Tuesday, April 26, 2011

On the People's Budget, the AzBlueMeanie tells it like it is

Except for the TucsonCitizen.com (1, 2), it was dang near impossible to find a local news story about the People's Budget, the progressive alternative to the much ballyhooed Path to Prosperity, penned by right-wing darling Rep. Paul Ryan. It didn't matter that our own Congressman Raul Grijalva was a co-sponsor; the Arizona Daily Star ignored the People's Budget, while printing several stories about the Ryan budget.

Not one to mince words, the AzBlueMeanie (of Blog for Arizona fame) recently offered an analysis of the People's Budget, including quotes from the New York Times' Paul Krugman, who wrote...
And that’s why the only major budget proposal out there offering a plausible path to balancing the budget is the one that includes significant tax increases: the “People’s Budget” from the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which — unlike the Ryan plan, which was just right-wing orthodoxy with an added dose of magical thinking — is genuinely courageous because it calls for shared sacrifice.

True, it increases revenue partly by imposing substantially higher taxes on the wealthy, which is popular everywhere except inside the Beltway. But it also calls for a rise in the Social Security cap, significantly raising taxes on around 6 percent of workers. And, by rescinding many of the Bush tax cuts, not just those affecting top incomes, it would modestly raise taxes even on middle-income families.

All of this, combined with spending cuts mostly focused on defense, is projected to yield a balanced budget by 2021. And the proposal achieves this without dismantling the legacy of the New Deal, which gave us Social Security, and the Great Society, which gave us Medicare and Medicaid.
For the rest of the AzBlueMeanie's story check this link: The People's Budget praised by serious economists, dismissed by the clueless Arizona Daily Star

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