How About a "Better Off Budget"

You know, a reality-based budget that makes the rich pay for the wealth they've stolen from the middle class, that restores the social safety net, that rebuilds our infrastructure, that creates good jobs, that invests in the future.

The kind of budget the Congressional Progressive Caucus produces every year.

Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) Co-Chairs Reps. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) issued the following statement (this week) as the CPC released its Better Off Budget:

“During our economy’s best decades, Congress invested in the American workforce and every family was better off for it. But recent years have been dominated by growing inequality and a Republican majority in Congress obsessed with slashing the budget, making it harder for working Americans to find decent jobs and save for the future. The Congressional Progressive Caucus’ Better Off Budget reverses the damage their austerity agenda has inflicted on hard-working families and restores our economy to its full potential by creating 8.8 million jobs by 2017.

“The Better Off Budget reverses harmful cuts that have hit working families the hardest—starting with repealing across-the-board budget cuts known as the sequester. It creates a fairer tax code so that low and middle-income families no longer pay more than they should while the world’s biggest corporations benefit from unnecessary loopholes. Our budget reverses harmful pay freezes, expands benefits for federal retirees and strengthens federal health care and retirement programs Americans rely on.

“When the federal budget invests resources wisely, we can meet the needs of working families and shrink the deficit. The Better Off Budget not only creates jobs, it reduces deficits by $4.08 trillion over the next 10 years. It’s the right budget for the country, for working families and for our future.”

The release of the CPC’s Better Off Budget comes a week after President Obama presented his budget proposal to Congress and well ahead of Rep. Paul Ryan’s expected plan being made available. A brief summary of the Better Off Budget’s key provisions and topline numbers is available here and more detailed description of the budget, including job creation and deficit reduction impacts is available here.

As Digby writes:

The derision with which this budget has been received by the Villagers in general, much less this provision, has been overwhelming. If only these hippies could be as respectable as that nice Paul Ryan, the man who went on the radio this week and basically accused African Americans of being the causes of poverty, what with all their shiftlessness and laziness. (And that was after he'd been shown to have basically copied and pasted erroneous conclusions to his big "study" apparently to pad it with citations that don't apply. Very very serious.)

So the Progressive Caucus puts out a budget in which the numbers all add up, the deficit is cut, people are put to work, kids are educated and old people are taken care of and it's declared dead on arrival by all the pundits. Why? Because it raises taxes on millionaires --- which is such an outrageous proposal it might as well have been a proposal to fund the government with unicorn spit.

If only they'd strap some guns to their legs, slap some tri-corner hats on their heads and start babbling about tyranny and liberty then maybe the media would take it seriously.

Down with Tyranny:

Here's how Grijalva explained the budget to his constituents in Tucson:

During our economy’s best decades, Congress invested in the American workforce and every family was better off for it. But recent years have been dominated by growing inequality and a Republican majority in Congress obsessed with slashing the budget, making it harder for working Americans to find decent jobs and save for the future. The Congressional Progressive Caucus’ Better Off Budget reverses the damage budget austerity has inflicted on hard-working families and restores our economy to its full potential by creating 8.8 million jobs by 2017.

The Better Off Budget reverses harmful cuts that have hit working families the hardest-- starting with repealing across-the-board budget cuts known as the “sequester.” It creates a fairer tax code so that low and middle-income families no longer pay more than they should while the world’s biggest corporations benefit from unnecessary loopholes. Our budget reverses harmful pay freezes, expands benefits for federal retirees and strengthens federal health care and retirement programs Americans rely on.

When the federal budget invests resources wisely, we can meet the needs of working families and shrink the deficit. The Better Off Budget not only creates jobs, it reduces the deficit by $4.08 trillion over the next 10 years. It’s the right budget for the country, for working families and for our future.

Although creating jobs is the top priority, there are several other pieces of the budget that should play well among voters. For example, the budget

• Eliminates the ability of U.S. corporations to defer taxes on offshore profits.

• Enacts a Financial Transaction tax on various financial market transactions.

• Implements Chairman Dave Camp’s financial institution excise tax

• Allows states to transition to single-payer health care systems.

• Closes tax loopholes and ends subsidies provided to oil, gas and coal companies.

• Implements comprehensive immigration reform, including a pathway to citizenship.

• Calls for transparency in national security budgets to bring accountability to bulk data collection programs.

• Funds public financing of campaigns to curb special interest influence in politics.

• Endorses “Scrapping-the-Cap” and expanding Social Security benefits separately from the federal budget process.