| Meet Bill | Issues | Help Us | Contact Us | 2012 Plans |
 |
Contribute |
|
2012 Progressive House Caucus Budget Plan The U.S. House Progressive Caucus has issued a very good budget plan with a very appropriate name - "The People's Budget" (PB). It is a comprehensive plan which its sponsors say will produce a balanced budget by 2022. See the plan. Compare it with the Ryan plan which further cuts taxes on the rich with a top rate of 25% and makes Medicare a windfall for private insurers making seniors victims of insurer profit motivated abuses. The Economic Policy Institute analysis predicts that the PB would achieve a balanced budget in mid 2020. See the EPI analysis and comparisons with the Ryan (House Republican) and the President's budget. From the EPI report:
Here are two areas which the PB can be improved: The PB calls for the repeal of the Bush tax cuts for the rich at the end of 2012. It also adds two tax brackets with a 45% tax for income over $1 million and 49% for income over $1 billion. We should remove the Reagan tax breaks for the rich by adding progressive steps between $200,000 and $1 million with a 70% rate for income over $1 million. While adding a public option to health care, the PB promises to have no cuts in physician payments for 10 years. We need to go to a Single Payer system and review all health care provider rates on a continuous basis to identify best practices and cut the cost of health care where appropriate. With this approach we can achieve the cost savings (50- 70%) which other industrialized nations currently enjoy. With these added provisions, we should achieve a balanced budget several years before 2020. The PB recognizes that the economy is driven by money in the hands of the people. If the people have money, there will be a market for goods and services and business will prosper. The rich have enormous wealth now and (as would be expected) are not using it to expand business to chase a market which does not exist. More tax money in the hands of the rich does not help the economy.
Central to the Republican approach of the
Ryan Bill is their insistence on promoting supply side (aka trickle down)
economics. During the height of the Reagonomics push, "the
influential and multi-partisan American Economics Association had 18,000
members. Only 12 called themselves supply-side economists." That
is, 17,988/18,000 (99.94%) of economics professionals rejected the
approach which the Republicans insist on following to this day.
David Stockman, point man for Reagonomics explained this apparent
insanity. He
admitted that the 1981 tax cut "was always a Trojan horse to bring down
the top [tax] rate" for the wealthy. Cutting taxes for the rich had long
ago been coined "trickle down economics" - and it was an unpopular
concept with the middle class." "It's kind
of hard to sell 'trickle down,'" Stockman told the interviewer. "So the
supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really
'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory."
Later referred to by Stockman as the "Rosy
Scenario", the Reagan promise was that the
1981
tax
cuts
would
result in 5% economic growth in 1982. The actual result was a
negative growth of 2.2% along with a $200 billion deficit. So the
failed policy which originated as Hoover's trickle down approach was
revived by Reagan and is being perpetrated to this day as an elaborate
scam to bilk the citizens of the United States for the benefit of the wealthy.
If it were only simple larceny that would be bad. But, it is a
plan which will destroy our nation.
See the source article for the quotes.
|
