Demos, The Century Foundation and the Economic Policy Institute, in a joint venture, Our Fiscal Security, have just released a new report, "Investing in America's Economy: A Budget Blueprint for Economic Recovery and Fiscal Responsibility." (I'll have more later today about a second progressive proposal, which in part builds on this report.) Not only does it focus on the immediate crisis and the need for economic recovery in the short term, it is also focused on long-term economic growth for the economy as a whole as a key consideration in shaping a long-term sustainable budget policy. (Now, why didn't Obama think of that?) The press release explains:
The Blueprint takes a very different approach from other prominent proposals, specifically prioritizing a strong economic recovery because widespread job creation and robust economic growth are essential to successful deficit reduction.
The plan will produce the following short- and long-term results:
Substantial and sustained increased funding for job creation and investments, especially in the near term;
A budget path that significantly improves the 10-year budget outlook;
A transition from a primary deficit to a primary surplus in 2018, and sustainable debt levels by the end of the decade;
An improvement in the long-term path for public debt, stabilizing debt as a share of the economy beyond 2025;
A solid footing for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for the long term; and
A modernized tax code that raises adequate revenue fairly and efficiently.
The Blueprint's budget path boosts funding for near-term job creation, achieves lower deficits in the medium-term and balances the primary federal budget in less than a decade. It does so with the recognition that boosting-rather than cutting-spending on national priorities, including infrastructure, transportation, technology and education, is critical to American prosperity. Unlike the other plans, the Blueprint provides a path to do more than cut the deficit; it has as its overarching goal the creation of a stronger middle class and a fundamentally more robust American economy.
Last night, Heather McGhee, Director of the Washington office of Demos, appeared on Countdown to talk about the plan:
[Note]: If Democrats & progressives practiced hegemonic warfare, the way Republicans & conservatives do, you would be able to recite the contents of the following diary in your sleep. Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, heck, even Chris "The Osmosis Kid" Matthews would have shown you snazzier versions of the charts below a gazillion times alredy.
For conservatives, Ronald Reagan is a god. As well he must be, since gods are not to be questioned, and conservatives are not the questioning kind. Nor is Reagan the sort who stands up to scrutiny well, as I and countless others have pointed out on occasions numberless to man (though perhaps not to women who Google). For one thing, I can just never get over the fact that it's virtually certain he got into office by an act of treason--much like Richard Nixon did--and that Lee Hamilton, the Indiana prototype for Evan Bayh, let him get away with it. But if the political machinations of getting into office are obscure and controversial, the economic record is etched in stone in indisputable, widely available (it's on the internet!) public data. And this week, I just happened to stumble across a website comparing Reagan's record to that of the Clinton-who is, for modern conservatives, an antichrist-like counterpart to Reagan's godhood.
The website was created by a fellow named Patrick Ziegler way back in 2002. The best view for getting the point across is the "Charts and Commentary" view. The charts aren't the best quality in the world (Hey! It was 2002!), but the information they convey is devastating, and the commentary, though brief, makes sure you get the message.
For example, the first graph shows government receipts in billions of dollars:
The Harry Reid scandal probably is not going to hurt overall Democratic electoral and legislative positioning that much, if at all. However, new reports of bank profits will. If banks are perceived as fully recovered while the rest of America struggles, it will only further the sense of collusion between Wall Street and Washington, D.C.
whether you defend the Obama administrtion's actions in the financial sector or not, this is a principle that te Obama administration itself seems to realize. I mean, at least sort of recognizes. This is why, bracing for new reports on bank profits, the Obama administration is considering moving up the timetable to impose a tax on the financial sector that will recoup federal losses from the bailout:
The White House is considering a tax on financial institutions to ensure that taxpayers who bailed out banks get paid back, a senior administration official said Monday.
The law that created the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program empowered the president to ask Congress to recoup money if bailouts were not paid back in full.
TARP dictates that the Office of Management and Budget consider such action five years after TARP went into effect in October 2008 to prevent the federal bailout from adding to the deficit.
This tax would affect the entire financial sector, not just those firms that received bailout money. The Obama administration is considering putting the tax into the fiscal year 2011 next year's budget. Any announcement will likely come at the State of the Union speech.
It is a necessary first step, and worth applauding. However, they have to go much further in picking public fights with the financial sector. The Obama administration has to take the lead for the entire Democratic Party is creating a culprit for the current problems the nation faces. That culprit needs to be "the banks," or some other populist term for large financial institutions.
Without a convincing culprit, the people in charge--aka, Democrats--will bear the brunt of the blame for our economic problems. Even though the Bush administration is still less than one year behind us, Republicans do not work as a culprit. People want results quickly. Arguments about how much worse it would have been under Republicans, or about how recoveries take time, are entirely abstract when compared to the real economic conditions people face.
In lieu of a quick recovery, Democrats need to play up the banks and large financial institutions as the roadblock. While that should not be a hard sell--it is, after all, true-- they need to set themselves up as the people who are fighting the banks and the large financial institutions. That is more difficult for an administration that seems entirely averse to picking public fights, and for large segments of a party that actively collude with them. Still, creating jobs (the jobs bill is up next in the Senate after health care) and picking a fight with banks it is the only path to a less than disastrous midterm election for the Democratic Party. This tax is a first step down that path.
Forty years ago this week an event occurred that changed the history of mankind forever.
An event so monumental that the memory lingers on, even though the venue where the event took place has been, shall we say, "repurposed".
But we're not here to talk about the time that Minnesota Twins Manager Billy Martin appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
Instead, let's talk space.
NASA is forever trying to interest the world in space exploration...and forever struggling to come up with the money to get things done.
Well, I'm not a scientist, nor an engineer, and I don't assemble rocket vehicles...but I am a fake consultant, and if NASA took my advice, I'd bet my fake paycheck that money would be a lot less of a problem.
By Zach Carter, Media Consortium MediaWire Blogger
President Barack Obama rolled out his highly anticipated federal budget proposal on Thursday, and while the plan represents a dramatic departure from the priorities of the Bush administration, its ultimate impact may be crippled by a counterproductive bank bailout.
I was reading the WaPo today, and I noticed this story on how the Federal Budget Deficit is about to reach a new record in the neighborhood of $400 billion dollars. McCain would have the voters believe that this (and an additional amount caused by his tax cuts!) can be gotten rid of simply by cutting out earmarks. I propose to show how this is completely nonsensical below the fold.
STATE BLOGS
