Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) Offers Alternative to Simpson-Bowles Deficit Reduction Plan

[coti]

http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=122070

WASHINGTON, DC (November 16, 2010) – Today Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), a member of the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, offered a comprehensive proposal to reduce the federal deficit without making middle class Americans foot the bill. Schakowsky's plan is an alternative to the Bowles-Simpson plan and would reduce the deficit by $441 billion in 2015, surpassing President Obama’s $250 billion target. Critically, the Schakowsky plan accomplishes deficit reduction without making cuts to essential federal expenditures that benefit the middle class. In unveiling her proposal, Schakowsky made the following statement:

....

The Schakowsky plan is based on five key elements:

1) Increased economic stimulus to spur growth in the immediate term

· Provide $200 billion to invest over the next two years in measures to create jobs and spur economic growth, including passing the Local Jobs for America Act; and funding for education and law enforcement; Unemployment Insurance, Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (FMAP) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program extensions; and infrastructure.
· Adopt the President’s proposals to eliminate overseas tax havens and incentives for outsourcing

2) Smart, targeted spending cuts

· Non-Defense Discretionary – $7.55 billion in savings through increased efficiency and cuts to programs that benefit large corporations that don’t need assistance.

· Defense Discretionary – $110.7 billion in cuts from the 2015 defense budget, including efficiency savings, reducing our troop levels, cutting weapons systems we don’t need, and scaling back the wartime increases in the size of the military.

3) Mandatory spending cuts

•Health Care – at least $31.2 billion in savings by implementing measures to bring down the cost of health care to the federal government and lower health care inflation overall.
•Other – $7.7 billion in savings by cutting agriculture subsidies in half, and redistributing federal support to offer greater benefits to small family farms reduce subsidies to large corporate agribusiness.

4) Reductions in tax expenditures

•Raise $132.2 billion by closing tax subsidies for companies that ship American jobs overseas.

5) Increases in revenues

•Raise $144.6 billion in revenue through progressive reforms to the estate tax, treating capital gains and dividends as regular income, and enacting a cap and trade proposal that includes protections for lower-income people.
•Enact President Obama’s budget proposal to let the Bush tax cuts for the top 2 brackets expire and return to 2009 estate tax levels.
•Non-tax revenue – raise $7 billion by addressing places where the private sector is currently under-paying.

(more)

See the whole deficit reduction plan here:

http://schakowsky.house.gov/images/stories/1118_Schakowsky_Deficit_Reduction_Plan.pdf

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Much better.

[HereSince1628]

1. Taxing capital gains would slaughter a republican sacred cow.

I'd love to roast that beef, but that part of her proposal has little chance of becoming a reality.

I suppose she is trying to build a stack of trading cards moving toward the final recommendation of the committee.

[bullwinkle428]

2. We need to also re-implement a transaction tax on stocks. We had

one in place from the 30s to the 60s, and it was dropped because it was generating a genuine surplus, and apparently some rocket scientists decided we were just awash in money and didn't need it anymore!

[HereSince1628]

3. That would certainly help reduce the ultra high frequency trading

that give the big houses an enormous advantage over most individuals.