The People’s Budget, an alternative budget for the US, presents a coherent vision and a detailed plan for generating the revenue needed to invest in America’s infrastructure and people. It includes specific proposals for increasing revenue, decreasing tax expenditures (i.e., loopholes and deductions), and increasing efficiency in the public and private sectors. These will more than pay for its spending proposals (which I summarized in my previous post). [1]
Current tax policy is failing in multiple ways. Tax cuts and tax avoidance have reduced government revenue so that it is insufficient to pay for needed spending. Tax policy changes over the last 35 years have exacerbated economic inequality and created complexity that favors politically powerful special interests and those who can afford sophisticated tax accountants and lawyers. The theoretical progressivity of income taxes has been lost through tax cuts, tax deductions, tax avoidance, and favored tax rates and loopholes for high-income individuals.
The People’s Budget addresses the inequities in our tax system through changes in individual and corporate tax laws. Income taxes on the richest individuals would be increased. The tax on income from investments would be raised so it is at the same rate as income earned from working. The People’s Budget also would reduce tax deductions that favor the wealthy, such as interest deductions for mortgages on vacation homes and yachts. It maintains a tax on estates worth over $3.5 million, which current proposals would eliminate. It would also reduce income inequality by increasing tax deductions for low-income families. [2]
Inefficient corporate tax loopholes would be eliminated. Corporate tax benefits from moving jobs, profits, and a corporation’s legal home overseas would be ended. The People’s Budget would ensure that corporations pay their fair share of taxes and that large, multi-national corporations do not enjoy more favorable tax treatment than small, US-based companies. Current tax loopholes make it hard for small businesses to compete with large multi-national corporations.
A small tax would be placed on financial transactions. This is essentially a small sales tax on the buying and selling of financial products, like (but at a much lower rate than) the sales taxes many of us pay on non-financial products we buy. In addition to generating hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue, it would also discourage quick turnaround, high-volume, speculative trading of securities that can destabilize markets and that provide no benefit to our economy.
The People’s Budget would close tax loopholes and end subsidies for fossil fuel corporations, while putting a price on carbon pollution. This would end the unjustifiable public subsidies of fossil fuel extraction and use, requiring those burning carbon fuels to pay the true costs of doing so. In addition, the People’s Budget would invest in energy efficiency and clean, renewable energy production.
Income and wealth inequality would be reduced by the tax reforms in the People’s Budget, as well as by its spending proposals, which were summarized in my previous post. The Economic Policy Institute’s (EPI) analysis of the People’s Budget concludes that it “would have significant positive impacts, including improving the economic well-being of low- and middle-class families, … and increasing tax progressivity and adequacy while reducing the deficit in the medium term.” [3]
The People’s Budget would reduce the federal government’s projected debt level by trillions of dollars over the next 10 years. This makes it clear that we can afford investments in our human and physical capital if we reform our individual and corporate tax systems. Furthermore, we can simultaneously reduce income and wealth inequality.
I believe that candidates and the party(ies) who fully embrace the vision and goals of the People’s Budget will find that the American public and voters will strongly support them. Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign was built on a very similar vision and received tremendous grassroots support. Although President Trump’s rhetoric supported elements of the People’s Budget and many people voted for him believing or hoping that he would bring this kind of change in direction to Washington, his actions to-date have not reflected the vision or goals of the People’s Budget. The Republican Party appears to have a totally different vision for America – one where the rich and large corporations do very well and where everyone else struggles to make ends meet.
The Democratic Party would seem to have every reason to embrace the People’s Budget’s vision and goals. Although the Congressional Progressive Caucus has 75 Democratic members in the House (out of 194 Democratic Representatives), the national Democratic Party has not adopted many of the key proposals of the People’s Budget. The Party has not committed itself to goals and a vision for America that puts the working and middle class before wealthy individuals and large corporations.
Our democracy is threatened. Plutocracy, where a relatively small number of wealthy individuals control the government, might be a more accurate description of our current political system. Currently, neither of our major political parties is committed to government of, by, and for the people, as opposed to wealthy individuals and corporations. The People’s Budget would change this.
I encourage you to contact your Representative and Senators in Congress to encourage them to support the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s comprehensive, well thought out proposals that make up the People’s Budget. We need to support the working and middle class, decrease income and wealth inequality, and invest in preparing America and Americans for the future. The People’s Budget makes it clear we can do this and lays out a realistic plan to do so.
[1] Vanden Heuvel, K., 5/9/17, “Trump’s budget betrays his supporters. Here’s one that doesn’t.” The Washington Post
[2] Congressional Progressive Caucus, retrieved 7/7/17, “The People’s Budget: A roadmap for the resistance,” https://cpc-grijalva.house.gov/uploads/FINAL%20CPC%20Budget%20FY18%20Executive%20Summary.pdf
[3] Blair, H., 5/2/17, “‘The People’s Budget’: Analysis of the Congressional Progressive Caucus budget for fiscal year 2018,” Economic Policy Institute Policy Center (http://www.epi.org/publication/the-peoples-budget-analysis-of-the-congressional-progressive-caucus-budget-for-fiscal-year-2018/)
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