budget deficit

Sanders Bill "Goes Big" for Social Security

Daniel Marans — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 18:34:26 -0400

Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks to Alliance for Retired Americans national convention on September 8, 2011. Photo courtesy of the office of Senator Sanders.

The Keeping Our Social Security Promises Act, S.1558, introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), strengthens Social Security for future generations without cutting benefits. The bill “goes big” for the nation’s most important pension, life and disability insurance plan.

Before we get into the details of the Sanders bill, though, it is worth providing a little background on just what serious Washington people mean when they talk about “going big.”

A week ago, a group of more than 60 budget hawks of both parties sent a letter to the Super Committee asking its members to “go big” and propose a large-scale deficit-reduction package in excess of their $1.5 trillion goal.

There is no doubt that this letter, organized by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a think tank funded by right-wing billionaire Peter G. Peterson, had Social Security in mind when they called for the Super Committee to “go big.” After all, no fewer than four of its signers voted for the Fiscal Commission deficit reduction proposal, which recommended cutting Social Security benefits by as much as 40 percent. Among them, Former Senator Alan K. Simpson (R-WY), whose apparent expertise in Social Security led him to call it a “Ponzi scheme” long before it was cool.

Social Security does not and cannot contribute to the deficit. It has a $2.7 trillion surplus and is prevented by law from borrowing.

But assuming we accept the letter signers’ premise that Social Security must be part of any deficit-reduction package with aspirations to “go big,” there is a perfectly sound bill in Congress that does just that.

Meet the Sanders bill: It’s simple, fair, and enormously popular. It has even attracted the support of Moderate Democrats like Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), who is among the bills 9 original co-sponsors and who also signed the CRFB letter. Somehow I imagine it is not what the Alan Simpsons of the world had in mind, but they should give it a second look.

The Sanders bill (S.1558) closes Social Security’s 75-year funding gap by applying Social Security payroll tax contributions to covered earnings of $250,000 or more. Currently, only wages up to $106,800 are taxed.

S. 1558 will:

Guarantee Social Security can pay 100% of promised benefits for the next 75 years. Currently, with no action, Social Security will have sufficient income and assets to pay all monthly benefits in full and on time until 2036. S.1558 extends that through 2085, as estimated by the Social Security Administration.
Preserve currently scheduled benefits. Many proposals claiming to “strengthen” Social Security either undermine the program’s universal values, or the adequacy of its benefits. S.1558 closes Social Security’s funding gap without doing either.
Ensure everyone pays their fair share to Social Security. While nearly all Americans must make Social Security tax contributions on all of their wages, the wealthiest only do so on the first $106,800 of their annual earnings. S. 1558 rights this wrong. Social Security payroll tax contributions are only paid on wages up to $106,800 in 2011. S. 1558 gradually lifts the cap on taxable wages so that all workers contribute on all of their wages. It applies the Social Security payroll tax to covered earnings of $250,000 or more right away, but maintains the current-law benefit base. Importantly, it leaves the current cap temporarily in place, creating a donut hole so that a person’s earnings between $106,800 and $250,000 are not subject to a precipitous one-year increase in their payroll tax contributions. The donut hole would close over time, since the $106,800 cap rises with average wage increases. Once the cap reaches $250,000, in approximately 25 years, all wages would be subject to the Social Security payroll tax contribution. Benefits would continue to be calculated on the basis of capped wages, as they are under current law.
Affect a small number of Americans. Few Americans would be affected by this change to the Social Security payroll tax cap. Just 1.2% of workers had earnings over $250,000 in 2009, including 0.4% of women, 0.3% of African American workers and 0.3% of Latino workers.
Follow the will of the public.Two-thirds (66%) of voters support enacting Social Security payroll taxes contributions on wages above $106,800, according to a Lake Research poll. This includes 73% of Democrats, 66% of Independents, 59% of Republicans and 60% of Tea Party supporters. A Democracy Corps poll found that 63% of Americans favor eliminating the cap on wages subject to the Social Security payroll tax contributions.

Views expressed are those of the author, and do not reflect the opinions of Social Security Works or the Strengthen Social Security Campaign.

The Importance of Being Alan: A Response to Alan Simpson's Conservative Defenders

Daniel Marans — Fri, 27 May 2011 16:03:03 -0400

Try as they might, conservatives cannot rescue Fiscal Commission Co-Chair Alan Simpson from self-marginalization. But while Simpson’s revealing gaffes remain a welcome political gift for opponents of Social Security and Medicare cuts, his staying power in elite policymaking circles only attests to the sad and distorted state of our nation’s fiscal debate—and the powerlessness of mainstream America within that discussion. That Simpson was probably the most prominent Republican President Obama could find to chair the Commission, is just the latest sign of how Democrats have had to define “moderate” down to slightly-left-of-nutjob.

Charles Blahous, a conservative Social Security expert, and public trustee of the Social Security trust funds, tries to undo the damage done to the Fiscal Commission’s credibility by Ryan Grim’s conversation with Fiscal Commission Co-Chair Alan Simpson. While some of the points he makes are valid, all fail to restore confidence in Simpson as a prominent voice on Social Security policy, or the fairness of the process by which the Fiscal Commission developed its recommendations.

Here’s the rundown. Grim found Simpson cursing out AARP, calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme,” and claiming that life expectancy was 63 when Social Security was created at an event hosted by the Investment Company Institute, a financial industry trade group.

Grim caught up with Simpson and challenged him on the life expectancy statistics. It turns out, Grim noted, that according to the Social Security Trustees, life expectancy if you reached age 65 was 79.7 years for women and 77.7 years from men. Overall life expectancy was lower because of high infant and childhood mortality rates that medical advances have since been largely eliminated. Contrary to Simpson’s implied argument that Social Security was intended to cover very few people, the life expectancy statistics at age 65 confirmed that it served a very real segment of the population.

Simpson responded with confident disbelief, saying, “Just because a guy gets to be 65, he’s gonna live to be 77? Hell, that’s my genre. That’s not true.”

Chuck Blahous defends Simpson, claiming that Simpson was clearly confusing life expectancy at any age with life expectancy at age 65. In any event, Blahous argues, Simpson’s point stands that overall increases in life expectancy have made Social Security’s finances unsustainable. Simpson’s statement does not discredit the Bowles-Simpson [Fiscal Commission] recommendations, because the “Commission” used SSA’s estimates of both kinds of life expectancy, regardless of what Simpson said. Finally, the ongoing 1983 increase in the normal retirement age from 65 to 67, Blahous says, does not account for the full increases in life expectancy.

But Blahous’s argument doesn’t hold water. In the first place, He gives Simpson far too much of the benefit of the doubt. What Simpson intended is not 100 percent clear; what he said is. And even then, what he intended is probably 99.9 percent clear. Simpson was evidently not familiar with the distinction between life expectancy at birth and life expectancy at age 65, and displayed a stubborn aversion to confirming the facts when he was presented with an account that did not square with his own.

It is really the latter aspect of the interaction, in which Simpson showed a total lack of intellectual curiosity, or openness to the possibility that he might not be familiar with the statistics being presented to him. If it were an aberration for Simpson that would be one thing, but unfortunately, Simpson has a long record of hostility to facts and people that challenge his glib pronouncements on Social Security. As head of the Fiscal Commission, he repeatedly derided critics who presented him with inconvenient information about the program’s finances (see Lawson, Alex), and was dismissive of Americans who rely on Social Security (see Carson, Ashley, and “cow with 310 million tits”).

More recently, Zach Carter heard Simpson parroting the oft-repeated myth that because Social Security had 16.5 workers for every 1 retiree in 1950, and only 3 workers for every retiree today, it is now de-facto unsustainable. In fact, the program had a 16-to-1 worker-retiree ratio in 1950 because of the addition of millions of farm, domestic and self-employed workers that year, who had not yet begun receiving benefits. Ten years later it was 5-to-1, and by 1975 it was at the 3-to-1 ratio it has now. More importantly, since 1961, as the number of workers supporting beneficiaries got smaller, Social Security’s tax rates and base have both more than doubled, going from 3% to 6.2% (on the employee side), and $30,000 to $106,800 (both current dollars), respectively.

As for Blahous’s argument that increases in the retirement age have failed to accommodate the financial impact of growth in life expectancy, he is comparing apples and oranges. As he concedes, growth in life expectancy is not the largest contributor to Social Security’s projected long-term shortfall (the decline fertility and increase in income not covered by the cap are the biggest causes). What Blahous doesn’t mention is that life expectancy’s financial impact is so insignificant that it could be entirely balanced by miniscule revenue increases. As Monique Morrissey of EPI explains, in her excellent paper, Beyond Normal: Raising the Retirement Age is the Wrong Approach for Social Security, longevity gains could be offset by a 0.01% increase in the payroll tax, phased in over 60 years from 2025 to 2084.

I disagree with Blahous that the Commission’s proposal must be considered independently of Alan Simpson. The Commission has been irrevocably discredited by Simpson’s record of ignorant and insensitive remarks. Blahous is correct that the Commission staff, who no doubt did the bricks-and-mortar work of running the numbers for the recommendations, know the correct numbers on life expectancy. But the Commission’s—or, more accurately, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson’s—proposal, has earned gravitas in the media and in Congress (where a group of Senators is using its proposal as the basis for a bipartisan deficit deal), at least in part by virtue of the distinction enjoyed by the two men who headed it. As evidenced by the location of his very encounter with Grim, Simpson continues to be an active spokesman for a center-right brand of deficit reduction, and use his perch to mischaracterize Social Security and other programs.

The practical implications of Alan Simpson’s leadership are two-fold. First, his constant repetition of exaggerations and myths about Social Security has no doubt contributed to the constant drumbeat of fear that has characterized debate over the deficit in general, and Social Security in particular. When the President’s Republican appointee as chair of the Fiscal Commission can spew such misinformation about Social Security and is received as “brave” and “honest” on all of the major television networks, is it any wonder that the public believes Social Security is “broke,” “not gonna be there,” and responsible for our debt?

More importantly, Simpson represents just what it means to meet Republicans on their terms in the current political climate in Washington. When President Obama, a Democratic president, appointed Simpson to be the Republican face of a blue-ribbon Fiscal Commission, Simpson was hailed for his spunk and wit, and willingness to “tell it like it is.” Without a Republican figure like Simpson who was willing to agree to cutting tax loopholes, which angered Grover Norquist, it is likely that a bipartisan Commission would not have been able to exist. But beyond ticking Norquist off, and not embracing the Ryan budget wholesale, Simpson is not especially “moderate.” And neither was the Commission he headed, for that matter. The composition of the Commission’s proposal was two-thirds cuts and one-third revenue increases at a time when tax rates on the wealthiest Americans have reached their lowest levels since the 1950s. Is it really worth courting moderates like Alan Simpson who are liberal only when compared to Grover Norquist and Paul Ryan?

In denouncing Simpson, we must also reject the logic of bipartisan appeasement that empowered him. Rather than work with Republicans to reduce the deficit on their unfair and ultra-conservative terms, we should stand our ground, knowing that the public stands with us.

Why Progressives Keep On Losing and the Right Keeps On Winning

Richard Eskow — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 13:45:59 -0400

Congratulations! The "grand compromise" will cut nearly thirty nine billion dollars in needed government spending, which proves how "serious" everyone is about reducing the deficit. The grand compromisers could have cancelled the next ten years of tax subsidies for oil companies and cut the deficit by forty billion, but apparently that's not how serious people do things.

If the Republican Party were singing to its base today, the song would be the theme from Friends, "I'll Be There For You." And the Democrats would be singing "You Always Hurt the One You Love." We're being told we should celebrate a "compromise" in which Democrats gave up $38.5 billion in spending cuts, when the original Republican demand was for $32 billion. That means the Democrats only gave the Republicans 20% more (20.2135%, to be precise) than they originally demanded.

Okay, guys. You get an extra 20% -- and not a penny more!

Once again the unpopular views of a minority have been imposed on the majority. Others will rant and rave about the Democratic leadership, and in fact that process has already begun. But progressives in this country should be asking themselves a serious question: Why does the Tea Party seem to be so much more effective than the left as a movement?

It's a complicated question that deserves in-depth discussion, but some of the things that may be impeding progressives include excessive party loyalty, the desire for a charismatic leader (the "XFK phenomenon"), and the urge to prematurely celebrate accomplishments that are flawed and incomplete.

Why?

Why did Tea Partiers win such a major victory? Money, for starters. The Tea Party's generously funded by billionaires like the Koch Brothers, and ultra-conservative policies are given "nonpartisan" ideological cover by right-wing billionaire Pete Peterson and his network of allies and paid savants. Corporate campaign financing, now made limitless by the GOP's ideological packing of the Supreme Court, allows the mega-corporations of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to impose policies that crush the middle class and smaller businesses. And decades' worth of funding for ad campaigns and "conservative think tanks" (an oxymoron, perhaps?) continue to lay the groundwork for destructive moves like the one we saw last night.

Progressives can't change the money equation without campaign finance reform, so that needs to be a priority.

And progressives can't be blamed for helping to elect a president who either misrepresented his positions on a number of issues or reversed himself once he was elected. (A sample: the health excise tax, which he opposed and later actively worked to enact; the individual mandate for health care coverage, which he opposed and then supported; some matters of civil liberties; and science policy).

But it's not as if progressives don't have any cards to play. Their policies are very popular, while those of the Tea Party and the Republicans are equally unpopular. Strong majorities in both political parties oppose cuts to Social Security and want to see the payroll tax cap raised, for example. Most people want the government to do more to create jobs. Only six percent of those polled think that reducing the deficit is Congress' highest priority. More people would like to see more done to end poverty.

If these popular positions weren't always being labelled "progressive" in the media, they'd probably be even more popular. The White House and other Democrats would be forced to respond to public pressure.

Despite the naysayers, the nation elected a President who presented himself as an unambiguous progressive and gave him both houses of Congress too. So it can be done. So what keeps going wrong, over and over?

24-Hour Party People

I didn't vote for Ralph Nader in 2000 or 2008. I've always believed that political change is best effected in this country through the two-party system. But that idea can be taken too far. The Democratic Party is a tool, a means to an end and not an end in itself.

And there's a world of difference between supporting the Democratic Party and supporting incumbents in the Democratic Party. The Tea Party did a very smart thing last year: They kicked out a few independents who didn't support them politically. Too many progressives followed the President's lead and pledged their fealty to Democratic incumbents who had devoted themselves to undermining causes supported both by progressives and the majority of Americans across the political spectrum.

Not everyone did that, of course. Progressive groups like Blue America are doing a brilliant job of targeting problem Democrats and promoting progressive challengers, and the union movement performed a valuable service for all Americans by supporting Sen. Blanche Lincoln's challenger in the Arkansas primary.

Challenging incumbents doesn't just help the progressive cause. Paradoxically, it helps the Democratic Party too, by forcing it to clarify its "brand" and espouse more popular positions than those it now holds.

Remember what Harry Truman said, which we will liberally paraphrase as follows: In a race between a Republican and a Republican, the Republican wins every time.

If progressives want to identify and work within the Democratic party, that's a worthwhile endeavor. But their relationship to the party should mirror what Thoreau said about his relationship to the world: Be in it, but not of it.

Premature Exhilaration

Progressive activists should celebrate accomplishments in health care and financial reform, but they should never forget what went wrong and why. Progressives were much too quick to celebrate both the health care and financial reform bills before they were done, and while issues of critical importance were still being debated.

We heard it during the financial reform debate. Progressives were all too quick to label the draft bill a success, even while it lacked (and continues to lack) critical provisions on "too big to fail" banks and the so-called Volcker rule. That removed any leverage the left might have had to win a better bill that had more restraints on banks (and would therefore have been more popular with the public).

As so often happens, we heard lectures from Democrats and some progressives about "what's politically possible." Yet when progressive measures found their way into open debate -- a process that was often blocked by Democrats like ex-Senator (and now film industry lobbyist) Chris Dodd -- we saw right-wing stalwarts like Sen. Tom Coburn and establishment Republicans like Sen. Chuck Grassley cross the aisle to support them. We also saw the Senate's only Socialist, Bernie Sanders, team with right-wing libertarian Ron Paul on a measure to audit the Federal Reserve.

The progressive inclination toward "premature exhilaration" over flawed Democratic bills is often matched with a flawed sense of what's politically possible... and politically popular.

The Right likes to call the health bill "Obamacare." A better name would be "BaucusConradNelsonLincolnLiebermanAndSomeOtherSenatorsCare." The president maintained a characteristically hands-off approach as the details were being worked out in the Senate, only stepping in at the last minute to push a provision he had specifically opposed as a candidate. If Democratic Senators had been under the same kind of political pressure that the Tea Party is now applying to Republicans, we'd have a significantly better (and significantly more popular) bill.

Instead the left was eagerly applauding a bill before it was finished, despite the fact that it was (and is) seriously flawed. Those of us who were strongly criticizing its weaknesses were subjected to a barrage of harsh and often personal attacks from progressives who accused us of undermining the President.

Once when I was on The Young Turks, a liberal writer said "If it's such a bad bill, why does Bernie Sanders support it?" I explained that Sanders held out for a long time and only signed on after he was given billions of dollars in additional funding for community health clinics. My answer then (and now) was this: "Bernie Sanders got billions of dollars for clinics in return for supporting this bill. What did you get?"

Tea Partiers instinctively understand that kind of strategy. In exploring the question "Was John Boehner bluffing all along?" Steve Kornacki also illustrates how a movement that places its goals over a political party's success can get results that are disproportionate to the popularity of those goals.

The "XFK" Phenomenon

Then there's something that might be called the "XFK Phenomenon." Progressives of a certain age recall the exciting days when JFK became president (I was six, so the memory's vague) and when RFK energized disillusioned young people and a broad range of other Americans. (I was fourteen then and very political, so I certainly remember that.)

A lot of progressives have been waiting, through decades of gloom and disappointment, for the next Kennedy-esque figure to lead them out of the gloom and rescue a suffering nation. This charismatic figure has no name, face, race, or gender. He or she is an "X" to be filled in with the dreams and yearning of a movement that longs for leadership.

A lot of people thought that Barack Obama might be that "XFK." I'll confess, I eventually came to think so myself. Other people thought it might be Hillary Clinton, or even (odd as the thought seems now) John Edwards.

Isn't it time to let go of that yearning? Activists succeed when they stop following leaders and start acting for themselves. The Tea Party is seen as a leaderless movement. By having no alliance to a party or a politician, it holds a credible veto threat over the Republicans and their leadership. There's something to learn from that.

Whatever your feelings about President Obama, he's not "XFK." XFK never existed, and like Clifford Odets' "Lefty," he ain't comin'. Activism starts at the ground floor, not at the top. While the President may not be today's JFK, much less its FDR, like any politician he's open to persuasion from progressives and the Democratic base. But progressives have to be willing to persuade - as gently or as strongly as the moment demands.

2021 Vision

Say what you will about Rep. Ryan's budget proposal, it's a vision. By proposing to dismantle Medicare for people retiring in 2021 and afterwards, he's laid out a radical alternative to today's policies. By slashing taxes for the wealthy and proposing deregulation for all industries, the Ryan plan envisions a future America: one where the environment is despoiled, the poor go unfed, and the middle class faces a lifetime of financial insecurity following by an old age of sickness and penury.

It may not be a good vision, but it's a vision.

Where's the progressive vision for 2021? Where's the dream people can seize upon and make their own? Where's the ideal that can energize activists? Where's the extreme position from which the Democrats can be "bargained down" so that they, too, can only get 20% more than they asked for when the negotiations began? If they're not going to do it, we have to do it for them.

Here's a start: First increase Social Security retirement benefits by 15%, across the board, by lifting the payroll tax cap and imposing a financial transactions tax. Second, increase income taxes on a sliding scale that goes up to 60% for the highest earners in the country. (It's been as high as 90% during periods of our greatest prosperity.) Third, add $500 billion to our stimulus spending over the next two years, and keep adding it until unemployment is down to 4%. Fourth, immediately add a public option, "Medicare For All" plan that's voluntarily available to Americans of all age brackets.

Have fun. Add your own visions. Dream. Then demand your dream. It's working for the Tea Party, and it can work for you.

One thing's for sure: The old definition of insanity, "doing the same thing and expecting different results," still holds. Whatever the progressive movement's doing right now, it's not working as well as it should. It's frustrating, but it's no reason to give up. Like a guy with a guitar said a century ago: Don't mourn, organize.

Fiscal Commission Co-Chair Alan Simpson Calls America "Stupid"

Daniel Marans — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 16:35:32 -0500

"You've got a country that is stupid, a government that is stupid," Fiscal Commission Co-Chair and Fmr. GOP Senator Alan Simpson said in an interview on CNN this past Monday morning. His words sum up the feelings of a band of elitist budget hawks, who blame ordinary Americans for our current economic and budgetary problems.

Remember how conservatives always call liberals the Blame America First crowd for suggesting a connection between American interventionism and anti-American sentiment? Well, now they're blaming America first, only rather than critiquing our governing elites, they are blaming working America for problems they had nothing to do with. Call it the real Blame America First crowd.

Now, to be fair, here is the full quote from Simpson:

But the real one is, everybody at their kitchen table--we're always talking about the couple at the kitchen table--well, here it is: For every buck we spend, we borrow forty cents. If that isn't stupid--we've got a country that is stupid, a government that is stupid, to borrow forty cents, not from your good old uncle Henry, but from the world.

Okay, he may be right that, in a vacuum, borrowing that much money is "stupid." It's just what he and every other Washington budget hawk doesn't say that makes those words so ignorant and hurtful. The bulk of our short-term deficit is the result of, in this order, the Bush tax cuts, two unfunded wars, the revenue lost as a result of the recession, and other emergency spending the government had to take on to stave off a worse crisis. That is not the fault of ordinary Americans sitting at their kitchen tables. It is the fault of greedy Wall St. banks that got rich off of crashing the economy, and the government officials who enabled them.

But while middle class Americans did not cause the crisis, they are now paying for it, and then some. We are currently experiencing a depression-level employment crisis. 13 million Americans are out of work and countless more have settled for part-time work, but need full-time work to make ends meet. Millions have lost their homes and their savings.

Washington has only done the bare minimum to create jobs and help those who have been hurt most by the economic downturn. The long-term unemployed are constantly on the verge of being cut off from unemployment insurance and left to a life of destitution. Bailed out banks are still foreclosing on homeowners who they can afford to re-finance. Worse still, they often do so on false premises, using fraudulent paperwork.

And now DC elites like Alan Simpson, have the nerve to bully those same Americans into swallowing deficit reduction measures that would cut what small benefits they have left? Because it is the "top national priority"?! It amounts to punishing Americans twice for a crime they did not commit.

If the Alan Simpsons of the world cared half as much about the future of America as they claim, then they would be proposing deficit solutions that get at the deficit's root causes, rather than scapegoating the American people. They would be the leading advocates of defense cuts, allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, and reforming the underlying costs of our health care system. They might even recommend that we adopt a 0.5% financial speculation tax on the banks who caused the crisis, which conservative estimates show would raise $100 billion in revenue annually.

But Alan Simpson has no interest in making decisions that are actually "hard." Maybe it's because, as the rich, privileged son of a governor, he doesn't want to betray his own economic self-interest and class.

Either way, he and the other Washington budget hawks should stop blaming America first. America isn't stupid. They are.

Political Corruption: GOP Embraces the Ken Lay Way

Leo Gerard — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 09:40:30 -0500

The GOP has adopted the Ken Lay principles – that is obfuscation, false statements and feigned innocence. Republicans are obfuscating about the real reason for their opposition to extending unemployment benefits, the way Enron CEO Ken Lay concealed the truth about billions in losses his corporation racked up.

Lay assured Enron workers the corporation was strong – five weeks before it failed. When the nation’s 7^th largest corporation collapsed into bankruptcy in 2001, Lay walked away, by his own estimate, with $20 million. By contrast, Enron’s 4,000 workers and creditors left with debts. The employees lost their jobs and pensions, and the creditors lost $65 billion.

Lay cooked the books. A jury, and a judge in a separate case, convicted him of it in 2006 – finding him guilty of fraud, conspiracy and false statements. He obscured Enron’s massive losses with accounting hocus-pocus then lied about it so pervasively and persuasively that in February of 2001, ten months before the bankruptcy, Fortune magazine awarded Enron first place for innovation and second for management quality.

Republican acolytes of the Ken Lay way contend that the federal budget deficit prohibits spending $65 billion to extend emergency unemployment insurance for a year. But, at the same time, they insist the deficit doesn’t constrain extending tax cuts to the richest 1 percent at a cost of $61 billion for the year 2011. It’s masterful. And as corrupt as Ken Lay.

In the past 60 years, Congress has never terminated emergency unemployment benefits when joblessness was this severe. The highest point at which Congress ended the program previously was 7.2 percent, and that rate was declining. Now, unemployment is stuck at a rate significantly higher -- 9.6 percent. There are 14.8 million unemployed workers, five jostling for every single job opening. They subsist on unemployment checks averaging less than $290 a week, which for too many is insufficient to forestall foreclosure because it’s half of what an average family spends for necessities.

Despite that six-decade precedent, Republicans blocked extension of unemployment benefits on Tuesday, then on Wednesday announced they’d vote on no measure until they got renewal of the Bush tax cuts and a resolution continuing funding for the federal government. As a result, 800,000 jobless Americans lost those small, family-preserving checks. Republicans are holding them hostage, with a ransom demand of tax cuts for the nation’s richest 1 percent. If the GOP doesn't get what it wants, 2 million will lose unemployment insurance by year's end.

Like Ken Lay, Republicans mouth right-sounding words. They claim they care about creating jobs and improving the economy. All the while, just the way Lay covertly defiled accounts, the GOP kicks the economy in the stomach.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) ranked unemployment insurance as among the best economic boosters and job creators. CBO determined it generates as much as $1.90 in economic activity for every government dollar. Similarly, a study by the Economic Policy Institute showed that extending the benefits for a year would create as many as 488,000 jobs, which, ultimately, would reduce the cost of benefits because those workers would pay taxes rather than seek food stamps.

Republicans swear that the way to create jobs is to extend the Bush tax breaks for the nation’s richest – people earning more than a quarter million dollars a year. The GOP slyly says those words over and over, hoping repetition will spin them into truth. Like Ken Lay’s assertion that Enron was strong as it disintegrated, the GOP tax cut talking point defies truth.

The CBO concluded that extending tax cuts for the rich was among the least effective economic stimulators. It calculated that extending unemployment insurance would revive the economy up to 19 times as much as extending tax cuts for the nation’s wealthiest 1 percent. In addition, those tax breaks didn’t achieve promised job creation during the Bush administration. Since Harry Truman, no president but George H.W. Bush and Gerald Ford, both one-termers, generated fewer jobs than the 3 million George W. Bush did over his eight years. Even one-term “stagflation” President Jimmy Carter produced more than three times as many jobs as George W. Bush.

Again, aping Ken Lay, Republicans are engaging in accounting fraud. Professing deep concern over the budget deficit, Republicans say they’d extend unemployment insurance for a year if Democrats would cut federal spending by $65 billion to pay for it. They don’t acknowledge any parallel requirement to cut federal spending by $61 billion to pay for extending tax cuts for the rich for a year.

Just like Enron furloughing 4,000 while Ken Lay and fellow executives stole away with millions, Republicans would take food from the mouths of the unemployed while bulking up the deficit to appease the rich who feast on Almas caviar and White Alba truffles.

That’s corrupt accounting.

And it makes sense. It comes from the party of Ken Lay, who flew George H. W. and Barbara Bush on an Enron plane to George W’s inauguration. You can betcha Republicans won’t take responsibility for the personal and economic devastation caused by their decision to continue moving wealth from the middle class to the rich, just like Ken Lay denied responsibility for Enron’s bankruptcy – right up to his death -- which occurred at a Colorado resort as he awaited sentencing.

Say No To Secrecy For The Deficit Commission!

Rep. John Conyers — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 17:19:22 -0400

At the end of this month, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform will hold its first meeting and begin to consider ways to dig our nation out from the irresponsible deficits created by the Bush Administration. This presidentially-created 18-member commission is tasked with addressing "the growth of entitlement spending and the gap between the projected revenues and expenditures of the Federal Government."

While I and many of my fellow Members of Congress support efforts to balance the budget, it is critically important that this commission examine every part of the federal budget during this process. For example, the Commission should most certainly consider the $985 billion dollars spent on foreign wars since 2001.

In order to ensure that the American people are informed about the Commission’s work, I am asking my House colleagues to join me in sending a letter to the Commission’s co-chairmen asking them to make every one of their meetings (including any working group meetings) public, to rigorously analyze the impact of every potential benefit cut or tax hike, and issue draft recommendations before Election Day, so that voters can ask candidates how they feel about the Commission’s recommendations.

Even Minority Leader John Boehner gets it – he wrote a similar letter to the Commission last month. Although we don’t see eye-to-eye on most issues, one thing the Minority Leader and I can agree on is that the more open and transparent the Commission’s process is, the better the outcome for the American people.

We all know how Americans react to backroom deals cut behind closed doors, and that is why it is critical that we maintain our promises to the people on transparency and openness.

We need transparency to make sure that the members of the Commission don’t buy into the right-wing myths being put forward by CNN, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, and others that want to convince the American people that creating jobs and fighting poverty will damage the economy, that Social Security is going broke, and that achieving fiscal stability means cutting Medicare benefits for our seniors.

The large majorities of Americans who oppose cuts to Social Security and Medicare haven’t bought into any of those distortions and neither should the members of the Commission. By opening up these meetings and shining sunlight into their deliberations, we can ensure that they won’t.

Also posted at Daily Kos