Progressive Caucus: The People’s Budget
As President Obama reportedly prepares to give his speach that will suggested modest tears in the social safety net, thus virtually guaranteeing that the result will be the net’s shredding, the Congressional Progressive Caucus has proposed a real alternative, the People’s Budget:
The People’s Budget
Progressive Caucus People’s Budget FY12 Memorandum
Eliminates National Deficit by 2021
Read the People’s BudgetRead The Technical Analysis and Working Paper
Progressive Caucus co-chairs Raúl M. Grijalva and Keith Ellison sent a memo to House Budget Committee Ranking Member Chris Van Hollen April 6 outlining the Caucus’ top budget priorities. The letter and attached budget information are available at this link. An op-ed by Dr. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University endorsing the People’s Budget is available at this link (off-site).
The CPC proposal:
• Eliminates the deficits and creates a surplus by 2021
• Puts America back to work with a “Make it in America” jobs program
• Protects the social safety net
• Ends the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
• Is FAIR (Fixing America’s Inequality Responsibly)What the proposal accomplishes:
• Primary budget balance by 2014.
• Budget surplus by 2021.
• Reduces public debt as a share of GDP to 64.1% by 2021, down 16.5 percentage points from a baseline fully adjusted for both the doc fix and the AMT patch.
• Reduces deficits by $5.6 trillion over 2012-21, relative to this adjusted baseline.
• Outlays equal to 22.2% of GDP and revenue equal 22.3% of GDP by 2021.
Tgh this budget is far from radical, the corporate media and the pro-corporate politicians from both parties will do everything possible to keep people from realizing that there is a genuine alternative available. We should do what we can to enter this alternative into the budget debates that may send our country back to the 1920s in a matter of months.
Economist Jeffrey Sachs say of the People’s Budget:
In the progressive middle is the People’s Budget. Like Ryan’s plan, the People’s Budget would cut the budget deficit to zero by 2021, but would do so in an efficient and fair way. It would close the budget deficit by raising tax rates on the rich and giant corporations, while also curbing military spending and wrestling health care costs under control, partly by introducing a public option. By raising tax revenues to 22.3 percent of GDP by 2021, the People’s Budget closes the budget deficit while protecting the poor and promoting needed investments in education, health care, roads, power, energy, and the environment in order to raise America’s long-term competitiveness. The People’s Budget thereby achieves what Ryan and Obama do not: the combination of fairness, efficiency, and budget balance….
The Republicans often say that they want Congress to respect the voice of the people. The voice of the people is crystal clear. In one opinion survey after the next, the public says that the rich and the corporations should pay more taxes. The public says that we should tamp down runaway health care costs through a public option, one that would introduce competition to drive down bloated private health insurance costs. The public says that we should get out of Iraq and Afghanistan and reduce Pentagon spending. (Just yesterday, Defense Secretary Gates let loose the predictable Pentagon canard that we should stay in Iraq if the Iraqi government asks for it. Better yet, we should respond to what the American people are asking for: to bring our troops home).
The fact is that the People’s Budget is the public’s position. That’s why it is truly a centrist initiative, at the broad center of the U.S. political spectrum. Ryan reflects the wishes of the rich and the far right. Obama’s position reflects the muddle of a White House that wavers between its true values and the demands of the wealthy campaign contributors and lobbyists that Obama courts for his re-election. Many Democrats in Congress have also gone along with the falsehood that deficit cutting means slashing spending on the poor and on civilian discretionary programs, rather than raising taxes on the rich, cutting military spending, and taking on the over-priced private health insurance industry. Only the People’s Budget speaks to the broad needs and values of the American people.
The current budget negotiations have been a dialogue among the wealthy. The big debate has focused on which programs for the poor should be axed first…. With public protests against government by the rich now spreading in Wisconsin, Ohio and beyond, and with the launch of the People’s Budget by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a great national movement to restore American democracy has begun.
April 13th, 2011