Carl Levin's Seven Point Plan to Reduce the Deficit

1. 71

   Ralph Deedsposted 13 years ago

   Seven-Point Plan to Reduce the Deficit
   
   We can reduce the deficit, avoid devastating cuts to important programs, and avoid greater harm to middle-class families that have seen their incomes stagnate or even fall over the last decade. In hopes of moving that process forward, I have sent the Joint Select Committee a letter outlining a seven-point plan for deficit reduction that will require sacrifice not just from middle-class families, but from all Americans.
   
   Congress Should Pass the American Jobs Act
   Clearly, the economic recovery that we all hoped was under way in 2009 and 2010 has slowed, and with it, job creation has stalled. With the hopes of millions of American families at stake, the time is now to act on initiatives that would create jobs and re-energize the economic recovery.
   
   That's why I was so encouraged by the jobs plan that President Obama outlined in his Sept. 8 speech to a joint session of Congress. The president proposed legislation called the American Jobs Act. I support his efforts to create jobs and to do so in ways that do not add to the budget deficit.
   
   The president's speech was a rousing, patriotic call to action. And the argument for his plan is simple: We need to act now, and we need to do so with ideas that members of all political parties have supported in the past.
   
   Congress Should Pass the American Jobs Act
   
   09-16-2011
   
   Clearly, the economic recovery that we all hoped was under way in 2009 and 2010 has slowed, and with it, job creation has stalled. With the hopes of millions of American families at stake, the time is now to act on initiatives that would create jobs and re-energize the economic recovery.
   
   That’s why I was so encouraged by the jobs plan that President Obama outlined in his Sept. 8 speech to a joint session of Congress. The president proposed legislation called the American Jobs Act. I support his efforts to create jobs and to do so in ways that do not add to the budget deficit.
   
   The president’s speech was a rousing, patriotic call to action. And the argument for his plan is simple: We need to act now, and we need to do so with ideas that members of all political parties have supported in the past.
   
   Now some in Washington have criticized the president’s plan by comparing it negatively to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the stimulus bill. They claim the Recovery Act was a failure. What these critics fail to acknowledge is what economists across the ideological spectrum say: that the Recovery Act helped us avoid a second Great Depression.
   
   Experts at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and at private forecasting firms – firms that are paid for the quality of their analysis – say the Recovery Act saved or created millions of jobs and boosted economic growth. In fact, as the amount of stimulus from the Recovery Act has dwindled in recent months, so has the growth of our economy.
   
   But important as the Recovery Act was, job growth is still not good enough. The president’s plan will help by doing a number of things:
   
       It would cut taxes for small businesses that create jobs. It would cut payroll taxes in half for 98 percent of American businesses, and it would eliminate all payroll taxes for companies when they hire new workers or increase the pay of current employees.
   
       It would support state and local governments that otherwise will have to lay off police, firefighters and teachers, preserving those jobs and the public service those employees provide.
   
       It would give tax credits to businesses that hire veterans returning from overseas.
   
       It would give tax credits to companies that hire unemployed workers.
   
       It would modernize schools, roads and bridges across the country, providing new jobs while improving public infrastructure that in too many cases is overdue for rehabilitation.
   
       It would expand a payroll tax cut for workers that we already have in place, cutting payroll taxes in half for 160 million Americans.
   
   The plan would have an immediate impact in Michigan. It would save the jobs of an estimated 11,900 Michigan teachers and public safety workers; create more than 20,000 jobs rebuilding Michigan schools, roads and bridges; and give the typical Michigan family a tax cut of about $1,430.
   
   All these ideas have had support in the past from members of Congress across the ideological spectrum. There is no reason these members should not support the American Jobs Act today – especially because the president has also proposed ways to pay for the plan so that it doesn’t add to the budget deficit.
   
   Among the steps he proposes is to eliminate big tax breaks for profitable oil companies; ending a tax subsidy for the sky-high paychecks of hedge fund managers; and asking the wealthiest Americans, who have continued to do well even as middle-class families have struggled, to give up some tax breaks. Those who reject the idea of shared sacrifice and oppose the president’s plan and the jobs it would create most often do so at the same time they protect tax breaks for big corporations and wealthy individuals.
   
   The president laid out a path to support job creation, using ideas with broad support, and without adding to the deficit. How can we not seize that opportunity? I support the American Jobs Act, and in the coming weeks I’ll be working hard to encourage its passage.
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   Senator Levin’s Offices
   Washington D.C.
   Washington D.C. 269 Russell Office Building
   U.S. Senate
   Washington, DC 20510-2202
   Phone (202) 224-6221
   Fax (202) 224-1388
   TTY (202) 224-2816

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2. 86

   lovemychrisposted 13 years ago

   Cantor said the Jobs Act won't even be debated.
   
   It's dead in the water...the poison water of wall street politicians, like Cantor.
   
   ....maybe flooding the pols with phone calls MIGHT help?
   
   Or just tell them to turn on the news......they may want to re-think their support of the 1%'ers?
   
   doubtful, but hey...a Revolution has Begun!

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3. 71

   Ralph Deedsposted 13 years ago

   Editorial
   Where’s the Jobs Bill?
   Published: October 5, 2011
   
      
   When Eric Cantor, the House Republican leader, predictably said that President Obama’s jobs bill was dead on arrival in his chamber, and would not even be debated, the president — in a break from his usual forbearance — lashed right back at him. “Does he not believe in rebuilding America’s roads and bridges?” Mr. Obama asked on Tuesday. Does Mr. Cantor oppose rehiring teachers or construction workers, he continued, or giving tax breaks to businesses that hire?
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   It was the kind of strong, personal rejoinder to Republican obstructionism that Mr. Obama needs to make. Unfortunately, he has not been as forceful in pressing the other lawmakers holding up his bill: Senate Democrats.
   
   Nearly a month after the president proposed his jobs bill, it has not yet been taken up in the chamber controlled by his party. “We’ll get to that,” Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, said last month, after taking up a misguided bill to punish China for currency manipulation. The truth is that Mr. Reid has not had enough Democratic votes to even claim a Senate majority. That is because so many members of his caucus do not have the political courage to stand up for aggressive government action to revive the economy, or to admit that both higher taxes on the wealthy and an end to corporate tax breaks are necessary to pay for it and to start wrestling down the deficit.
   
   The Republicans have used that cowardice to embarrass Mr. Reid, his party and Mr. Obama. On Tuesday, when the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, prankishly offered to bring up the jobs bill, Mr. Reid was forced to object, leading to all sorts of merry, if hollow, taunts from the Republican side.
   
   The Republicans’ willingness to play political games while millions are out of work is inexcusable, but the eagerness of some Democratic senators to protect big business and big contributors is no less frustrating.
   
   Oil state Democrats, like Mark Begich of Alaska and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, are resisting ending tax breaks for energy conglomerates. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Bill Nelson of Florida have objected to broad tax revenue increases. Even Charles Schumer of New York objected to increases on families making more than $250,000, claiming— no more convincingly than Republicans do — that many are struggling small businesses.
   
   To reassemble his coalition, Mr. Reid on Wednesday proposed scrapping the president’s plan to pay for his bill, and substituting a new 5 percent surtax on incomes of more than $1 million. That would increase the progressivity of the tax code, and White House officials said they could accept it. But their original idea was much better.
   
   Ultimately, families making $250,000, and even those making less, will have to give back some of the tax benefits they got from the Bush administration if the budget is to return to long-term health. Beginning that tax-reform process now makes more sense than confining the new tax to millionaires, whatever its populist satisfactions.
   
   In the end, it may be a political exercise anyway, since Mr. McConnell’s Republicans will filibuster any jobs bill, and Mr. Cantor’s will reject most of it. But the sharp contrast with the Republican plan to do nothing can only be made if Democrats are clearly united behind a plan to invigorate the economy. Mr. Reid insists the millionaire’s tax will unite Democrats and produce a vote on the jobs plan in the next few days. It cannot come soon enough.
   A version of this editorial appeared in print on October 6, 2011, on page A34 of the New York edition with the headline: Where’s the Jobs Bill? Congressional Democrats need to stop cowering and fight for it.

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4. 86

   lovemychrisposted 13 years ago

   The corporate Blue-Dog Dems are just as bad as the GOP.
   
   They need to get the message right along with the Bag-Heads:
   
   Occupy Wall Street is NOT a joke, or a FAD.
   
   Get with the American people, or get lost.

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5. 86

   lovemychrisposted 13 years ago

   VP Joe Biden: "The core is the bargain has been breached with the American people."
   
   He gets it!

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   1. 71

      Ralph Deedsposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      In some ways I like Biden better than his boss.

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6. 86

   lovemychrisposted 13 years ago

   Obama on #occupywallstreet: "The protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration with how our finance sector works"
   
   Obama on #occupywallstreet: "I think it expresses the frustrations that the American people feel"
   
   ****
   
   He gets it too.

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