Posts Tagged ‘budget’

11 Aug

He picked Ryan

Posted by James O'Rourke in Opinions and Other Issues. Tagged: , , , .

Dear Readers,

By choosing Paul Ryan as his running mate, Mitt just made the most radical choice possible.

Paul Ryan is the Tea Party’s darling and architect of the GOP’s plan to destroy Medicare. And while dismantling the nation’s social safety net, he will give even more tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires like Mitt Romney.

We only have 86 days until the election. We need to act now– we cannot prevent a GOP takeover of the White House and Senate without you.

Should you care to donate, here is the link: http://dscc.org/supportobama

Thanks for your help,
Harry Reid

11 Aug

Top 5 Worst Things About Paul Ryan’s RecordRyan

Posted by James O'Rourke in Opinions and Other Issues. Tagged: , , , , , , .

Top 5 Worst Things About Paul Ryan’s Record
By Alison McQuade on
August 11, 2012

It’s a big day in presidential politics. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has chosen Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate. The Vice President pick says a lot about a nominee’s legislative priorities, and with Ryan joining Romney on the ticket, we think there are a few things you should know.

1. Paul Ryan authored budget proposals that would end Medicare as we know it. His budget proposal would repeal health care reform, sticking seniors with the bill and leaving their health care at risk. This is especially problematic for women, who make up fifty-six percent of Medicare beneficiaries.

2. Paul Ryan’s budget plan would have cut SNAP grants by 18%. SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) grants, also known as food stamps, has kept 3.9 million Americans (equivalent to the entire population of Oregon), including 1.7 million children, out of poverty, and allowed them to keep their families from going hungry. This plan also would have drastically cut jobs, leaving 174,000 people out of work.

3. Paul Ryan is bad for women. He voted for a bill that would have effectively banned abortion coverage by insurers who received federal or taxpayer funding. This bill, which Ryan favored, would have allowed anyone involved to refuse to perform an abortion for any reason, even if the life of the woman needing the abortion was in danger.

4. Paul Ryan is extremely anti-choice. Paul Ryan voted for the Protect Life Act, which grants hospitals far-reaching powers to deny women abortion care, without any exception for emergency situations. US law currently requires hospitals receiving federal funds to provide emergency care to anyone in need up to the point at which they can be stabilized or transferred, if the original hospital is incapable of providing the care they need. “The misnamed Protect Life Act is about allowing women to die if they need an emergency abortion,” said Meghan Rhoad, women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “It is a vicious attack on women’s rights and on the most basic right to life.’”

5. Paul Ryan wants to defund Planned Parenthood. This ideological attack would only result in more women losing access to necessary and basic health care. One in five American women have used Planned Parenthood health services.

There you have it. While Mitt Romney parades Paul Ryan around as his pick to be first in the line of succession to the presidency, you now have the facts. Paul Ryan has a long history of voting against affordable health care and women’s health. His legislative priorities leave millions of people at risk of losing their health care and in medical and financial danger. Combined with Mitt Romney’s bad policies, it’s clear: the Romney/Ryan ticket is bad for women and families.

If we want to re-elect President Obama and elect the women who can hold Romney, Ryan, and the rest of the far right accountable, we need you with us. We’ve got a long fight ahead, but I know that there’s no stronger barricade in the War on Women than the EMILY’s List community. Click here to contribute to help our women win in November.

25 Mar

How Paul Ryan sold his budget plan

Posted by James O'Rourke in Opinions and Other Issues. Tagged: , , , , , .

Sourced from Poltico.com

The sales job on this Ryan budget is a far cry from last year’s rollout.

John Shinkle/POLITICO

By JAKE SHERMAN
3/22/12

The Paul Ryan budget was a political disaster last year for Republicans. This year the GOP had a much more methodical, careful rollout.

The party polled on Medicare in 50 battleground districts. It vetted the plan with a dozen conservative groups. It reached out to rank-and-file lawmakers and asked them what they needed to support the sweeping conservative spending plan. Ryan briefed the Republican presidential candidates and won a quick public endorsement of the plan from Mitt Romney.

On the day before the budget rollout, top Republicans gathered in Speaker John Boehner’s smoky Capitol conference room with National Republican Congressional Committee officials and went over key phrases. Call the Medicare reform “bipartisan,” they were told. Frame it as helping to “fix Medicare and keep it from going bankrupt.” Be sure to point out that Americans 55 or older would not be affected. And say it gives seniors the choice of “staying in the current Medicare system or using the new one.”

Using this phrasing, 46 percent in an internal GOP poll — conducted in January — would support the Republican argument that Medicare is going bankrupt, Republicans were giving them a choice and the GOP is trying to preserve the program. The Democratic argument that Republicans were ending Medicare registered at 37 percent.

The precise, strategic sales job of the Ryan budget is a far cry from last year’s clunky rollout, and a sign that Republicans have learned some lessons in political strategy on the divisive issues underlying the Ryan vision.

Last year, they were blindsided by the backlash to the Wisconsin Republican’s plan. It was immediately framed by Democrats as ending Medicare, crushing Medicaid while keeping taxes low for the rich. Ryan, who was being pitched as a presidential prospect for the party, receded as his plan came under attack from all sides.

The 2012 plan is — simply put — to not talk about the plan too much.

Ryan and Republicans no longer talk about their plan as a stand-alone. They frame it as a contrast with President Barack Obama’s health care law, which they believe cuts $500 billion from Medicare. The presence of Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) as a co-author of Ryan’s Medicare overhaul gives them bipartisan cover.

GOP leaders are suggesting members use props. In a presentation, the NRCC said members should try to “inoculate” themselves in a campaign season by using “credible third-party validators (mom or seniors),” according to a party document.

Above all, the Ryan budget rollout was designed to conform to a new political reality for Republicans: Changing entitlements is difficult, not popular but necessary. And even the true believers — like Ryan himself — need to build coalitions when they pitch big ideas.

To ensure the plan landed well nationally, Ryan personally reached out to presidential candidates to brief them on it. Romney endorsed the plan this week.

Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) joined with the Budget Committee, Boehner (R-Ohio) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) to work over members to fit their needs on the budget. Deeper cuts to spending? Done. Replace automatic cuts to the Pentagon? Sure.

McCarthy’s team also reached out to more than a dozen outside groups to hear what they want to see in the budget — and then let them know where the committee was heading. Groups ranged from monied Republicans like Crossroads, American Action Network and FreedomWorks, to tea party groups such as Americans for Prosperity and American Conservative Union, to Washington establishments like Americans for Tax Reform, the Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute.
One of the few criticisms came from the Club for Growth, but that group seems to be more the exception than the rule.

The Club for Growth Wednesday said Ryan’s budget “falls short” because it doesn’t balance the budget “for decades” and it violates the spending caps agreed to by the House and Senate.

“On balance, the Ryan budget is a disappointment for fiscal conservatives,” said former Rep. Chris Chocola (R-Ind.), now the president of Club for Growth.

It remains to be seen whether the methodical work Republicans have gone through will pay dividends. They lost a House race in upstate New York after passing Ryan’s budget in 2011.

And Democrats still think the Ryan budget is an election-year gift that will allow them to portray Republicans as killing Medicare, cutting taxes for the rich and slashing programs that help the poor. Democrats are also expected to hit Republicans for violating an agreement on spending caps and changing Medicaid.

But Republicans expect the carping from the left. They believe that if the upstate New York race last year was a low point for the GOP, a race in Nevada last fall was a dry run for how to frame 2012 races around the budget.

In that race, Republican Mark Amodei faced Democrat Kate Marshall in a solidly Republican district. But among seniors, he was getting badly beaten.
Amodei gave up talking about the particulars of the Ryan budget. He started saying the status quo was unsustainable. He tagged Marshall as supporting Obama’s health care bill, which he said cut from Medicare. When talking about the Republican plan, he said it would “save and protect” the senior health care program.

Amodei sent out direct mail that branded him as the “the one candidate working to protect Medicare.” They enlisted his mother to star in an advertisement vouching he would protect the program.
The contrast worked.

At the beginning of the race — just a few months after Ryan’s first budget passed — 39 percent of voters thought Marshall would better “protect seniors on Medicare.” Just 26 percent thought Amodei was up for that job. By the end of the race, that number jumped to 41 percent, and Marshall’s dropped to 33. And, Amodei’s favorable ratings with voters older than 65 nearly doubled.

He is now a member of Congress.

“Here’s what I’m real comfortable telling people,” Amodei said in an interview in Washington on Wednesday. “I’ll tell you the truth about your program, and I’ll fight to save it, but in order to tell you the truth and to fight to save it, you can’t continue to do nothing. Can you fix it all in a year? Absolutely not. Can you fix it in five years? No you can’t. But you better start now.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com

1 Aug

Capitulation

Posted by James O'Rourke in Federal Budget and Economy. Tagged: , , , , , .

Sourced from Campaign for America’s Progress

By Robert Borosage
August 1, 2011 – 6:54am ET

The raw deal on the budget ceiling has been cut. The Tea Party terrorists – the extremist faction willing to hold the economy hostage to get their way – have won. The Republic, common sense and decency have been trampled.
With the economy deeply depressed, 25 million people in need of full time work, the raw deal will impede any recovery. It precludes any serious action on jobs from the federal government. It will cost jobs as spending is cut. Instead of getting serious about a plan to revive this economy and put people back to work, Washington will remain fixated on what and how much to cut. From the President to the Tea Party zealots, politicians will tell Americans that this agreement is “important to our economy.” Yes, it is important – important in the way a virus is important to a sickly patient. It will make things worse.

With Gilded Age inequality, and hedge fund billionaires paying a lower effective tax rate than their secretaries, the deal contains no tax hikes. Poor and working Americans are asked to pay to clean up the mess that Wall Street’s excesses created.

Although the terms of the agreement are complicated, the capitulation is clear. There will be deep cuts in discretionary spending—$900 billion over 10 years, one-third from the Pentagon—in the first step. There are no tax revenues, much less higher taxes on millionaires in that mix. (The President touts that domestic discretionary spending will be slashed to levels not seen since the Eisenhower administration, presenting a travesty as if it were a victory.)

Then a rump congressional committee—a gang of 12, split between Republicans and Democrats—will be given the charter and extraordinary powers to find another $1.5 trillion over 10 years, from cuts in Medicare and Medicaid or possibly with revenues from closing loopholes (raising tax rates seems to be off the table.) Republicans have already pledged to allow no revenue increases.

If the committee gridlocks, there will be an automatic $1.2 trillion in across the board spending cuts, with the Pentagon and Medicare on the chopping block, while Medicaid, Social Security, veteran’s pay and programs for the poor are exempted.

The raw deal sets a precedent that Republican leaders are already celebrating: from now on, they boast, every debt ceiling vote will be the occasion for holding the economy hostage to more extreme demands. A balanced budget constitutional amendment. A two-thirds vote for any tax hike on the rich. Privatization of Social Security. The demands will get more extreme over time.

No progressive can or should vote for this capitulation. Republicans have won big. They should be forced to produce the votes to pass this in the House. If they can’t, the president should do what he should have done from the beginning. Stop the negotiations, demand a clean lift of the debt ceiling, and invoke his constitutional powers to avoid default.

If the deal passes the Congress, then congressional Democrats should insure that no Democrat named to the Gang of 12 will accept any agreement that does not include more revenues than spending cuts, while defending Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security from a rump process.

Given Republican intransigence, that will force deadlock, triggering deep spending cuts that won’t go into effect until January of 2013. Americans can then decide in the election whether they want to vote for those who would gut Medicare and Social Security to protect tax breaks for the wealthy.

The media will trumpet the agreement; the markets will exhale; the pressure to fall in line will be great. But when the dust clears, the economy will still be in trouble, and the federal government will be less able to help. Americans will see investments in schools, research, public health, clean energy, transportation cut back. Inequality will grow; poverty will spread.

Voters will have to decide. They know Republicans are prepared to go to the mat to protect the wealthy from tax hikes, even to the point of endangering the economy. Will voters have any clue about what Democrats are prepared to fight for?

1 Aug

Democrats will lose now. But they can win later.

Posted by James O'Rourke in Federal Budget and Economy, Politics As Usual. Tagged: , .

Sourced from wapo.com

By Ezra Klein  |  11:36 AM ET, 07/31/2011

wpid-taxincreasesover10years-2011-08-1-10-34.jpg

Democrats are going to lose this one. The first stage of the emerging deal doesn’t include revenue, doesn’t include stimulus, and lets Republicans pocket a trillion dollars or more in cuts without offering anything to Democrats in return.

The second stage convenes a congressional “Supercommittee” to recommend up to $2 trillion in further cuts, and if their plan doesn’t pass Congress, there’s an enforcement mechanism that begins making automatic, across-the-board cuts to almost all categories of spending. So heads Democrats lose, tails Republicans win.

It’s difficult to see how it could have ended otherwise. Virtually no Democrats are willing to go past Aug. 2 without raising the debt ceiling. Plenty of Republicans are prepared to blow through the deadline. That’s not a dynamic that lends itself to a deal. That’s a dynamic that lends itself to a ransom.

But Democrats will have their turn. On Dec. 31, 2012, three weeks before the end of President Barack Obama’s current term in office, the Bush tax cuts expire. Income tax rates will return to their Clinton-era levels. That amounts to a $3.6 trillion tax increase over 10 years, three or four times the $800 billion to $1.2 trillion in revenue increases that Obama and Speaker John Boehner were kicking around. And all Democrats need to do to secure that deal is…nothing.

Continue reading »

1 Aug

Capitulation

Posted by James O'Rourke in Federal Budget and Economy, Policy, Politics, and Politicians, Politics As Usual, Poppycock. Tagged: .

Sourced from Campaign for America’s Future

The raw deal on the budget ceiling has been cut. The Tea Party terrorists – the extremist faction willing to hold the economy hostage to get their way – have won. The Republic, common sense and decency have been trampled.

With the economy deeply depressed, 25 million people in need of full time work, the raw deal will impede any recovery. It precludes any serious action on jobs from the federal government. It will cost jobs as spending is cut. Instead of getting serious about a plan to revive this economy and put people back to work, Washington will remain fixated on what and how much to cut. From the President to the Tea Party zealots, politicians will tell Americans that this agreement is “important to our economy.” Yes, it is important – important in the way a virus is important to a sickly patient. It will make things worse.

With Gilded Age inequality, and hedge fund billionaires paying a lower effective tax rate than their secretaries, the deal contains no tax hikes. Poor and working Americans are asked to pay to clean up the mess that Wall Street’s excesses created.

Although the terms of the agreement are complicated, the capitulation is clear. There will be deep cuts in discretionary spending—$900 billion over 10 years, one-third from the Pentagon—in the first step. There are no tax revenues, much less higher taxes on millionaires in that mix. (The President touts that domestic discretionary spending will be slashed to levels not seen since the Eisenhower administration, presenting a travesty as if it were a victory.)

Continue reading »

31 Jul

Top Ten Facts You Need to Know About Why We Need to Raise the Federal Debt Ceiling

Posted by James O'Rourke in Federal Budget and Economy. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , .

Sourced from Center for America’s Progress

Sarah Ayres
Jul 29, 2011 6:06 PM more »

The U.S. Congress this weekend and early next week will hopefully reach a deal to raise the federal debt ceiling before time runs out on August 2. Here are 10 facts that you need to know to understand why we need to raise the federal debt ceiling by then, and why we’re in this mess in the first place.

1. Failing to raise the debt ceiling will cause a downgrade in the United States’s AAA credit rating, resulting in higher interest rates for American families and businesses. Rating agencies S&P and Moody’s say they will downgrade the United States’s credit rating if the government fails to raise the debt limit by August 2. U.S. creditworthiness keeps interest rates low, easing the burden on consumers and homeowners while allowing businesses to invest. If the debt limit is not raised, American families and small businesses will pay the price in the form of higher interest rates.

2. Failing to raise the debt ceiling could cause a second recession. After August 2, the federal government will be unable to pay all of its bills. As a result, some people who are expecting to receive a check—either for benefits such as Social Security or for services rendered to the federal government—may not get it. The withdrawal of billions of dollars from the economy could well be enough to plunge the United States back into a recession. In fact, if the debt limit remains frozen throughout September, the ensuing loss may be even greater than that suffered during the worst quarter of the Great Recession.

Continue reading »

9 May

How to Stop the Fiscal Bleeding

Posted by James O'Rourke in Policy, Politics, and Politicians. Tagged: , , , .

Sourced from: TheDailyBeast.com

by Michael Tomasky

 With the budget debate firing up again this week, Michael Tomasky says there’s just one serious way to cut our deficit—by focusing on tax expenditures, the tax loopholes and deductions that are bleeding federal coffers dry.

The budget is likely to revert to Topic A in Washington this week, as Vice President Joe Biden’s bipartisan negotiations resume at Blair House and the Senate Gang of Six (maybe) finally releases its report. The key to making sense of this latest round of wrangling is to keep an ear out for the phrase “tax expenditures,” because how that issue is handled will largely determine whether we end up with a serious and equitable solution to our financial problems—or an ideological one that extracts flesh from the targets (poor people, domestic programs) that are running out of flesh to extract.

More on tax expenditures in a moment, but first some background. Fixing our long-term budget problems requires work in three basic areas. First, spending cuts. That, you know about. You hear about it ceaselessly from the Tea Party caucus and Republicans generally. You know that $38 billion (it was really only about $25 billion) was wrenched from the 2011 domestic budget, and that conservatives want far, far more than that. Non-defense domestic spending, remember, constitutes just 12 percent of the federal budget.

Continue reading »

20 Apr

Obama Returns to his Moral Vision: Democrats Read Carefully!

Posted by James O'Rourke in Federal Budget and Economy, Obama Administration, Policy, Politics, and Politicians, Seniors. Tagged: , , , , , .

Sourced from AlterNet
By George Lakoff

The President’s budget speech presented a straightforward idea of right and wrong that he correctly attributes to the founding of the country.
April 18, 2011  |

Last week, on April 13, 2011, President Obama gave all Democrats and all progressives a remarkable gift. Most of them barely noticed. They looked at the President’s speech as if it were only about budgetary details. But the speech went well beyond the budget. It went to the heart of progressive thought and the nature of American democracy, and it gave all progressives a model of how to think and talk about every issue.

It was a landmark speech. It should be watched and read carefully and repeatedly by every progressive who cares about our country — whether Democratic office-holder, staffer, writer, or campaign worker — and every progressive blogger, activist and concerned citizen. The speech is a work of art.

The policy topic happened to be the budget, but he called it “The Country We Believe In” for a reason. The real topic was how the progressive moral system defines the democratic ideals America was founded on, and how those ideals apply to specific issues. Obama’s moral vision, which he applied to the budget, is more general: it applies to every issue. And it can be applied everywhere by everyone who shares that moral vision of American democracy.
Discussion in the media has centered on economics — on the President’s budget policy compared with the Republican budget put forth by Paul Ryan. But, as Robert Reich immediately pointed out, “Ten or twelve-year budgets are baloney. It’s hard enough to forecast budgets a year or two into the future.” The real economic issues are economic recovery and the distribution of wealth. As I have observed, the Republican focus on the deficit is really a strategy for weakening government and turning the country conservative in every respect. The real issue is existential: what is America at heart and what is America to be.

In 2008, candidate Obama laid out these moral principles as well as anyone ever has, and roused the nation in support. As President, as he focused on pragmatics and policy, he let moral leadership lapse, leaving the field of morality to radical conservatives, who exploited their opposite moral views effectively enough to take over the House and many state offices. For example, they effectively attacked the President’s health care plan on two ideas taken from the right-wing version of morality: freedom (“government takeover”) and life (“death panels”). The attacks were successful even though Americans preferred the President’s health care policies (no preconditions, universal affordable coverage). The lesson: morality at the general level beats out policy at the particular level. The reason: voters identify themselves as moral beings not policy wonks.
All politics is moral. Political leaders put forth proposals on the assumption that their proposals are the right things to do, not the wrong things to do. But progressives and radical conservatives have very different ideas of right and wrong.

Continue reading »

28 Feb

Maybe you shouldn’t have supported trillions in unfunded wars

Posted by James O'Rourke in Federal Budget and Economy. Tagged: , , , , , .

Sourced fron DailyKos.com

MON FEB 28, 2011 AT 02:32 PM EST

by clammyc

What “the great deficit debate” really boils down to is one thing:  priorities.

Deficits weren’t a priority when nearly all Republicans and a good number of Democrats voted for the ill conceived and ill advised invasions and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq close to a decade ago.  They weren’t a priority when tens, if not hundreds of billions went to waste or were just “lost” in Iraq – not knowing if they ended up in the hands of those who were the stated enemy.  They weren’t a priority when billions of no-bid contracts were handed out like candy, with no accounting.

There were some in Congress, including my Representative, Scott Garrett, who weren’t yet elected when the first vote was taken to start the folly in Iraq.  However, he, and his ilk have been present for all or most of the subsequent economy killing votes to continue funding these disasters with our children’s, grandchildren’s and great-grandchildren’s money.  There wasn’t even a hesitation on most of this – even with the very basic premise that cutting taxes in conjunction with a war is unheard of and pretty much unprecedented.

There was little to no concern of the drain on the economy, the massive deficits being caused by these trillions – coupled with the massive tax cuts at the same time.  There was little to no concern when the levees in Louisiana couldn’t hold back, despite prior warnings.  There was little to no concern when bridges were collapsing in Minnesota, when a failure of the power grid knocked out much of the east coast for over a full day or as our country’s roads were given failing and close to failing grades.

There was little to no concern when the amount of money being borrowed was a neverending pit, or when the weapons being used weren’t really suitable for the kind of “war” that was being waged.  There was little to no concern when the debt was piling up and our country’s coffers were being raided for “business opportunities” for looting by private companies post invasion rebuilding.  There was little to no concern that this government was paying private contractors scads of money for “security” in Iraq – with no accountability and on numerous instances, with highly questionable behavior.

So now, as we hear suddenly from the same people that brought the ill advised invasion and occupation of Iraq, the same people that doubled down on Afghanistan, the same people who have no interest in holding those accountable for stealing untold billions from We the People – we hear that this country can’t afford to take care of its own?  

Really?  Really?  Perhaps if any thought was given to the plight of Americans and the US economy for the past 8 years, then we wouldn’t be in a “nobody could have guessed” scenario as the guilty parties try to give moral advice.

28 Feb

GOP spending plan would cost 700,000 jobs, new report says

Posted by James O'Rourke in Federal Budget and Economy, Politics As Usual. Tagged: , , , , .

Sourced from wapo.com

By Lori Montgomery, Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, February 28, 2011; 3:40 PM

A Republican plan to sharply cut federal spending this year would destroy 700,000 jobs through 2012, according to an independent economic analysis set for release Monday.

The report, by Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, offers fresh ammunition to Democrats seeking block the Republican plan, which would terminate dozens of programs and slash federal appropriations by $61 billion over the next seven months.

Zandi, an architect of the 2009 stimulus package who has advised both political parties, predicts that the GOP package would reduce economic growth by 0.5 percentage points this year, and by 0.2 percentage points in 2012, resulting in 700,000 fewer jobs by the end of next year.

His report comes on the heels of a similar analysis last week by the investment bank Goldman Sachs, which predicted that the Republican spending cuts would cause even greater damage to the economy, slowing growth by as much as 2 percentage points in the second and third quarters of this year.

Zandi also had bad news for liberal Democrats who are resisting sharp spending cuts: Bringing deficits down to sustainable levels will require more than a growing economy. Even if the economy recovers as expected, he writes, lawmakers will have to cut about $400 billion a year through the rest of this decade to narrow the gap between spending and revenue, and stop adding significantly to the national debt.

“Significant government spending restraint is vital, but given the still halting economic recovery, it would be counterproductive for that restraint to begin until the economy is creating enough jobs to bring down the still very high unemployment rate,” Zandi writes. “Shutting the government down for any length of time would also be taking a big chance with the recovery, not only because of the disruption to government services, but also due to the potential hit to the fragile collective psyche.”

Lawmakers are facing a Friday deadline to approve a new measure to fund the government through the remainder of this fiscal year; the current funding bill is set to expire. Republicans insist the new measure should include deep cuts; Democrats say they are willing to cut spending this year, but not nearly as much.

A potential compromise emerged late last week, when House Republicans offered a stopgap measure that would keep the government operating through March 18 while cutting $4 billion from programs that President Obama has already identified as unnecessary. But even if that compromise passes the House and Senate this week, lawmakers are still sharply divided on funding for the rest of the fiscal year and beyond.

A partisan brawl is also brewing over the legal limit on government borrowing, currently set at $14.3 trillion. In his new report, Zandi predicts that the U.S. Treasury will be able to manage the government’s finances under that cap only until June. With Republicans lining up against an increase, Zandi writes that the “threat of a serious policy misstep in the next several weeks and months” is serious.

But the potential fallout from such a misstep is also serious, Zandi writes, raising “the odds that policymakers will be able to come to terms.” He concludes that the most likely scenario is “a political compromise” that raises the debt limit and “roughly splits the difference between the administration and House Republican proposals with spending cuts in fiscal year 2011 of closer to $30 billion.”

“This isn’t ideal fiscal policy, but the economic recovery will be able to manage through it,” Zandi writes. “And if the compromise is reached relatively gracefully, it could send an encouraging signal that policymakers will be able to reasonably navigate the much more serious budget battles set to come.”

23 Feb

The Truth Behind The Anti-Union Assault

Posted by James O'Rourke in Policy, Politics, and Politicians, Politics As Usual, Poppycock. Tagged: , , , .

Sourced from: thinkprogress.org

RADICAL RIGHT

Two months after taking office, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has launched one of the most aggressive attacks on union rights since the 1960s. Purporting to rein in the state’s budget deficit, Walker is pushing legislation that marks “a lethal threat to public-sector labor” by threatening “to strip state employees of the right to bargain collectively for anything besides their pay.” Walker’s radical policy has sparked eight days of protests in Wisconsin from a range of parties, including firefighters, teachers, the Green Bay Packers, and even Egyptian unions. President Obama recently called Walker’s policy “an assault” on workers’ rights. Despite the unpopularity of his position, Walker has refused any compromises offered by the unions and members of his own party unless collective bargaining rights are eliminated. To prevent such a calamity, 14 state Democratic lawmakers took a page out of President Abraham Lincoln’s playbook and fled the state last week to prevent the bill from moving forward. Rather than following any fiscal principle, Walker’s crusade against workers betrays a political calculation to gut the rights and organizing capabilities of his political opposition. Rather than shy away from such blatant anti-democratic policies, Republican governors are following suit and threatening to derail and destroy the few remaining political voices for the middle and working class.

THE BUDGET BUSTER: The stated motivation behind Walker’s union-busting ambitions is Wisconsin’s looming deficit: “We’re broke and it’s about time somebody stood up and told the truth,” he said. The state budget has a $137 million shortfall in the current fiscal year and faces a $3.6 billion projected shortfall in the upcoming 2011-13 biennium. Citing this projected $3.6 billion deficit, Walker insists “we’ve got to balance the budget and fix it once and for all” which requires public employees ”to help us out” and make “shared sacrifice” by paying a greater percentage of pensions and health care premiums. While unions offered to make those concessions, Walker still demands eliminating collective bargaining rights because it “costs local governments money.” But a closer look at Wisconsin’s deficit reveals Walker’s budget woes don’t stem from workers’ collective bargaining rights. The claim that public employees must sacrifice their bargaining rights to balance this year’s budget is misleading as there is no obvious relationship between union membership and state budgets. Indeed, “the biggest savings Walker is proposing for the current budget have nothing to do with public employees. His bill proposes to save $165 million this year by simply refinancing state debt.” But the $3.6 billion deficit Walker is apoplectic over is actually exacerbated by his own tax cuts. According to Wisconsin’s nonpartisan fiscal office , Walker’s three tax cut bills “will reduce general fund tax collections by $55.2 million in 2011-12 and $62.0 million in 2012-13.” And, as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities’ Nick Johnson states, “the governor is likely to propose a LOT more tax cuts” in his proposed budget, including a total repeal of the state’s corporate income tax. As Johnson notes, the tax cuts are “worsening the state’s overall budget picture, and it is the state’s overall budget picture — not the current-year picture alone — that [Walker] is using to justify going after the workers.” Thus, the real fiscal truth behind Walker’s deficit woes reveals Walker — not workers — as the budget buster.

THE UGLY TRUTH: As the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein notes, what Walker is doing is not attacking the budget but “attacking the right to bargain collectively — which is to say, he’s attacking the very foundation of labor unions, and of worker power — and using an economic crisis unions didn’t cause, and a budget reversal that Walker himself helped create, to justify it.” By doing so, the Republican governor will strike a severe blow at long-standing allies of his political opposition. Unions have typically been “an important part of the core Democratic coalition” and Walker is creating an opportunity to land a blow at his opposition by attacking the political participation on behalf of those who support workers’ rights. Any question of whether Walker’s attack on unions is politically motivated can be answered by the fact that he exempted the police and firefighter unions from this power grab — two groups that supported his candidacy. Certainly, Walker’s anti-union policies didn’t arise in a vacuum but were orchestrated and buttressed by notorious right-wing political players including Koch Industries and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation — “a $460 million conservative honey pot dedicated to crushing the labor movement.” Indeed, the Bradley Foundation’s CEO, former state GOP chairman Michele Grebe, headed Walker’s campaign and transition. What’s more, media and astroturf organizations ginning up support for Walker’s power grab include the MacIver Institute (which produced a series of videos attacking anti-Walker protesters) the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (which funded polls, policy pieces, and attack videos against Walker’s opposition) and Americans for Prosperity (which not only helped elect Walker but bused in Tea Party supporters to hold a pro-Walker demonstration Saturday). All of these groups receive funding from the Bradley Foundation. As the New York Times’ Paul Krugman notes, “billionaires can field armies of lobbyists; they can finance think tanks that put the desired spin on policy issues; [and] they can funnel cash to politicians with sympathetic views.” Given this political reality, unions “are among the most important” of the institutions “that can act as counterweights to the power of big money.” Nancy MacLean, a labor historian at Duke University, said “eliminating unions would do to the Democratic Party what getting rid of socially conservative churches would do to Republicans.” “It’s a stunning partisan calculation on the governor’s part,” she said, “and really ugly.”

ANTI-UNION TIDAL WAVE: The high-stakes battle against union rights is gaining momentum in other GOP-led states. While “Wisconsin is moving the fastest and most aggressively so far,” Wisconsin Democracy Campaign director Mike McCabe points out that “this is a national push, and it’s being simultaneously pushed in a number of states.” Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich, who believes public employees should be fired if they strike, is backing a similar bill in Ohio to roll back collective-bargaining rights for about 400,000 public employees. Kasich will see at least 5,000 protesters today at the statehouse to protest his efforts. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) is ahead of the curve as he has already “aggressively gone after the state’s public-sector unions, taking away their collective-bargaining rights on his first day in office in 2005.” He is also pushing the legislature to weaken tenure protection for teachers. “The new crop of governors is even more bold,” said Walker ally and Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad (R). Incredulous over state employee benefits, Branstad indicated “he was anxious to reassess Iowa’s public employee benefits and had brought in an official from the private sector to examine the state’s collective-bargaining law.” Currently, 16 states are “now weighing, or expected to weigh, laws to trim unions powers or benefits” including New Jersey, Michigan, Tennessee, Idaho, Indiana, and Florida. This tidal wave of contempt that Republican controlled states hold against unions marks more than a blind power grab, and more than “a violent break with a bipartisan consensus about government workers that has operated unquestioned for four decades.” Should it succeed, this Republican onslaught on unions will eradicate the existence of “the few influential players in our political system representing the interests of middle- and working-class Americans.” As SEIU president Mary Kay Henry points out, “it’s not just union members at risk; it’s the services these members provide-whether that be as teachers, public safety personnel or home health care workers.” Whether Walker and his cohort will succeed is unclear, but as Krugman notes, “anyone who cares about retaining government of the people by the people should hope that it doesn’t.”

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