As we hopefully start
hashing out a Democratic economic agenda in advance of the next elections, I focused previously on a Congressional Progressive Caucus ("CPC") budget proposal. Just in time, the CPC has now released its new proposal, titled:
"The People's Budget: A Raise For America." A quick primer on the proposal is provided by Dylan Matthews at
Vox, who notes:
But its budget — or "the People's Budget," as CPC likes to call it — deserves your attention. It's a far better contrast to the aggressive spending cuts of the House and Senate GOP budgets than President Obama's much more timid offering. Like the congressional GOP, and unlike Obama, the CPC isn't trying to lay out a realistic spending course or create a starting point for negotiations. It's trying to lay out a comprehensive vision for transforming the federal government, to give grassroots activists something to rally around and to pressure presidential contenders. It sets out a clear theory for where the Democratic Party should head next that Hillary Clinton and others need to reckon with.
Well, alright . . . As Dylan Mathews summarizes the proposal:
[I]t does just about everything a progressive could ask for, short of fully implementing Swedish social democracy in America:
$745 billion goes to an infrastructure program, meant to both create jobs and repair deteriorating roads, bridges, and the like.
$128 billion goes to a new tax credit for low- and middle-income workers.
The debt limit deal of 2011 — including the budget sequestration — is repealed in full, and more spending on non-defense discretionary programs is added on top of that, for a total discretionary spending hike of nearly $1.9 trillion.
A bevy of new education programs are introduced, including universal pre-K and a matching fund to help public universities "increase aid to students to help them cover the total cost of college attendance without taking on debt."
While the budget declines to change Social Security (believing that to be an issue best addressed outside of the budget process), it calls for the program to be significantly expanded.
There are a few cuts, too, and you can probably guess where:
Defense spending is slashed, and the overseas contingency operations (OCO) budget, used to fund operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, is canceled entirely.
Medicare is allowed to bargain for lower prescription drug prices.
A public option is added to Obamacare, saving money and paying for the budget's repeal of the Affordable Care Act's tax on expensive health plans (a policy beloved by health wonks but loathed by labor, a major base of support for CPC members).
By looking at the previous CPC budget proposal and a proposal from the Economic Policy Institute, we had come up with 21 separate proposals, which are listed below the jump. This latest People's Budget has a lot of new ideas to offer (with details in the budget document), and I suggest you give it a read. After I've had some time to digest it, I will update our "21" list below. In the meantime, continue to send your own ideas, critiques, approvals or links.
Our prior list:
1. Raise the federal minimum wage. (Key: to what amount? $12/hr was previously suggested).
2. The Department of Labor should raise the salary ceiling for mandatory time-and-a-half overtime pay from current $23,6660 to roughly $51,000, which would extend overtime protections to 6.1 million additional workers.
3. Invest in infrastructure and public and nonprofit employment programs that create jobs.
4. Restore Clinton-era marginal income tax rates starting at the $250,000 threshold.
5. Establish new income tax brackets - 45 percent at $1 million, 46 percent at $10 million, 47 percent at $20 million, 48 percent at $100 million, and 49 percent at $1 billion.
6. Capital gains and dividends taxed as ordinary income.
7. All itemized deductions will be capped at the 28 percent rate.
8. The estate tax will have a $2.5 million exemption and then a series of progressive marginal rates from 55 to 65 percent.
9. The mortgage-interest tax deduction for second homes is eliminated.
10. "Regularize" undocumented workers, either through a path to citizenship or some form of legal recognition.
11. Provide earned sick leave and paid family leave.
12. A financial transactions tax.
13. A too-big-to-fail tax on banks more than $50 billion in assets.
14. A $25 per-ton carbon tax.
15. Strengthen collective bargaining rights, increase penalties for corporate violations of labor laws, and stop the spread of so-called "right-to-work" laws.
16. Pass and enforce laws prohibiting gender and race discrimination in salary.
17. Tighten enforcement of labor standards to stop "wage theft" and other abuses, including failure to: pay minimum wage or overtime, eliminate workplace hazards, pay payroll taxes or worker’s compensation premiums, and provide family and medical leave, and make sure workers have access to courts and are not routed to arbitration.
18. Base Pentagon spending should be reduced to 2006 levels, and farm subsidies for commodity crops reduced.
19. Encourage/require Federal Reserve Board policymakers to prioritize very low rates of unemployment when making Fed policy.
20. Reduce trade deficit by stopping destructive currency manipulation by certain foreign governments.
21. Restrain income inequality by eliminating tax preferences for executive pay or tying executive compensation to productivity growth, peg corporate tax rates to the ratio of executive pay to median worker pay, change corporate governance procedures favoring exorbitant executive pay, impose a financial transactions tax and/or impose higher top marginal tax rates for financial-sector professionals and corporate managers.