Budget Smudget

For a week or two now, most people have heard there are two federal budget plans on the table: the Obama administration's vs the Ryan budget. These two don't differ substantially -- it's more a case of degree. The Republican version is extremely draconian. Obama's is a little less so.

It sure would be nice if someone out there offered another alternative, say, someone like the Congressional Progressive Caucus. But alas, there are no other proposed federal budgets...What?...You say the caucus has prepared such a document?...I don't think I've seen it mentioned in the mainstream press!

Since you might not see it otherwise, here is a brief outline of the People's Budget.

Overview of Our Policies

Individual Income Tax Policies

• Allow the Bush-era tax cuts to expire at the end of 2012, but extend marriage relief, credits, and incentives for children, families, and education
• Immediately rescind the upper-income tax cuts in December’s tax deal
• Index the AMT for inflation for a decade (the AMT patch is fully paid for)
• Schakowsky millionaire tax rates proposal (adding 45%, 46%, 47%, 48%, and 49% top rates)
• Tax all capital gains and qualified dividends as ordinary income
• Progressive estate tax (Sanders’ estate tax, repeal of Kyl-Lincoln)
• Limit the rate at which itemized deductions can reduce tax liability to 28% for high earners
• Replace the tax exclusion for interest on state and local bonds with a subsidy for the issuer
  

Corporate Tax Reform

• Tax U.S. corporate foreign income as it is earned
• Eliminate corporate welfare for oil, gas, and coal companies
• Enact a financial crisis responsibility fee
• Financial speculation tax (derivatives, foreign exchange)
• Reinstate Superfund taxes
  

Health Care

• Enact a public option
• Negotiate Rx payments with pharmaceutical companies
• CMS program integrity and other Medicare and Medicaid savings in the president’s budget
• Prevent a cut in Medicare physician payments for a decade (maintain doc fix)
  

Social Security

• Raise the taxable maximum on the employee side to 90% of earnings and eliminate the taxable maximum on the employer side
• Increase benefits based on higher contributions on the employee side
  

Defense Savings

• End overseas contingency operations emergency supplementals starting in Fiscal Year 2013, providing $170 billion in FY2012 to fund redeployment, while saving more than $1.8 trillion from current law spending levels over ten years.
• Reduce baseline defense spending by reducing strategic capabilities, conventional forces, procurement, and R&D programs
  

Comprehensive Jobs Program

• Invest $1.45 trillion in job creation, education, clean energy and broadband infrastructure, housing, and R&D
• Infrastructure bank
• Surface transportation reauthorization bill ($213 billion)

I certainly wouldn't call this budget proposal perfect, but I would much rather see something like this pass than the "sock it to the poor and middle class" budget proposals now making the rounds. Unfortunately, it will be very difficult for the voting public to apply any pressure to our elected officials to give this proposal serious consideration because a) they don't really care what we think and b) too few people will ever catch a whiff of the progressive proposal in the first place.