While the clown caucus unveiled their annual fictional budget proposal, an actually serious budget proposal that would work and adds up exists:
Too often neglected in this Beltway brawl is the budget alternative offered by the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The fifth annual CPC alternative — “The People’s Budget: A Raise for America” — is about as close to common sense as Congress gets. And it is honest: Its numbers are carefully laid out and add up. It actually says what it would invest in and how it would pay for it.
On the investment side, the CPC expands investments in areas vital to our future. It would rebuild America, modernizing our outmoded infrastructure. It would invest to lead the green industrial revolution that is already forging markets and creating jobs across the globe.
The CPC understands that we must do the basics in education. It would provide pre-K for every child, the most important single reform we can make in education. It calls for increasing investment in our public schools, helping to mitigate the destructive inequality between rich districts and poor. It would provide students with four years of debt-free college education, and pay for renegotiating existing student loans, relieving the burden now crushing an entire generation.
The CPC recognizes that more seniors are facing a retirement crisis. On budget, it would adopt an inflation measure for Social Security that reflects the rising costs seniors face in areas like health care. Off budget, the CPC calls for expanded Social Security benefits, paid for by lifting the income cap on Social Security payroll contributions. No longer would Donald Trump pay a lower rate in Social Security taxes than the police who guard his palaces.
You can read the entire budget here. It’s rational, thoughtful, accounts for incoming and outgoing dollars, and as such will be completely ignored.
Major Major Major Major
Ah, budget season. Can’t wait to ignore all the wrangling. It’s my new plan for sanity: I ignore legislation that will never get passed, which includes every budget since they’re non-binding blueprints and not really legislation. Saves me a lot of time!
OT: greetings from Rome! Any suggestions other than old town (forum, colosseum, ect.) and not waiting in line four hours for the Vatican?
Major Major Major Major
Hm, mobile edit button broke btw.
I was going to say I always love the people’s budget. Don’t know what to do with the CPC–they’re pushovers, like most of us good government types, so they’ll swallow objections and vote for the senate PPACA for example, so they aren’t the mirror version of the tea-tards (and good for them!). But it limits their ability to influence stuff too much when Dems have the gavel, since they do the whole “let’s do what’s best for everybody” shtick rather than hostage-taking, which mostly is (was) in the conservadem playbook.
Just thinking out loud.
jl
Funny how we hear all about the GOP House budge every year, which has no chance of becoming law and is crazy extreme rightwing BS, reported as if it were serious policy because ??
But we never hear about the CPC because the news actors say it has no chance of becoming law and is crazy extreme leftwing BS.
Krugman has some things to say about it in his NYT column today (though I am linking to the Economists View version below)
Paul Krugman: Trillion Dollar Fraudsters
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2015/03/paul-krugman-trillion-dollar-fraudsters.html
Our miserable failed corporate media experiment is billion dollar fraudsters facilitating trillion dollar fraudsters.
Edit: Oops, just saw Zandar has a post on this morning’s Krug. Sorry for not reviewing the full morning harvest of BJ commentary before commenting.
Germy Shoemangler
If I limited myself to the network evening news and talk radio I wouldn’t even KNOW there was a Congressional Progressive Caucus, let alone that they’d created a budget.
Turgidson
I don’t think the “accounts for incoming and outgoing dollars” is the reason it will be ignored. The Village would love it if GOP budgets did this – it would make their turd-polishing job much much easier.
No, this will be ignored because it isn’t brave enough to punch the poors in the gut in the name of “fiscal discipline.” So, it’s unserious dirty hippie talk.
Zandar
Cross-reference “House Democrats who voted to strip funding for closing Gitmo” and “Congressional Progressive Caucus” sometime.
Josie
@Major Major Major Major: Eat fresh pasta in an outdoor restaurant.
raven
GO DAWGS!
Spiffy McBang
I don’t suppose there are actual numbers hidden somewhere…? Or are we at a point where explaining what you’ll do to raise money for stuff is so much better than what we’re used to that even the people who have done the math find no advantage in tucking the math someplace on the website? I like it, but right now it just looks like it’s preaching to the choir.
Major Major Major Major
@Josie: I am so sick of eating fresh pasta in an outdoor restaurant. Haha. We’ve been here a few days :)
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@raven: Easy for you to say. My local team is about to become a court mop. How much does the biggest loss margin pay out in your calcutta? I can pretend I’m in it with and imagine what I’ll do with the winnings.
Major Major Major Major
@Zandar: Foreign policy/military stuff is weird. But this is a domestic budget. When congress can’t even get rid of funding for a plane the pentagon has said “please stop sending us momey for this” about, I’ll take my good policies where I can get them…
Davis X. Machina
The CPC is the largest single non-party– i.e. non-pro forma — House caucus, IIRC.
This is not a ‘three-Marxists-and-a-mimeograph’ (Cambridge, MA 1974) outfit.
raven
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): 5%, I won it last year when Wiscy beat American by 35. That was good for $700 and the charter I tool by myself! I have UAB and, as my luck would have it, someone else has Ga State so I’ll probably have to split that 5%! I also have Belmont, Davidson and St Johns so ya never know. It won’t be easy for the Dawgs to beat Sparty but I’m hopin!
Elie
This whole political show (and that is what the Republicans have reduced our national policy and economic wellbeing to). It is costing us in every economic and non economic way… They are destroying this country with their hatred and need for corporate control of everything, once they smash up our government beyond repair. None of the Democrats are saying much and I fear our chance to push back hard is being weakened by their fear and weakness.
raven
Here’s Basketball Jones, can you believe it, 40 years!
Villago Delenda Est
@jl: Your post is why my nym exists.
Wipe them out. All of them.
Epicurus
@Elie: Preach! Your ideas intrigue me, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. I’ll buy the Democrats in Congress a gift sub, if available.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Major Major Major Major:
The Pantheon. Then walk down the street to Torre Argentina where the kittehs are.
Bystander
Major X 4: I’ve been wanting to do a compare and contrast of the different gelaterias. Skip any Grom. I’d think the lines wouldn’t be so wretched at this time of the year.
Mike in NC
The Village Idiots couldn’t explain the difference between the CPC and CPAC. Nor do they care.
Cervantes
Hold the presses! Dog bites man!
1. Honest budgeting is something modern Democrats have been trying to do explicitly since the Carter Administration, at least.
2. Dishonest budget chicanery has been a Republican sine qua non since the Reagan Administration, with one glaring exception: the tax increase Dick Darman convinced G. H. W. Bush to accept, for which, naturally, he was pilloried by his fellow Republicans.
(Both statements are true by and large, I would argue.)
Goblue72
Of course they fold – they’re liberals. I’m surrounded by them in the Bay Area- homeopathic, anti-GMO, free Mumia, wimps.
It’s like pushing as crazily as the Teahadis do is considered unseemly or something. As opposed to, you know, effective.
Davis X. Machina
@Major Major Major Major: Ostia Antica. As good as Pompeii, but not as sexy. (Volcanoes trump sand dunes). Out on the Metropolitana line that serves DaVinci/Fiumicino.
Cervantes
@Goblue72:
You know who else was effective, don’t you?
Cervantes
@Major Major Major Major:
Visit the Pantheon — when it’s raining.
raven
Oh goodie, Che is here to tell us all about it.
Pogonip
Cole, thanks for the previous pupdate!
Goblue72
@Cervantes: LBJ.
Germy Shoemangler
@raven: There was another song I remember from that period. I don’t remember if it was on the same album. Kid listening to hard rock, the father keeps yelling to turn it down, needle scratching on the record.
Golden age of comedy albums. Robert Klein, George Carlin, Cheech and Chong, Monty Python. National Lampoon’s “Radio Dinner” with Tony Hendra setting “Lennon Remembers” to music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zznr2qKKpnM
Jack the Second
It’s going to be really … interesting to see what happens with the budget. It sounds like any bill sent to the President will defund anything and everything that smells vaguely useful, making the alternative of just letting the government shut down a much smaller step. And that is assuming a bill actually makes it that far.
jl
Through this magic portal at Lawyers Guns and Money blog, you can see (with your own eyes), House Judiciary immigration policy internet ‘policy statement’ that is entirely made of GIFs with snarky commentary.
I guess this is the GOP outreach effort towards… whom, exactly? These crazy kids today? Kats-on-roombas youtube moms? I dunno. But I think it means we are all doomed.
GIF Governance
March 20, 2015 | Erik Loomis
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2015/03/gif-governance
Cervantes
@Goblue72:
You might not remember this, but LBJ’s effectiveness depended largely on his ability to sweet-talk, cajole, and twist the arms of Southern Democrats. (Need I say more? I will: Bring LBJ back today and see how effective he can be now.)
Goblue72
@Cervantes: did my dig at the pussification of the left strike a nerve?
Elie
@Epicurus:
Thanks but just my take on the world these days… These are times that will take our measure and so far, I don’t see a response from our party, which seems to be waking up from a long slumber. We have disparities across the globe and as we know, in this country. The disparity is driving instability, not the other way around. If you get on top early, (which we have been trying to a little under Obama), you can avoid much of the violence. If not, you get increasing violence and instability. Obama’s initiatives to address inequality and mitigate the maldistribution is why they hate him. Being black is just a side benefit rationale. The core issue is to knock out anything that checks the power of the elite.
Goblue72
@jl: well, when your entire Congressional intern pool consists of Buffy, Babs and Belle from Kappa Kappa Kappa at Ole Miss, this is what you get.
Germy Shoemangler
@jl: Our miserable failed corporate media experiment is billion dollar fraudsters facilitating trillion dollar fraudsters. And every election cycle, those expensive campaign commercials are so profitable. They’re facilitating each other. What if the networks were required by law to provide a certain amount of free airtime to each candidate (who gets enough signatures)? “But That’s Just Crazy Talk!”
Brachiator
The one thing I like about this proposed budget is the plan to negotiate drug costs instead of relying on current pricing models. I’m not sure if the plan would also let people directly buy medicines from Canada and still get a deduction on their taxes.
The promise of millions of good paying jobs doesn’t sound realistic. Some of the other proposals don’t really seem to be based on current economic circumstances, but are just old policy warmed over and presented again. We need new thinking on this stuff, not just old ideas with a “progressive” label.
Even here, all of this stuff is dead on arrival as long as the Republicans control the Congress, especially the House.
Elie
@Jack the Second:
This is war for the value of government in mitigating disparity and entrenching the power of the eliite. Plain and simple
jl
@Jack the Second: Boehner seems to realize that McConnell understood what he was saying when he said that the GOP has to govern like grown-ups if they are to do well in 2016. So looks to me like Boehner is ready to dump the Hastert rule whenever he needs to get something done. See the doc-fix legislation he put together with Pelosi.
The RWNJ attempts to dethrone Boehner are so laughable and brain dead that he is willing to risk them now that he sees preparing for 2016 is just as important for his future as a bigshot, probably more important, than attempting to please his gang of idiots.
The media has given a free puff pass to Boehner for years, so he can just spin however he wants and the corporate media will repeat it almost word for word, with same free breathless admiration thrown in to make it seem journalistic and all serious.
I think Boehner will do what he needs to do to manage the PR of dishonest and loony GOP House garbage that is bad and unpopular policy. We will see.
Eric U.
@Germy Shoemangler: earache my eye is the song you are thinking about. Same album as Basketball Jones? too lazy to look
Goblue72
@Germy Shoemangler: pshaw. You act like the public owns the airwaves or something.
Germy Shoemangler
@Eric U.: That must be it. It’s weird to poke around youtube and hear stuff I haven’t thought of in 40 years. I remember a Monty Python album with three sides. Side two had a hidden third side if you put the needle in a different spot. What a time!
raven
@Germy Shoemangler: And then there was Sister Mary Elephant.
Germy Shoemangler
@Goblue72: I know, right? Sitting here waiting for the men in white coats to show up (with butterfly nets). Here they are now!
Cervantes
@Goblue72:
Hardly. I was just responding to your notion (?) that there’s something operationally relevant today about LBJ’s effectiveness in the ’60s. I don’t think there is, partly because of … LBJ’s effectiveness in the ’60s.
raven
@Germy Shoemangler: Johnny Winter’s “Second Winter” was 2 records with one blank side.
raven
Fuck LBJ.
Kylroy
@Goblue72: Yeah, look at all the awesome things Alan Grayson got accomplished in the House. Clearly we just need to shout louder and the world’s our oyster.
raven
@Kylroy: Next thing you know some loudmouth asshole will start talking about “offiing” people and shit.
Major Major Major Major
I went to the Pantheon. Dropped some change by one of the pews (and f*ck whatever popes decided that Agrippa’s masterpiece had to become strictly Catholic) and when I bent down I saw…
Genuflex-brand Industrial Communion Furniture. No joke. Translating from Italian except for Genuflex. Real brand name.
Steve in the ATL
@Major Major Major Major: the Protestant cemetery is cool, and it’s big tent Protestant–anyone who is not Catholic. Via Vento of course. Vatican museum is worth the wait; it’s one of the greatest collections of stolen art in the world. I was even there when the pope died!
If you get bored with Rome (it’s no Florence), take a day trip to Pompeii and/or Herculaneum. They are awesome.
Cervantes
@Major Major Major Major:
No joke, says you, but it’s funny enough.
Major Major Major Major
@Cervantes: if I didn’t think it was hilarious I wouldn’t have taken a picture :P
Lurking Canadian
@jl: I do not understand Boehner. He could toss the Hastert rule and govern like the head of a parliamentary coalition made of centrist Dems and not-entirely insane Reps.
Yes, the Tea party nuts would go nuts, but the money people would back him because he could get shit done that they want. Obviosuly nobody else can win election as Speaker right now, or they already would have.
Yes he’d probably be primaried, but the media would forever fellate him as the Second Coming of Rean’s Head on Tip O’Neill’s body and he’d have his pick of post-retirement swag.
Heck, the logjam is so profound, that even if the nuts did primary him, he could probably run as an independent and win his seat back.
The man has no vision.
Cervantes
@Major Major Major Major:
I know; I was just playing with words.
Glad you’re enjoying your trip.
Major Major Major Major
@Cervantes: I know :)
Thanks.
Just the evening internet break for me, if you were wonderin why I’m not out :)
It’s also refreshing to find another city where the transit is so ineffective that it’s faster to walk (looking at you, San Francisco)
Huggy Bear
Can anybody find the actual numbers in the linked page? Is it just me?
Cervantes
@Major Major Major Major:
How much more of la dolce vita are you looking forward to?
Cervantes
@Huggy Bear:
See here, foot of the page.
Major Major Major Major
@Cervantes: one day (two nights) more, alas. Then Prague, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Yokohama, Taipei, and back home. Don’t worry, we have enough time.
NonyNony
@Lurking Canadian:
Nope. Every not-insane republican would get primaried and they know it. And nothing that they pass would get through the Senate – in fact it would only serve to make the division in the Senate more obviously worse than it is now.
The media would also not treat him kindly – he’d be ripped to shreds by Fox News for betraying the Republican party and the rest of the media would follow that message because they like to play follow-the-leader where Fox is concerned.
He wouldn’t be able to get the votes to win a Speaker election with a coalition of Dems and GOPers and he knows it. He’s going to continue to be the King Of Shit Mountain and suck up the perks while he can and not worry his head about getting anything done. Nothing but emergency resolutions are going to get done for the next two years and he and everyone else in DC knows it. The fact that our media is going along with the farce that things other than political posturing might get done before the next Presidential election just underscores how terrible our media is.
Huggy Bear
@Cervantes: Thanks!
RaflW
I can pretty easily imagine many newsrooms in America:
“Hey, lets do a story on the Congressional Progressive Caucus and their budget.”
“HA HA HA hah hah hah. That’s a good one. Ok, who’s gonna blow a Republican today?”
Elie
@Lurking Canadian:
First, I apologize for the weird place I am in. The last few weeks have just taken me to a new level of awareness about the situation that we are in…
I think Boehner is doing exactly what he wants to do and making sure there is chaos is the plan. There can be no strategy for the opposition (such as it is), because there is little that you can do with chaos — there is no leverage, no way to negotiate for things both partners in a true negotiation want. They don’t seem to want anything from this administration and do not want to give anything to them either. Its survival mode for the remaining pieces of the Obama policy and legislation legacy – and for what remains of respected governance. I take them (the republicans) at their word that they will seriously attempt to ruthlessly undo anything that they can in the remaining two years and make it impossible to do anything but paddle in a survival kayak for any democrat that ends up in the WH. That is the PLAN. It destroys the public’s morale or faith the government can do anything as well as the morale of the elected democrats. It is not important to the republicans to have a competent candidate or President. He/she/it just has to spout platitudes and our increasingly captured media will play it like they did the outrageous Netanyahu..
Our country has lost a lot of prestige, respect and power through the efforts of the Republicans and their corporatist owners. This has impacted the world who have witnessed this incredible insulting horror, which was capped with a cherry by the Netanyahu show.
My question to Obama and the Democrats is what are you going to do with this? This is civil war. How are you going to get our people ready? How do we ready ourselves to counter this?
Germy Shoemangler
@Elie: Good question. I think it would help if the nightly news teams, both local and national, did real reporting on this.
I read stuff here and elsewhere, and then when I see it covered in the news (the mainstream places) all of the details are M.I.A.
So I learn from tv that the repubs want to fix the deficit with this reasonable budget plan, but that Obama (and Pelosi) want to spend spend spend. The impression is created that the dems are the ones throwing away our future.
Baud
@Elie:
If trench warfare with the GOP is demoralizing to Democratic voters, then there is very little our politicians can do. We can’t really ask them to fight if fighting itself is demoralizing.
Germy Shoemangler
Here is something to improve our spirits:
CHILE (CNN Newsurce) — In Chile, rescue crews and volunteers were surprised when they found nine puppies inside a hole after forest fires in Valparaiso last week. Apparently, the mother of the puppies – a dog named Negrita – dug a hole in the ground to protect her litter. It took about an hour to lift all of the puppies out of the hole. The puppies are all expected to be okay.
Elie
@Baud:
Maybe we are all still in shock and mourning the loss of our assumptions that good governance would be respected and trump all other considerations. I am still hopeful that once we accept the reality of what we face, people will be activated.
sheesh, I have to sound like a tinfoil hat person.. but how long can you see such bizarre, and extreme behavior in “the loyal opposition” and think that its not just rank incompetence, but something more? Isn’t it dangerous to just assume these people, like Boehner, are incompetent? As for the media, they are supporting a frame that everything is normal and ok — just regular politics — when it quite clearly is not.
Carl Nyberg
Corporate media attacks progressive ideas as pie-in-the-sky.
But corporate media takes seriously the obvious BS in “Conservative” budgets.
There’s no point in being honest.
An honest progressive proposal is not going to be taken seriously by corporate media, but BS of “Conservative” proposals is taken seriously.
We live in an intellectually unhealthy society.
Kay
@Elie:
It’s hard because there’s a sort of “snapshot” effect that’s involved. Head Start is wildly popular here, as is the children’s health insurance program. But if you’re young enough (and poor enough) to benefit from those two things you just walk into them-they exist.
People who aren’t “political” don’t have this whole frame of reference, where they’d be like “who created/pushed these programs?- I must support those people!” It’s just this thing that exists that they use, They don’t know when it wasn’t there, because they were 9 years old or something.
Elie
@Kay:
Yes, Kay. What do we do about it, though? In local election after local election, the progressives just don’t “get after it”, and the people who benefit most are stubbornly resistant to making their votes count or to vote, period. I am active in my local Democratic/progressive party, but finding good candidates is a challenge and the frustration of getting people out to vote for their interests just sends me around the bend, sometimes..
Anyway. I am sorry. I am having a bad day.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Link takes me to a swoopy cool website that talks about how awesome the budget is and the good that it will do, but numbers? Not so much.
However, after some digging I found a PDF that goes into more detail.
Reasons it will never, ever happen – it taxes capital gains as regular income, restores the Clinton-era marginal rate to the top bracket, and institutes new brackets for incomes in the millions (plural) of dollars range.
Oh, yeah, it also invests in programs that benefit the hoi polloi. Can’t have that. Bad juju.
JustRuss
Funny how are media is in constant “Both Sides” mode, until it’s time to talk about budgets.
Baud
@Elie:
As I understand it, Democrats continue to outvote Reoubkicans. Our problems are structural. The Senate is permanently gerrymandered and the House since 2010.
Another Holocene Human
@Davis X. Machina: Yeah, I did that, it was cool, and the public transit connection was easy, as you say.
Another Holocene Human
@jl: God, that was stupid. I also noticed a high number of conventionally attractive caucasian females in the GIFs, which isn’t the GIF mix I usually see in comments. Says something about whoever threw that up there, not sure what.
It was dumb, though. Really fucking dumb.
Makes me want to post that Obama sipping a soda pic.
Another Holocene Human
@Goblue72: If going more radical is the answer, why isn’t Zephyr Teachout the governor of New York right now?!
Another Holocene Human
@Brachiator:
That’s just good sense, which is why ConservaDems and GOPers will fight it tooth and nail.
Just saw a graph where the US is paying 50% on healthcare vs Netherlands and France. Dunno about the low countries but France has palpably better healthcare and better health outcomes. Maybe dropping young adults off healthcare and also dropping a lot of kids leads to big problems down the line? Naaahhhh….
Another Holocene Human
@Germy Shoemangler:
What future? The golden years squeezing pennies? Young people NEED that spending! The cuts are getting us right in the neck!
Another Holocene Human
@Germy Shoemangler: Aww :)
AnonPhenom
It’s like they take their bookreport from last year’s class and just put a new cover on it, I mean …at least the Judiciary Committee is updating their stuff with .gifs!
Com’on Budget Committee! Give us the .gifs!
Omnes Omnibus
@Major Major Major Major: Buy a Roma Pass.
jl
@Lurking Canadian: I think Boehner will toss the Hastert rule whenever his own loons threaten to stink up the House too badly, whenever something important needs to get done that will make his side look bad if it doesn’t get done.
Boehner will never adopt a bipartisan approach as routine, but I think the Hastert rule can now be considered discretionary.
I guess Boehner will calibrate the outrage of his nuttier troops, who have shown no ability at all to mount a half-way serious challenge to his Speakership because, well, because they are nuts.
Davis X. Machina
@Another Holocene Human: False consciousness, of course.
SWMBO
@Germy Shoemangler: I love happy endings.
Cervantes
@jl:
It always was discretionary, if that’s the right word.
Foley and Gingrich violated it occasionally, before it was dubbed the Hastert Rule (by a Hastert propagandist). Pelosi violated it a half-dozen times, and Hastert himself violated it at least twice as many times as Pelosi did.
Fred
@Germy Shoemangler
“Golden age of comedy albums. Robert Klein, George Carlin, Cheech and Chong, Monty Python. National Lampoon’s “Radio Dinner” with Tony Hendra setting “Lennon Remembers” to music”
Don’t forget Richard Pryor. Remember the album cover with Richard looking beseechingly at the viewer flanked by a gang of hooded Klansman with torches. The title: “Was it Something I Said?”
And “Lemmings”!
Cervantes
@Fred:
“Is it something I said?”
And they weren’t Klansmen.