The votes have been counted. The election is over. But now we have another decision to make. Over the next few weeks, and likely months, Congress and President Barack Obama will decide between two different visions for America. What they do will have a huge effect on our families’ and country’s future.
By early next year, Congress and the president will decide so many things: Whether to continue Bush tax cuts for those earning more than $250,000 a year; whether to keep the promises of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security for working Americans; whether to avoid scheduled cuts in spending that would radically pare all sorts of domestic programs, from providing tuition grants for college, protecting our food, water and air, to eliminating food assistance for hungry Americans; whether to move the economy forward by creating good jobs repairing bridges, roads and schools.
As we enter these deliberations, Congress should keep four principles foremost in mind.
First, we must end the Bush tax cuts for couples earning more than $250,000 a year, which will save $1 trillion over the next decade, almost the amount of the automatic spending cuts. Instead of more tax breaks for higher incomes, the revenue would be better spent providing vital services to our families and investing in good jobs at home.
Second, we must keep our seniors and families secure by not cutting benefits for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The financial future of all Medicare and Medicaid can be secured by building on the steps taken in the Affordable Care Act to eliminate wasteful spending and payments to insurance companies. The life of the Social Security trust fund can be extended beyond 2075 simply by having those who earn more than $110,000 pay into Social Security on all of their income, like most Americans do.
Third, Congress must not allow huge, automatic cuts in vital services for our families. These cuts are scheduled to begin next year, and, if they do, two things will happen, both bad. First, millions of jobs will be lost because of the money that is suddenly subtracted from our economy. And second, middle-class families will be further traumatized by the loss of services they depend on: anything from Pell grants for college students to moms, babies and children who depend on the WIC program.
Fourth, Congress must invest in good jobs for America by rebuilding roads, bridges and schools. Creating green jobs in our communities to save money for families and businesses and move us toward energy independence. We should put more people to work caring for our children and elders and create a big youth jobs program.
The bottom line is that Congress and Obama must make decisions that invest in the middle class. The middle class is the engine of our economy, but it is not built by accident. We can only build a powerful economy, driven by working families and the middle class, if we make the right decisions.
Together we decide whether to help people get a world-class education and create a culture of opportunity, so people can afford a decent home, send their kids to good schools and have access to affordable health care and retirement security.
The election is over, and the mandate is clear. Americans chose “we’re in this together” and rejected “you’re on your own.” Now it’s up to members of Congress to listen. Will they continue to favor the super-rich and CEO campaign contributors? Or will they choose prosperity for working families and the middle class?
Jesse Graham is executive director of The Maine People’s Alliance.
So don’t spend less, and when we get more tax revenue, let’s spend that, too?
Cuts need to be a part of the equation and the most recent Democratic proposals (pre-election though) were somewhere around $2.5 cuts for $1 in new revenue. Seems reasonable.
I agree with those. That’s not quite what MPA is calling for. But like Ryan’s budget, it’s meant to start a conversation.
The problem is that the increased revenue is now and the spending cuts are always promised “down the road”. The tax increases happen now but the spending cuts never do. Not only that but the spending cuts are not really cuts. They are reductions in the rate of projected increases.
The cuts and the tax increases are in the same plan, so your comment is, again, nonsense.
If the cuts in the plan never happen then the plan is nonesense.
Or the plan was an outright lie in the first place.
I have a plan. You lend me $1000 and I promise to pay you starting next year. Now just what are you going to say next year when I don’t pay you and tell you then that I never intended to in the first place?
Ending tax cuts for the rich, will have a major impact on their disposable income and that will in turn ‘trickle down’ to the middle class who sells them services and goods; and to the working classes who work for them.
The only beneficiary is the Federal government, who will gain some revenue, but there will be a downside and it will hurt Maine’s Middle class and its working class in a boomerang.
To the naive like the writer who believes that the collected revenue will then be poured back into the income redistribution pipeline and then come back to the middle class and the working poor without a substantial ‘cut’ for the middleman.
Indeed, the government takes as much as 50% of the revenue; and even if it were redistributed in the form of food, healthcare, etc. vouchers there is a substantial processing loss.
So we have a choice….getting paid directly from the disposable income of the RICH for the work we do for them; or possibly some targeted money with a lot of conditions(regulation) attached to it.
I’d rather do the work, get paid and then meet my needs without govt. interference. Socialists like Jesse want their hands on the money so they can decide who gets it and who doesn’t, all while making $!00k salaries.
It’s as naive to believe that eliminating tax cuts for the wealthiest will “trickle down” in the form of reduced incomes for the middle class as it was to assume these same cuts would “trickle down” in the form of increased incomes when they were initiated. There is ample research available to that point. What is easily demonstrable is that countries that have smaller wealth gaps have better performing economies and happier populations. We either come together as Americans or we remain as divided as we were prior to Nov.6.
read what the International Business Times has to say, since it supports my ‘principles’ with facts:
“But we deal in facts, not philosophy. We think we have found a way to demonstrate that the nation has had both a spending problem and a revenue problem, at least since the halcyon days of 2001, when the Congressional Budget Office estimated that over 10 years the government would run a $5.6 trillion surplus.
We’re not saying that the Bush-era tax cuts were the primary reason for the disappearance of the surplus; the data clearly shows that new spending exceeded the estimated revenue loss of the tax cuts. One of the biggest problems, in fact, was that the revenue estimates made by the CBO turned out to be wildly overstated — so much so that a case can be made that Bush’s tax cuts actually reduced revenue less than is conventionally assumed.”
Capital gains should be taxed as regular income just as it used to be. We need to value actual labor and work again.
Since you’re into “just as it used to be”, how about no capital gains and no income tax. You know, just like it used to be.
I gave a reason to go back (value labor) — so what do you have to back up your proposal to go even further back?
Taxation = theft, especially a progressive income tax. Although I’m not in favor of a flat tax, at least it’s applied equally. Capital gains tax is double taxing when being taxed as regular income.
No, it’s not a double tax. That’s a phony meme. Everything gets taxed when it changes and changes hands. How come people don’t scream about multiple taxation when a builder buys wood (taxed), then turns it into a table and sells it to a store (taxed), then is bought by a consumer (taxed)?
Not everything gets taxed when it changes hands. When you trade in a vehicle for a newer and/or more expensive one, you only pay sales tax on the difference because you already paid sales tax on the vehicle you traded in. That’s just one example that most people can relate to. I’m sure there are others. As I said, taxation = theft. If you walked out of an ATM and somebody sticks a gun in your face and says “give me your money”, that’s called theft. When the government does it, that’s called taxation.
You just showed us how little you know about either business or taxes.
When a builder buys wood to make a table it is NOT taxed. When that builder sells that table to a store to be resold it is NOT taxed. It IS taxed when the final consumer buys it.
Ummmmmmmmmm, what planet are you operating on? If I buy materials, it is taxed. When I make something out of those materials and sell it, it is taxed.
If you are a business then you have a sales tax number. That number allows you to buy materials (wood), without paying tax if those materials are to be used in something that will be resold.
If you pay sales tax on something that is later used in something that is sold then you get to use that tax paid as a credit against the tax you collect from the buyer. Net effect is no tax on the purchase of that wood.
Sounds to me like you have never filed or paid a Maine sales tax form.
The wood is taxed, the profit is taxed, the labor is taxed, the product is taxed, the profit is taxed, the labor is taxed. It’s all being taxed more than once and getting back to the original point, there is nothing unfair about a capital gains tax. Period.
You can’t even address that point so you obsessed in spin over what is besides the point. Capital gains were taxed exactly as regular income under Reagan and the US didn’t collapse onto itself — that runs contrary to your doom and gloom speculations as to what would happen if taxes were raised.
Taxation = theft is not a reasonable argument. It’s that kind of extreme libertarianism that’s making the GOP irrelevant.
Says who, you? Are you now the “reasonable argument” cop? You forgot to throw in “tea bagger” as well, since you don’t seem to know the difference between the different ideologies (which there are distinct differences).
Arguing that taxation equals theft is arguing for no taxation, unless you’re arguing for theft. Without taxation there can be no defense or much of any government for that matter. If that sounds reasonable to you, then I guess I am the guy who tells you it ain’t.
I would be for looking into eliminating the federal income tax (we did get by without it for a long time), or at the most, a flat tax. That is what sounds reasonable to me.
Short term capital gains already are taxed at regular income levels.
I’m sure you do not realize the effect on average people if you tax long term capital gains as regular income.
They used to be taxed at the same level as regular income and that was under Reagan. All the GOP has is nonsense when it comes to tax policy. If you raise the rates the sky will fall! The rates used to be much higher and there was more prosperity.
“The rates used to be much higher and there was more prosperity.”
If that is true then why don’t you just raise all the taxes. Everyone should go back to at least Clinton level taxes or higher.
I for one will be interested in seeing if taxing businesses, or families making (could be both) over 250,000 will increase or will reduce the work force. Time will tell whose right on ending the Bush tax rates. America elected Obama, and now it’s put up or shut up. We will know in a year who is right…
Congress should hold off on providing any tax cuts for the middle class. One more generation of exporting jobs and importing illegal immigrants to take the jobs that are left and we will not have a middle class to worry about. They need to get to work on ways to tax the poor more. Make them pay for all those social services they use to bridge the gap between what they earn and what it takes to live in 2012 America. Close the loopholes in our tax laws that allow WalMart and McDonald’s workers to hide their fortunes in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland, thus avoiding the tax man. We need sensible tax policies that fit our demographics.
Give Obama his tax increase. I’ll be waiting to see who he blames and who he decides to tax even more when it becomes apparent it didn’t work.
Typical right wing do nothing, whine, complain and do nothing, but then you’ve done nothing for four years why start now?
ROMNEY lost because of Ryan, Pailin, McCAin, Boehner, the TEA PARTY>