Posted on 08/09/2011 9:22:06 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Liberals outline stimulus agenda in 'Contract for the American Dream' By Erik Wasson - 08/09/11 10:57 AM ET
Liberal organizations and unions are frustrated that President Obama has not aggressively pushed a new jobs stimulus agenda and they are offering up a consolidated fall agenda for Democrats to embrace as an alternative to austerity.
Representatives of MoveOn, Rebuild the Dream and the Center for Economic Policy and Research will join Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) on Tuesday to launch a progressive “Contract for the American Dream” to urge the administration and Congress to turn away from budget cutting and focus on job creation.
The Contract is a mix of proposals that could make their way into a fall jobs compromise with Republicans and more far reaching goals such as universal government run healthcare for all that are far less likely to be enacted.
In 10 bullet points, the Contract calls for massive new spending and taxes.
At the top of the list are items President Obama has been calling for: investing in infrastructure, clean energy strengthening public education. These “winning the future” items were included in Obama’s 2012 budget, which was rejected unanimously in the Senate which had become focused on budget cutting by late spring.
The Contract also calls for a crackdown on corporations to enforce equal pay for equal work, reforming Social Security only by lifting the cap on payroll taxes, accelerating the pullout of Afghanistan and overhauling the campaign finance system.
On taxes, the groups are calling for an end to Bush-era tax rates and a new higher tax bracket for millionaires and a surcharge on a Wall Street trades of 1/20th of 1 percent.
“We have a jobs crisis, not a deficit crisis,” the Contract reads.
“The federal government must act now to put Americans back to work, and that will require reversing the premature focus on deficit reduction,” Robert Borosage of the Campaign for America’s Future said. In a separate release he called for expanding Americorps and creating new direct work programs he calls Urban Corps, Green Corps and Service Corps. He calls for direct intervention to prevent layoffs on the local level of teachers and police.
The Contract is also being promoted by the Change to Win union coalition and a host of smaller groups.
“The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it.”
George Carlin
Do they really want this? Last time I checked, women who do not take time off to raise a family made more than their male counterparts...
Please remind me - why do we criticize business-people who set up factories and offices in other countries???
We can be PIIGS too! We could rename it to UPIIGS. (U.S, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Spain). Such a deal.
it is the same stale warmed-over pap the Left is always pushing.
- Infrastructure bank, “invest” in infrastructure (make union jobs)
- “Green” jobs (electric cars, windmills, solar farms, smart grid, etc.)
- “Invest” in “fully funding” “public education”
- Single payer national health care
- “Make Work Pay” (everyone into unions with mandated benefits and Living Wage)
- “Secure” Social Security (by extending FICA taxes on the wealthy to every penny they earn, “just like the rest of us”)
- Raise income taxes on the wealthy (that dropped to #7 ???)
- End Bush’s ILLEGAL FOREIGN WARS and invest all of that money here at home (rerun Bob Casey’s 2006 Senate campaign)
- Slap a per-transaction tax on Wall Street “speculation”
- Strengthen Democracy (i.e. undo Citizens United, public financing of campaigns, immigration amnesty)
Yawn.
If they could force them to pay equal wages, no matter where their company is located there would be no need to take it out of the country. If they did take it out of the country, then it would help keep those workers in their own country instead of trying to enter the USA illegally.
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."
Regards,
GtG
PS One definition of a "Conservative" is a person who hasn't had a new idea in one hundred years. The corresponding definition of a "Liberal" is a person who has NEVER had a new idea!
Add Russia and make it PIIGS-R-US. ;)
“The Contract also calls for a crackdown on corporations to enforce equal pay for equal work...”
That’s exactly the kind of heavy-handed regulatory action that destroys jobs. If corporations begin to expect such a crackdown, then they’re going to hire fewer people or even cut headcount to reduce the number of employees through which they can be attacked for “not providing equal pay for equal work.” Oppressive labor laws and regulation reduce employment levels (obviously), which is why Europe has had much higher unemployment than America over the last 40 years.
Tax increases on business owners are also a terrible idea that reduces the return on investment in employees and equipment and thus causes a decline in hiring and investment. The only way to substantially increase employment levels is to completely repeal the dreadful Obamacare law and cut way back on other oppressive regulation such as NLRB interventions and idiotic CO2 regulation. Liberals, you can’t have it both ways. If you want those brilliant business people to hire more employees, you have to get your filthy paws out of their lives and let them run their businesses for the benefit of their employees, their communities, and themselves and not for the benefit of your extreme left-wing agenda.
Your argument makes sense, but it’s completely unenforceable. Not that BO wouldn’t try it. :-)
What do they mean by “full taxes”? 60%? 80%? 95%? Some people believe that if the guy next to them has $5 more than they do, that the government has an obligation to confiscate the $5 and “redistribute” it to the layabout and parasites. Obama would love this system, but like Obamacare he would issue thousands of exemptions for his hollywood, Chicago, Washington and union buddies.
Meaning the RATS know they can roll the Stupid Party by giving up something extreme that has no hope of passing in return for agreement on the remainder of the proposals. We'll of course be called terrorists again for opposing another disastrous bill that the Republicans will claim is the best they could do.
The problem is that they are working their way towards just such a thing. The bad thing is that instead of forcing the corporations to pay wages equally no matter where the job is located, they are taking the jobs to places that pay 25 cents and hour. With unemployment so high here now, companies can slowly reduce starting wages and put wage freezes effect and over time greatly reduce the wages so that in time we will be getting equal pay. Just at the third world pay scale.
Liberal American Dream?
You mean smoking pot and collecting government checks while doing the “hard work” of writing hippie poetry?
I guess “Communist Manifesto” was already taken...
Does that nitwit ever have an original idea? First it was to create a "coffee party" in response to the TEA Party, now he's trying to re-imagine Newt's Contract With America.
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