The Right-Wing Assault on the 99 Percent
20.05.12
Americans are undoubtedly fed up with the yawning gulf between a powerful minority of the wealthiest Americans and the other 99 percent of us. The “Take up” protest movement reflects widespread middle-class frustration with rising injustice of income, wealth, and economic opportunities .
A year before the first Occupy Wall Row protests in Lower Manhattan, the Center for American Progress exposed and explained the stable political strategy to obstruct proposals that would boost job creation, help families aggrieve by the Great Recession, and hasten investments that strengthen productivity and competitiveness of the U.S. restraint. Indeed, since the 2010 midterm election, conservative politicians who control half of Congress have pressed up ahead with policies designed to shower privilege on the ultra-wealthy and saddle more budgetary burdens on everyone else.
Their actions weakened the economic recovery, discouraged private businesses from hiring, and formerly larboard our economy more vulnerable to economic shocks. And those shocks came early in 2011 with an oil amount spike, an earthquake in Japan, a deteriorating environment for U.S. exports, and conservative-led threats to ban down and default the U.S. government .
It's long past time for these politicians to heed the lawful gripes of regular Americans who are fed up with rising economic inequality and congressional assaults on the mesial class. Conservatives in Washington must:
Stop obstructing job-creating policies such as the American Jobs Act Stopover defending special tax privileges for America’s wealthiest citizens Interrupt attacking the federal safety net Stop sabotaging efforts to make our monetary system safer, fairer, and more efficient
This column details the ongoing efforts by conservatives in Congress to stand in the way of proposals that would provide relief to the ordinary Americans participating in spontaneous protests around the homeland—and to the mass majority of people they represent.
How conservatives obstruct job-creating policies such as the American Jobs Act
What the U.S. briefness needs most now is short-term policy support for employment creation and cost-effective growth. That’s a consensus view shared by leading Republican economists such as Martin Feldstein and Bruce Bartlett as well as nonpartisan pecuniary experts including those at the International Monetary Fund and many private-sector work economists.
Policies to create jobs and growth would help put 14 million at liberty Americans back to productive work. They would improve job opportunities and incomes for those already working. They would sire an economic environment conducive to business investment and hiring. And they would sustain serious public services and investments while easing budget shortfalls faced at all levels of our administration.
And yet at every turn, conservative politicians stand in the way of policies that would benefit the 99 percent.
Justified this month, Republicans in the Senate voted unanimously against the proposed American Jobs Act . Republican Take in Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) similarly refused to let the American Jobs Act uphold for a vote in the lower chamber of Congress, declaring it “dead” even before representatives could mark the policy. This opposition comes despite predictions by private-sector economists who approximation that the Jobs Act would add as many as 2 million net new jobs in the United States and boost the economic flowering for 2012 by 2 percentage points—all while decreasing the federal budget deficiency by $6 billion .
The American Jobs Act grouped together a menu of proven, widely accepted money-making policies to promote jobs and growth, combined with innovative approaches to modernizing and increasing the competitiveness of the U.S. conservatism and its workers. “Everything in here is the kind of proposal that’s been supported by both Democrats and Republicans,” Obama said in his September disquisition to Congress announcing the plan.
Among its provisions, the American Jobs Act would create jobs throughout the compactness by investing in repairs and modernization of U.S. infrastructure . The legislation also would create a national infrastructure bank—something that organized labor and the Body of Commerce both support —to insulate critical infrastructure investments from federal manipulation and mobilize private investors to help foot the bill.
In addition, the bill would rejuvenate our unemployment insurance system to encourage entrepreneurship and ensure those who lose a job don’t plunge down the economic ladder. Unemployment insurance is one of the most efficient policies available to instigation short-term job creation , and the Jobs Act would make it even more effective. The Jobs Act would also put some 400,000 teachers back in the classroom to make sure America’s kids get the quality education they need to renew the competitive and rewarding U.S. economy.
Blocking the American Jobs Act, however, is just the latest conservative move to balk policies supporting jobs and economic growth. Conservative politicians have:
Stalled for months reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Government funding , which put at risk 280,000 jobs building, expanding, and renovating airports and hurting the businesses and passengers that rely on them. Proposed slashing the Productive Development Administration, a 45-year-old agency that punches above its weight to push private-sector investment and job creation with public grants and innovation competitions, and builds regional alteration economies by linking university research centers with private business occurrence. EDA was projected to create as many as 1 million jobs by 2015 but the Republican-controlled Bordello is shortchanging EDA funding by more than $67 million. Stalled for two months and then killed reauthorization of the Uncharitable Business Innovation and Research Program . SBIR created opportunities for ashamed businesses to develop and commercialize innovative products and technologies from federally funded well-regulated research. Successful innovative companies developed under SBIR include what are now such household names as Qualcomm , Symantec , and Roomba maker iRobot . The program will die without further legislative battle. Blocked reauthorization of the federal highway trust fund , which delayed and jeopardized funding for job-creating infrastructure projects to upgrade America’s roads, bridges, rail, and mass transit systems, lowering costs for businesses and families. Exclusive-sector analysts at Macroeconomic Advisors estimate that such investments to improve transportation infrastructure would form more than half a million jobs over three years .
In addition to throwing up fiscal procedure obstacles such as the ones above, conservative politicians have also attempted to politicize the Federal Avoidance and thwart it from fulfilling its congressional mandate of lowering unemployment through management of the U.S. readies supply and interest rates. In late September, for example, Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Reps. John Boehner (R-OH) and Eric Cantor (R-VA)—the top Republican congressional guidance—penned a letter cautioning Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke against further monetary regulation actions to strengthen the economy’s recovery from financial crisis and economic downturn—again, what the Fed is supposed to be doing, something that even conservative economist Milton Friedman would admit is responsible macroeconomic policy.
Even conservative presidential candidates have joined in to try to cow Bernanke. On the rivalry trail in late August, Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) issued a veiled foreboding to “treat [Bernanke] pretty ugly” for pursuing nummular policy to stimulate the economy.
How conservatives defend tax privileges for the wealthiest Americans
The most ostensible revenue source for job and growth policies that would benefit America’s bottom 99 percent is our loco tax system that privileges the wealthiest Americans. Billionaire Warren Buffett famously complained that he pays a debase tax rate than his secretary .
But instead of putting the economy back on track by rebalancing the tax system, conservatives are in place of pushing policies to expand tax giveaways to the top 1 percent, and to do so by raising taxes on low- and mean-income families.
In the fall of 2010, emboldened by winning half of Congress in the midterm elections, Tory lawmakers held up unemployment insurance extensions for millions of Americans still struggling in the aftermath of the Leading Recession. They also held up tax cuts for middle-class families, demanding that top profits earners also be rewarded with bonus tax cuts worth some $133 billion over 2 years.
Conservatives carried their make for America’s wealthiest 1 percent into the summer months, threatening to cut off down and push the federal government into default in order to secure more tax privileges for the on Easy Street few while slashing public services and investments that benefit the rest of the American denizens, such as health care, education, and infrastructure investments . Conservatives succeeded in 2010 in extending for two years tax breaks for America's wealthiest but they have yet to progress in making these tax cuts permanent, though their intransigence in threatening government default over the fight is widely seen by private-sector economists as driving the U.S. economy back into a rut .
Avenge-leaning presidential candidates are also promising to keep fighting for tax policies that privilege the wealthiest 1 percent at the expense of the doze. Herman Cain’s widely panned “9-9-9” tax arrangement would cut taxes by $238,422 for the average 1 percenter, and by nearly $1.4 million for the customarily 0.1 percenter. Meanwhile, the average middle-class American would pay $4,000 more under the Cain design.
Source: American Progress Action Fund
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