New Taxes Won’t Turn Millionaires into Fleeing Tax Refugees
Any time the idea that the very wealthiest among us ought to pony up their fair share is raised, Republican lawmakers issue dire warnings. ”If—heaven forbid—millionaires are asked to pay a little more in taxes, they will flee like flocks of migratory birds looking for a warmer welcome elsewhere. Their vast wealth forever lost.”
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) used that shaky rationale when he vetoed a small increase on taxes for millionaires in each of the past two years. In March, he told the state legislature:
Ladies and gentlemen, if you tax them, they will leave.
But a new study shows Christie and others are wrong.
“Tax Flight Is a Myth” from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) finds:
Compelling evidence shows that this claim is false. The effects of tax increases on migration are, at most, small—so small that states that raise income taxes on the most affluent households can be assured of a substantial net gain in revenue.
Republican 2012 Budget Kills Jobs, Vanishes Government
The closer we examine the House Republican budget plan for 2012 put together by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the worse it looks. Two new analyses show not only would Ryan’s plan to cut Medicaid cost 2 million mostly private-sector jobs, but—and this is scary—if the nation followed Ryan’s budget road map, the federal government would nearly vanish by 2050.
The Ryan budget plan, says Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) President Robert Greenstein,
specifies a long-term spending path that means that, by 2050, most of the federal government aside from Social Security, health care, and defense would literally cease to exist, according to figures in a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report.
He writes that the CBO report says that Ryan’s plan would shrink federal spending to its lowest level since 1951. It gets a little wonky from here, but bear with us.
Except for spending on Medicare, Medicaid (both due for big cuts), Social Security and debt interest, the Republican budget says all other federal spending such as education, infrastructure, law enforcement, job creation, workplace safety, and everything else including defense spending would be just 3.5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Republican ‘Path to Prosperity’ Just Another Dead End
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The Republican budget plan unveiled yesterday privatizes Medicare, cuts corporate taxes and taxes for the wealthy, cuts Medicaid funding and repeals health care reform. Says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:
Just as Republican governors and state legislators are assaulting the rights of working Americans under the guise of budget crises…Republican leaders in Congress are using the federal budget to further their own political agendas. Their credo is that tax giveaways to the super rich and Wall Street should be paid for on the backs of working people.
The budget plan offered by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), and dubbed The Path to Prosperity, is nothing but “a standard wish-list of right-wing policies,” says Economic Policy Institute (EPI) Research and Policy Director John Irons.
This budget is not a serious attempt to govern, but a warming over of long-dead economic proposals.
Setting the Record Straight: Public Employees Make Less Than Private Sector
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The nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) is setting the record straight and exposing the falsehoods behind the extremist rhetoric about public employees from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his ilk.
In a new report, CBPP looks at the facts about public employees and here’s what the data show: Public employees are paid 4 percent to 11 percent less than private-sector workers with similar education, job tenure and other characteristics. This wage disadvantage is greatest for higher-wage public workers.
Public employees also earn less than their private-sector counterparts when you count both their wages and benefits such as pensions and health insurance. Benefits are more generous and secure for public employees than for most private-sector workers. But even after factoring in the value of these benefits, it does not eliminate the gap between public employees and their counterparts in the private sector.
Check out the full CBPP report here.
Billions for Millionaires, Zilch for Neediest Families
Not only did Congress give zillionaires billions of dollars in tax breaks, they also told the people at the bottom of the economic ladder, “tough luck.” With unemployment at nearly 10 percent and 19 million Americans currently living in “deep poverty” (below half the poverty line), federal funds for the Temporary Assistance For Needy Families (TANF) program, the federal program that replaced welfare, have entirely dried up for the first time since 1996.
That leaves states, whose budgets are already overburdened, with an average of 15 percent less federal funding for the coming year to help an ever-increasing number of needy families.
Writing in Huffington Post, Laura Bassett. says TANF provides a lifeline for families and workers who have exhausted all of their unemployment benefits. According to a new report by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, (CBPP) the lack of funds means more homeless families will go without shelter, fewer low-wage workers will receive help with child care expenses, and fewer families involved with the child welfare system will receive preventive services. Read the rest of this entry »
Republican Senators Kill Jobs Program
Senate Republicans turned their backs on workers one more time before they left town for the Nov. 2 elections when they refused to allow a vote to keep alive a jobs program that has created nearly a quarter of million jobs. Many of those jobs were in some of the communities hardest hit by the nation’s unemployment crisis.
The program was a small part of the economic recovery package known as the TANF Emergency Fund and it directly subsidized jobs in government, nonprofit organizations and small businesses for unemployed workers.
On Tuesday, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.)—with the backing of Republican leaders—used Senate rules to block an extension of the TANF fund. The program expired today and the layoffs are beginning.
According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), the program subsidized jobs in 37 states for nearly
250,000 otherwise unemployed parents and youth—helping families, businesses, and communities across America weather the recession…. The fund has been a “win-win-win,” helping unemployed families find work, businesses expand capacity in a difficult economic environment, and local economies cope with the recession. Read the rest of this entry »
Happy 75th, Social Security, Watch Out for Deficit Scam
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Seventy-five years ago this August, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Social Security into law. Today, the nation’s most successful safety net, a program that has provided retirement security and kept hundreds of millions of seniors out of poverty, is under attack.
Politicians like House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) want to raise the retirement age to 70, and leading members of the federal budget deficit commission are trial-ballooning benefit cuts.
This morning, Kelly Ross, AFL-CIO deputy policy director, told the U.S. House Ways and Means Social Security subcommittee that the nation’s working families will fight any attempt to weaken Social Security.
Misinformation and exaggerated fears about the federal budget deficit are being deployed as the latest weapons in a decades-old Wall Street campaign to undermine Social Security, which is not a principal contributor to deficits in the short or the long term.
Obama Housing Plan ‘Aims Straight at the Heartland’
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As many as 9 million homeowners who are facing foreclosure or struggling with skyrocketing monthly mortgage payments could save their homes under the terms of a home rescue plan President Obama unveiled yesterday.
When the Bush economy began to tank more than a year ago with banks failing and jobs vanishing, foreclosure signs and abandoned houses began sprouting in working and middle class and even up-scale neighborhoods around the nation. The AFL-CIO first called for a homeowners’ lifeline in late 2007. But the Bush administration preferred to bailout Wall Street instead of throwing a lifeline to Main Street. Says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney:
The swift action by the Obama administration to address the housing crisis is a welcome and refreshing change.
For more than a year, the Bush administration ignored calls from the AFL-CIO and others to address a coming foreclosure tsunami. Tragically, in the months that followed, the deepening housing debacle turned millions of families’ lives upside down and strengthened its chokehold on our economy
Grim State Budgets Could Mean $100 Billion Shortfall
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The nation’s crashing economy and deepening recession is slamming states. A new report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) reveals that 43 states are, or will soon be, facing serious budget shortfalls, forcing them to cut vital services, lay off workers, deplete reserves or raise taxes. With this fiscal year only half over:
The outlook for state budgets remains grim. Over half the states had already cut spending, used reserves, or raised revenues in order to adopt a balanced budget for the current fiscal year—which started July 1 in most states. Now, their budgets have fallen out of balance again….And these problems are expected to continue into next year.
The CBPP study, State Budget Troubles Worsen, shows that economic indicators predict that the current recession will be far more severe that the 2001 recession where unemployment topped out at 6.3 percent. Today, it already has hit 6.7 percent and
many economists expect it to rise much further, which will reduce state income taxes and increase demand for Medicaid and other services.
