People's Budget

Not counting Senator Bernie Sanders, there are 80 voting members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Friday co-chairs Raúl Grijalva and Keith Ellison introduced the People's Budget as an alternative to Paul Ryan's-- and to a lesser extent, Chris Van Hollen's-- corporately-oriented budgets. The People's Budget, for all its reflection of public opinion priorities, only wound up with 77 votes. So 3 members of the caucus didn't vote for it? More.

Non-caucus members who did vote for it were Joe Baca (Blue Dog-CA), G.K. Butterfield (D-NC), Hansen Clarke (D-MI), Mike Doyle (D-PA), Alcee Hastings (D-FL), Rush Holt (D-NJ), Betty McCollum (D-MN), Grace Napolitano (D-CA), Cedric Richmond (D-LA), John Sarbanes (D-MD), Paul Tonko (D-NY), Edolphus Towns (D-NY), and David Wu (D-OR).

I counted these Caucus members among the NO votes: Pete DeFazio (D-OR), Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), Dave Loebsack (D-IA), Jim Moran (D-VA), Jared Polis (D-CO), and Henry Waxman (D-CA). I won't dwell on it.

On Wednesday, President Obama spoke in eloquent language of our social contract, of a progressive patriotism, and of a role for government that helps us "do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves." It was a clear rebuke to the GOP's Robin Hood in Reverse agenda-- taking from the poor and middle-class in order to preserve tax breaks for corporations and the wealthiest Americans.

Obama made the right choice in defending Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and pushing instead for healthcare reform-- even putting negotiating drug prices on the table. He again refused to renew the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy-- a pledge he has made and broken in the past. He also called for cuts in a defense budget that has contributed 2 out of 3 dollars in increased discretionary spending since 2001.

Yet in many ways his approach continues to legitimize the inside-the-beltway consensus that spending cuts must lead the way toward achieving fiscal responsibility. Just as the Simpson-Bowles Commission proposes, for every $1 raised by closing tax loopholes on wealthy Americans, the President proposes $2 in spending cuts. Two-thirds of those cuts would come from education, health and other social programs, while only one-third comes from the military budget. While the president speaks eloquently of his vision of "shared sacrifice," in reality it is still a budget that hits the poor and the middle-class hardest while wealthy Americans and the military are asked to sacrifice far less.

An alternative approach that deserves more attention is the "People's Budget" offered by the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC). It will be introduced in the House on Thursday and it is the strongest rebuke-- in the form of an amendment-- to the unconscionable "Ryan Budget" for FY 2012. It's a budget that gives the people-- according to poll after poll-- exactly what they want (something which shouldn't be a rarity in a healthy, vibrant democracy).

The People's Budget lays out what a robust progressive agenda looks like. It protects an already frayed social net and promotes a progressive tax policy that makes millionaires, billionaires, and big corporations pay their fair share. It doesn't stop at cutting the low-hanging fruit at the Pentagon, instead it brings our troops home from two wars that cost trillions of dollars and do nothing to make the U.S. safer, and resets and rethinks what real security means in the 21st century.

"The People's Budget generates a government surplus by 2021 by closing tax loopholes, ending corporate giveaways to oil, gas and nuclear entities, bringing our troops home, and creating jobs that expand the American tax base," said Representative Raul Grijalva, co-chair of the CPC. "This is a sensible solution that listens to what the American people have said about where our budget priorities should be."

UPDATE: How The Government's Budget Is Not Like Your Household Budget

The one thing they have in common is that they share the word "budget." I don't always agree with Ezra Klein but he hit this one out of the park yesterday:

It’s increasingly well understood -- at least among the tiny slice of Americans who read wonkish economic blogs-- that thinking about the government as a very big household that happens to employ an army is a bad thing. When economic times are good, households should spend and invest more, while government should spend and invest less. When they’re bad, households need to cut back, and the government needs to step in. But as Karl Smith says, that’s not the only place where the analogy breaks down. Another-- and one that’s increasingly relevant-- is “not realizing your personal control over spending versus revenues is essentially the exact opposite of the governments control over spending versus revenues.” He continues:

"Most middle class folks can cut back on their spending with relative ease. They probably won’t get sick, malnourished or injured from exposure as a result of spending cuts. What this means is that if revenues are running higher than spending-- a necessary condition for building up debt-- the most obvious choice is to cut spending. Therefore, as a rule of thumb people develop the notion that debt comes from living beyond your means...to the government, the exact opposite is true.

"It is much easier for the government to raise revenue than to cut spending. Moreover, most of the movement in the deficit is tied to movements in revenue, not movements in spending. Thus the exact same reasoning that leads you to associate debt and spending in your personal life should lead you to associate debt and revenue for the government."