The People’s Budget

While cruising the Sunday morning talking heads, I came across Marco Rubio of Florida defending the Paul Ryan budget by stating “Those that are knocking Ryan’s budget have no ideas of their own.” Well, as we have come to expect, Rubio was wrong either through ignorance or purposeful misstatement. And unlike the Republicans' laughable attempt to claim they had an alternative last year,  the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) has put together a quite serious piece of work called The People’s Budget.

Pundits in the media called Mr. Ryan’s budget serious, yet failed to note that it actually increases the debt by $6 trillion while ending most safety net programs and gutting FEMA. At least the rich still get big tax cuts.

So let’s take a look at the budget proposed by the CPC. Here is a short list of what the Progressive Caucus’ accomplishes: (thanks to Dailykos.com/story/Introducing-the-Peoples-Budget)

 – Reduces unemployment—and thus the deficit—through extensive investment in infrastructure, clean energy, transportation and education;

 – Ends almost all the Bush tax cuts, creates new tax brackets for millionaires and new fees on Wall Street;

 – Full American military withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, along with other reductions in military spending;

 – Ends subsidies for non-renewable energy;

 – Lowers health care costs through a public option and negotiating Rx payments with pharmaceutical companies;

 – Raises the taxable maximum on Social Security.

You can read the budget itself here

Economist Jeffery Sachs of Columbia University did an analysis of the People’s Budget, the Ryan Budget, the Obama Budget and compared it to what people say they want in polling. Sachs finds the People’s Budget comes closest to what the public has expressed as what they want. And it is the only one that truly attacks the deficit while leaving the safety net in place.

So when your congress person starts talking budget policy, ask them if they are aware of the People’s Budget that was produced by the Progressive Caucus. If they are not, please school them on a well thought out budget that takes a giant step towards fiscal rationality.

On a slightly related note, I would like to comment on the Republican campaign method. It is very similar to the Tobacco Wars of the ‘60s to the ‘90s. The Tobacco Industry fought a public relations war to save their product despite the fact that the product was onerous and deadly. They fought by using advertising, buying influence and any other way they could. Their strategy was not meant to win on merit, but to win through confusion on their product and fear of their opposition’s motives. Using this strategy they were able to avoid the wrath of a public long since well aware of the harm their product was doing. But in the end tobacco slowly met the fate it deserved as the only product that will kill you when used as directed.

I see the Republicans' basic strategy to be much the same. Confuse the public and create fear of the opposition through overwhelming control of the media to misrepresent the opposition’s message and accomplishments. The GOP’s main product these days is that of transferring wealth from the poor to the rich and ending regulation of business. Their tactics of confusion and fear have worked for 30 years, but just like with tobacco, the public finally realizes that the product is truly toxic by its nature. 

Dave
Bradley
E-mail Dave here

Dave Bradley is a self-described
retired observer of American politics “trying to figure out how we got
so screwed up.”  An
Iowa City native currently living in West Liberty,  Dave and his wife
Carol have two grown children who “sadly had to leave the state to find
decent paying jobs.“