THE OVERLOOKED PROGRESSIVE ALTERNATIVES.... <...>
Where's the left? As it turns out, there are progressive alternatives, which haven't generated much in the way of coverage. I recently
gave a plug to Rep. Jan Schakowsky's (D-Ill.) deficit-reduction plan, but she's not the only one with realistic proposals intended to address the problem from a liberal perspective.
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Matt Miller
got the ball rolling a few days ago, noting in passing that the Congressional Progressive Caucus' budget plan "wins the fiscal responsibility derby" against its competing proposals because "it reaches balance by 2021 largely through assorted tax hikes and defense cuts."
This one sentence seemed to have let much of the political world that the CPC plan exists.
The Economist noted today:
Have you ever heard of the Congressional Progressive Caucus budget plan? Neither had I. The caucus's co-chairs, Raul Grijalva of Arizona and Keith Ellison of Minnesota, released it on April 6th. The budget savings come from defence cuts, including immediately withdrawing from Afghanistan and Iraq, which saves $1.6 trillion over the CBO baseline from 2012-2021. The tax hikes include restoring the estate tax, ending the Bush tax cuts, and adding new tax brackets for the extremely rich, running from 45% on income over a million a year to 49% on income over a billion a year.
Mr Ryan's plan adds (by its own claims) $6 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, but promises to balance the budget by sometime in the 2030s by cutting programmes for the poor and the elderly. The Progressive Caucus's plan would (by its own claims) balance the budget by 2021 by cutting defence spending and raising taxes, mainly on rich people. Mr Ryan has been fulsomely praised for his courage. The Progressive Caucus has not.
I'm not really sure what "courage" is supposed to mean here, but this seems precisely backwards.
Bingo. Trying to restore tax rates to levels that were pretty normal in the America
John Boehner grew up in takes some courage, because it challenges the powerful and the elite to sacrifice. Republicans are doing the opposite -- as President Obama put it the other day, "Nothing is easier than solving a problem on the backs of people who are poor, or people who are powerless and don't have lobbyists or don't have clout."
Paul Krugman also had
an item on this today, noting some of the policy specifics.
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