Schakowsky Offers Alternative to Simpson-Bowles Deficit Reduction Plan

[JohnWxy]

http://schakowsky.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2777&Itemid=16


Plan Would Close Deficit without Forcing the Middle Class to Pay the Bill


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)
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Here is a GOOD summary getting at the meat of her proposal from Daily Kos

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/11/16/921062/-Rep.-Jan-Schakowsky-releases-deficit-reduction-plan


Representative Jan Schakowsky (D, IL-09) is a member of the Progressive caucus and holds a seat on the catfood commission. Today, she released her proposal to reduce the deficit. It is good, sensible policy, focusing on:

Ending various corporate tax breaks (132.2 billion in annual savings)

Reducing defense spending (110.7 billion in annual savings)

Taxing Capital Gains and dividends as ordinary income (88.1 billion)

Passing cap and trade (52 billion)

Passing a robust public option (10 billion)

Reducing agricultural subsidies (7.5 billion)

And several other, smaller changes that would cut tens of billions from the federal budget deficit. Schakowsky’s plan also focuses on $200 billion in investment spending that would get people back to work, thus saving the federal government in unemployment benefits and raising tax revenues. For Social Security, she proposes raising the cap.
As strong and sensible as Schakowsky’s plan is, it faces twin political problems of being popular, and not cutting benefits to the working and middle class.

[NorthCarolina]

1. It's too bad that this plan will undoubtedly be kept on the QT. nt

[Doctor_J]

2. Does this take into account the $750B that today's "negotiation" added?

:shrug: