15 million Americans are unemployed and 10 million more underemployed.
We see the rich getting richer while everyone else is working harder for less money and going more into debt.
Let's figure out where our jobs and wages went and, most importantly, how to get them back.
Our largest multinational corporations are hording a record treasure of several trillions of dollars in cash rather than investing that money in America and the richest 1% of Americans are sitting on yet more unused wealth.
The Federal Reserve
reports corporate cash balances alone grew to $2.05 trillion in September 2011 on a quarter over quarter cash reserve growth rate of nearly 5 percent. Neither the cash rich corporations or the richest 1% of Americans are not putting their decades worth of tax cuts to work to create jobs for Americans.
Doling out yet more tax cuts to the richest 1% of Americans and our largest multinational corporations will not induce them to use their already huge treasure trove of cash to create new jobs or move the jobs they have already off shored back to the U.S.We hear talk of trillions over here and billions over there, of government shutdowns, of cutting 100... no 61... no 38 billion dollars from Social Security, Medicare, FEMA disaster recovery, road and bridge maintenance, so our bridges stop falling down. What the heck? If you're like me, you might be thinking -- "Wait, I might actually like that stuff..."
There is a truly courageous alternative — the
Congressional Progressive Caucus' Budget proposal, which represents what the American people really want.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus has proposed a budget that balances the budget in just ten years without cutting Social Security and Medicare.
The Progressive plan repeals the Bush tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, which saves three trillion dollars. Second, the plan cuts corporate taxpayer handouts to pharmaceutical, insurance and petrochemical industries and adds a new income tax bracket for billionaires. That raises at least an additional three trillion dollars. In the next decade the plan also cuts defense spending by about $1.8 trillion. The Progressive plan also lifts the Social Security payroll cap of $106,800 per year (2011) so that wealthy individuals who take home millions and billions of dollars in earnings every year can pay their fair percentage share of Social Security support, too.
The Progressive plan not only protects and strengthens Social Security and Medicare for decades to come, it puts America back to work through infrastructure and high tech investments.
President Obama is now calling for millionaires, billionaires and billion dollar multinational corporations to pay their fair share of taxes as part of a debt reduction package, In response, Republicans are not only defending the tax cuts they gave to the wealthy over the past decade and more, they are calling for yet more tax cuts for the rich.
The wealth are the job creators, Republicans argue, and the "trickle down" tax cut economic growth will be hampered if the rich are required to pay their fair share to maintain America's roads and bridges.
Americans are starting to understand the truth of the about graph and graph at right; the trillions of dollars of tax cuts Pres. G.W. Bush and Republican controlled congresses gave to millionaires, billionaires and billion dollar multinational corporations in the last decade has never trickled down to every day working man and woman.
In the first public polling available on the so-called "Buffett Rule" specifically -- the proposal to raise taxes on millionaires advocated by billionaire investor Warren Buffett --
Daily Kos/SEIU's weekly "State of the Nation" survey asked the following:
Q: Do you support or oppose ensuring that people who make over a million dollars a year pay the same percentage of taxes or more on their total income as those who make less than a million dollars a year?
Support: 73
Oppose: 16
Not sure: 11
The answer even wasn't close. 73 percent of all Americans, including Republicans, supported the idea, versus 16 percent who did not, and 11 percent who were unsure. Every demographic sub-group favors the idea. Republicans back it 66-17 -- Even self-identified tea partiers, the weakest supporters, are at 52-29.
In recent polling, voters have shown a willingness to include raising taxes within a plan to address the deificit, and especially on those Americans making $250,000 or more. A recent
Pew survey showed 66 percent support for that idea, and 63 percent in a poll from
CBS News and the New York Times. The President himself has seemingly grasped on to that sentiment, going on the road promoting his jobs and debt reduction plans
with populist rhetoric. It's also further evidence that Obama is distancing himself from the ongoing squabbling of Congress, embracing more popular proposals and taking them directly to voters.
