Bush tax cuts, there's only a 32-cent return on investment in terms of economic stimulus. Not a solid investment. How about cutting the corporate tax rate? Also a 32-cent return in economic stimulus. Capital gains tax cuts? 37-cents. And, lumped together, there's your Republican plan for growing the economy. Dumb investments. Goldman Sachs would short these policies. I'm not sure they haven't, actually.
But what about the Democratic spending? For every dollar spent on unemployment benefits, there's a $1.61 return in economic stimulus. Good investment! How about infrastructure spending? $1.57 return. Aid to the states? $1.41. Temporary increase in food stamps? $1.74. Even the Obama tax credits for the middle class, $288 billion of the Recovery Act, account for up to $1.30.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration is working with a deficit commission which will focus on trimming the deficit after (we hope) the economy and jobs are back on track. The Republicans, of course, voted against forming a deficit commission.
Given the choice between deficit spending that significantly stimulates economic growth or deficit spending that barely makes a dent, which choice are the Republicans trying to sell? The really stupid deficit spending for the wealthy that barely makes a dent in the recovery. That's the Republican plan.
Also, contrary to popular far-right myths, it's worth noting that the Democrats and the White House have no intention of allowing the tax cuts for families earning less than $250,000 to expire. Those tax cuts will be renewed this year. As for the top tax brackets, you find me a multi-millionaire who pays the actual marginal rate every April and I'll show you a very rich moron. Most of these guys, after deductions and loopholes, pay an effective tax rate that's much lower than the middle class tax brackets. So don't tell me that millionaire Glenn Beck and millionaire Paris Hilton will be financially burdened by a 2.6 percent bump in their margin tax rate next year. Sorry, no. They won't be. And why do middle class Republican voters give a rip about Paris Hilton's tax rate? Because they believe they'll be as wealthy as Paris some day. But read those bullet-points again. It's not happening.
Unless there's some sort of mass epiphany, or unless the Democrats actually speak up and take the discourse by the horns and fight, middle class American voters in November will augment the number of Republicans (and conservadems) in Congress mostly because they've been suckered into endorsing these insane Republican economic policies. Subsequently, the Republicans will balloon the deficit and undermine the economic recovery in order to give more handouts to the super rich. And the middle class will continue to be an accomplice in its own slow-roasted homicide.
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American Crossroads Attacks Harry Reid For Not Bringing Nevada Enough Stimulus

MORE hypocrisy from the gop and tea-baggers, deceiving the American public about the stimulus package and unemployment benefits and the deficit and at the same time demanding more stimulus funds and trying to take credit for jobs created by stimulus funding. For a party claiming so many people of faith I have to question how they can flat out lie to the American people just to get more for their wealthy and corporate masters? Their god is money and power, and those gop politicians of faith who are signing on with american crossroads for campaign funding and support should be ashamed of the dishonesty and deception practiced by this group.  This is from Huffington Post, click the header to go to the article.
 
A television ad launched against Harry Reid late last week underscores an obvious tension, if not outright duplicity, that exists within the Republican Party with respect to the economic stimulus package passed by Democrats last year.
On Thursday evening, the new conservative group American Crossroads -- conceived of by veteran GOP operatives Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie -- released a TV advertisement attacking the Senate Majority Leader for, of all things, not bringing enough stimulus dollars back to Nevada.

It's bad enough that Nevada has the highest unemployment in the nation. And Harry Reid claims to be helping the jobs situation? Really Harry? Recent data show Nevada ranks 50th in the money received from Harry's stimulus bill. That's right -- Senate leader Harry Reid has gotten his own state less help than every other state but one. And along with bailouts, deficits, and Obamacare, that's what Harry Reid's done for Nevada. Really Harry? That's not the kinda help Nevada needs.

Coming in the middle of the heated Nevada Senate race, the spot is designed to put the entirety of the blame for Nevada's unemployment at Reid's feet. But the numbers are wrong. There are, in fact, 13 states that have received less stimulus money than Nevada, according to administration data.
More important than the misleading message, however, is the audacity of the messengers. Americans Crossroads is a conservative outfit run by a host of fierce critics of the Democratic stimulus program. Gillespie, the former RNC Chair and Bush hand, has criticized the stimulus package as ineffectual and misguided. Karl Rove, another American Crossroads chief and Bush confidant, actually insisted that the stimulus bill hurt the economy. Now, it appears, they see virtue in the recovery package. Were it not for the ineptitude of Harry Reid, the group argues, Nevada would be reaping more of the benefits.
Of course, the more fundamental message being advanced by American Crossroads is that Reid is simply incompetent. How, after all, could a Majority Leader not bring home the bacon to his needy constituents? But that too is misleading. As The Atlantic's Derek Thompson explains: "Republicans have spent the last three months blocking a Sen. Reid-endorsed extension to unemployment insurance that would particularly help Nevada, since federal UI contributions are tied to state unemployment rate. They're blocking Democrats' jobless aid in Washington and blaming Sen. Reid for not spending more on joblessness in Reno."
Indeed, from the perches of Congress and the cable news circuit, Republican lawmakers have howled at the mere suggestion of additional government spending -- reflecting concerns over rising deficits. But when the debate moves back to districts or the states, the tune is decidedly different. GOP lawmakers have attended ribbon-cutting ceremonies for stimulus projects; they have hosted job fairs with companies who have received recovery funds; they've complained about the slow pace of stimulus distribution; and they've even privately lobbied departments within the administration for stimulus funds.
In the end, the GOP isn't just trying to have its cake and eat it too. They're insisting that the cake has no nutritional value, refusing to bake more, and then criticizing Democrats for not feeding it to more people.

Drill, Gamble, Loot, Starve: The Chamber of Commerce, the GOP, and the Politics of Plunder 15JUL10

MEET YOUR republican CONGRESS
The United States Chamber of Commerce has released an "open letter" to the President, Congress, and the American people which contains its blueprint for our political future. It lays out the current Republican playbook in stark terms, and it reads like the battle plan for those alien spaceships from Independence Day: Drain the resources, take everything from the population, strip the land to a husk... and then presumably sail away in mile-long spaceships toward the next targeted planet.
What we're seeing is the Politics of Plunder, revealed in all its nakedness. There will be another example of this corporate-driven mindset this week, possibly even today, when all but a handful of Republican Senators vote against a moderate set of curbs on Wall Street excesses. The Democratic Party may disappoint its supporters from time to time, but it seems that Republicans never do -- once you accept the fact that its real "supporters" are the mega-businesses represented by the Chamber of Commerce. Some of the delegates who chanted "drill, baby, drill" at the GOP Convention are staring out their windows at oil-soaked beaches, while others have gone broke in an economy ruined by Wall Street gambling. That won't stop the Politics of Plunder. (Come to think of it, "drill, baby, drill" would have been a perfect motto for those spaceships.)
To be clear, the Chamber of Commerce isn't the political lobbying arm of "business," as it sometimes claims. It specifically serves the interests of massive businesses, which are often at odds with the needs of small and medium enterprises. Any CEO of a smaller company who's pressured by one of the Chamber's sales representatives to join, as I was in my business life, is being asked to subsidize policies that will benefit the Chamber's mega-donors -- often at her or his own expense. The Chamber's letter serves those mega-interests well, and we can expect most Republicans to follow it in lockstep, no doubt with cheering crowds pumped up for the same old chants and a few new ones.
"Drill, baby, drill." The lessons of BP are lost on this crowd -- or, to be more accurate, they don't matter. The Chamber's letter says that "there are numerous oil, gas, and shale leases on our lands and off our shores that are currently inactive. Some estimates show that they could generate as much as $1.7 trillion worth of royalties over the next 10 years. (Note: We heard that using 10-year timelines to create impressive-sounding numbers was "cheating" when the Administration did it.) Tapping these reserves would create direct federal revenues and hundreds of thousands of jobs."
The devastation of our Southern coastlines has not dimmed the Chamber/GOP crowd's thirst for drilling in costly, inaccessible, and dangerous areas. This letter, purportedly about "jobs," ignores the many jobs that have been lost because of the spill, and the thousands of small businesses devastated by the loss of fishing and tourism. It doesn't matter: The Politics of Plunder demands revenue for the largest businesses -- most of which would be generated by foreign sales of these resources, and very little of which would be returned to the US economy.
"Gamble, baby, gamble." Millions of American jobs were lost because of Wall Street's reckless, runaway gambling binge. The Chamber/Republican response is to whine about the Dodd/Frank bill, which is nothing more than a simple first step on the road toward comprehensive financial reform. "The soon-to-be-finalized financial regulatory reform legislation creates over 350 regulatory rulemakings, 47 studies, and 74 reports," the letter reads, "dwarfing anything in Sarbanes-Oxley."
The use of these kinds of numbers is a common rhetorical trick for the megabusiness/GOP crowd. Somehow we're expected to believe that the leaders of major corporations are overwhelmed by the complexity of "350 regulatory rulemakings" -- as if they don't have people who handle that sort of thing. Remember, we're talking about Wall Street here: banks and hedge funds, here not Norman Rockwell small-town grocers who will be overwhelmed by paperwork. The real purpose of this complaint is to provide cover for all those "no" votes we will see this week - each of which is a vote to continue the enrichment of wealthy financiers at the expense of the American economy.
"Loot, baby, loot." The GOP and its Democratic Blue Dog sympathizers don't want to vote for unemployment benefits or stimulus programs because, we're told, they're so concerned about the deficit. But when it comes to preserving tax cuts for the wealthy it's "deficits be damned." Sen. Jon Kyl's recent comments on the subject expose the inconsistency.
Here, too, the Chamber slavishly serves the mega-wealthy at the expense of other businesses and the American people. "(J)ust six months from now," their letter reads, "Americans will be hit with the largest tax increase in history in precisely those areas that would have the greatest negative impact on investment and jobs -- individual tax rates, dividends and capital gains taxes, the death tax, and the alternative minimum tax." It's economic nonsense to say that these are the areas that most impact investment and jobs. What's more, these taxes on the wealthy have been artificially low in recent years, adding to the deficit while doing very little to stimulate the economy.
The Chamber's use of the ideological phrase "death tax" to describe the estate tax masks the fact that they're talking about a 2009 law that allows wealthy heirs to inherit up to $10 million while paying no taxes at all, while people who work for their money pay at the usual rates. (If you want to amuse yourself, do a Google search of right-wing "tax justice" websites that rail against lifting this exemption and try to find one that mentions the actual numbers involved. They don't want you to know who's actually getting this tax break. It should be called the "Poodles for Paris Hilton Act.")
"Starve, baby, starve." The letter says that "The Chamber looks forward to the report due later this year from the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform." (Yeah, you bet it does.) "However, we already know that mandatory spending, especially in entitlements, is the primary culprit." Now that its clients have devastated the economy, robbing people of jobs and much of their savings, the Chamber is targeting an "aging population" in order to slash Social Security and other entitlement programs. Social Security is solvent for many more years and minor adjustments would make it completely viable indefinitely. But the mega-wealthy Chamber/GOP agenda demands that Social Security payroll taxes be redirected toward other government programs so they can fund further tax cuts for the rich.
Voters care more about helping the unemployed and getting Americans back to work than they do about cutting the deficit. Budget-slashing is a Washington fixation only, fueled by the think tanks and lobbyists that the Chamber/GOP crowd funds and promotes. But Chamber-driven Republicans hope that the public won't understand what they're doing, counting on "fatigue" and confusion to provide a smokescreen for the Politics of Plunder.
Those shadows over the nation's cities aren't spaceships. They're the very real threats that continue to loom over us: Continued unemployment. A damaged environment in risk of even greater devastation. Generations of older Americans who might be left without financial security. Republicans and the Chamber of Commerce want to use our economic crisis as a "shock doctrine" moment to pass measures that will continue a massive transfer of wealth to the upper one percent, while mortgaging the country's future to the economic interests that have already served it so poorly.
As the vote on financial reform will once again illustrate, this is not a movie.
_______________________________________________________________
Richard (RJ) Eskow, a consultant and writer (and former insurance/finance executive), is a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America's Future. This post was produced as part of the Curbing Wall Street project. Richard also blogs at A Night Light.
He can be reached at "rjeskow@ourfuture.org."
Website: Eskow and Associates

END $35 BILLION A YEAR IN TAX CUTS TO BP, EXXON, CHEVRON, ALL BIG OIR AND GET CLEAN ENERGY LEGISLATION PASSED NOW

With just 18 workdays left, we need at least 18,000 people to contact their Senators and urge them to pass comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation. Here's the link to find the contact information for your Senators, please contact them today. Need help with your letter, it is OK to copy and paste mine and edit it to express your views.  http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

With less than 18 workdays left to get comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation passed in the Senate -- we need your immediate help.
The Senate must build on legislation that passed last year in the House and move forward with comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation before the congressional recess begins on August 9th. That gives us just 18 workdays to get global warming legislation passed. 
The next few weeks offers our best opportunity yet to pass a bill that reduces our dependence on oil, creates jobs, and protects our planet. That’s why I need your help right now. With just 18 days left, our goal is to get 18,000 people to demand their Senators vote YES on global warming legislation.  Will you be the first to ask your Senators by sending them a message today?
As the worst environmental catastrophe in U.S. history devastates the Gulf of Mexico, Americans show overwhelming support for comprehensive energy legislation — by a margin of 2 to 1 — according to the latest polls.   This oil catastrophe has been a jarring wake-up call that the Senate can’t ignore.    
What’s more, polls show that comprehensive energy and climate legislation could be a pivotal election issue in November — with 63% of likely voters saying they would support an energy bill that invests in clean energy and makes energy companies pay for the carbon pollution they emit.
Your Senators must hear from constituents like you who support a transition to a clean energy future.  
This is not going to be an easy fight, but with your help we can counter the dirty tactics of those who want to continue our addiction to oil and coal.  Thank you for doing your part to help fight for the clean energy solutions we so desperately need for our economy and for our planet.
Sincerely,

Gene Karpinski
President
League of Conservation Voters

HERE'S my letter to Sens Webb and Warner.....I hope you will contact your Senators and tell them to get this legislation passed! And sign the petition below to end the tax breaks to the big oil companies.

As one of your constituents, I urge you to pass comprehensive energy and climate legislation before the August recess.  I also want you to ensure that this legislation includes a cap on carbon pollution and invests in clean energy that's made in America. We have the resources and the masses of unemployed to be retrained for jobs developing and sustaining and maintaining a new energy economy in this country. The power grid needs to be rebuilt with the same vigor the Interstate Highway system was built. Solar and wind power deserves the same level of financial support the dirty energy companies have received in the past. We should be able to develop a mass transit industry here supplying communities with subway cars, passenger rail cars and trams and should be supporting mass transit in urban areas and developing high speed passenger rail service. All of this will help end our dependence on coal and oil while addressing the massive unemployment problem we are facing. This national call to action can begin with this clean energy legislation that must be passed. must not be held hostage by the politicians, mostly from the Republican party who are controlled by their corporate masters from the big oil and gas and coal companies.

Oil companies and their corporate lobbyists have fought energy reform for decades to protect their profits  and in the process, they have made America more dependent on oil  -- hurting our economy, threatening our national security, and harming our environment.   I urge you to stand up to corporate polluters and stand with the American people by supporting action on clean energy and climate legislation now. 

Stop the Big Oil Bailout 

Big Oil companies are ripping you off -- and I don't just mean at the pump. BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and other oil companies are raking in some of the biggest corporate profits in history while taking $35 billion in government subsidies and tax breaks every year.

That's $35 billion of your money being used to pad the bottom line of oil companies like ExxonMobil, which posted over $45 billion in profits last year alone.

Oil companies don't need a taxpayer bailout while making money hand over fist. That's why we're joining our friends at Credo Action and True Majority to end the Big Oil Bailout. Sign our petition today and we'll make sure every member of Congress and candidate for office sees that we stand with clean, renewable energy, not Big Oil.

STOP THE BIG OIL BAILOUT -- SIGN THE PETITION TODAY

President Obama campaigned on an energy plan that promised to break America's addiction to oil and invest in clean, renewable energy sources. But the Big Oil Bailout that costs taxpayers billions of dollars every year is only feeding our addiction to dirty fuels.

With oil still gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, now is the time to break that addiction once and for all. We need to stop sending taxpayer money to some of the richest corporations on the planet. We need to end all taxpayer subsidies and tax breaks to oil companies and invest in clean energy companies to create new green jobs. Sign the petition today and let Congress know where you stand.

SIGN THE PETITION TO END TAXPAYER GIVEAWAYS BIG OIL

With your help, we can put an end to the Big Oil Bailout and finally break our oil addiction.