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(108,903 posts) Thu Oct 31, 2013, 09:42 AM Oct 2013

Robin Hoods Lobby Congress: 'Make Wall Street Pay!'

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/10/31

Led by nurses, anti-poverty advocates and environmentalists, the call for a 'Robin Hood' tax is growing. (Photo: robinhoodtax.org)

Robin Hood and his merry band of economic justice campaigners came to Capitol Hill on Wednesday looking to drum up support among lawmakers for their most contemporary economic policy proposal: a financial transaction tax.

Calls for a so-called 'Robin Hood tax' have grown internationally and exponentially in the years since the 2008 financial collapse and economists and social justice campaigners have explained how a financial transaction tax, or FTT, could stabilize the economy by placing an infinitesimal tax on Wall Street trades and speculation in order to disincentivize high-speed trading while generating hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue to fund education, alleviate poverty, battle persistent health problems, and assist the move to a more sustainable energy economy.

On Wednesday—backed by economists and a broad coalition of unionized nurses, economic justice groups, environmentalists, and sympathetic lawmakers—the Robin Hood Tax Campaign went door to door in the halls of Congress to deliver their message.

“With the latest Congressional super committee on budget deliberations [meeting] in the aftermath of the brinkmanship over federal funding, a change in tone is needed in Washington,” said Karen Higgins, RN, co-president of National Nurses United. “We are calling on Congress and the White House to refocus on a human needs budget, not just an endless cycle of more austerity and more cuts. We need the Robin Hood tax.”