Schakowsky Deficit Reduction Plan

by: wegerje

Tue Nov 16, 2010 at 19:21:39 PM CST

Schakowsky is on the commission. Some sort of tokenism to progressives. She rolled this out today.

As for getting the job done, it's really not so hard. Tax the rich fairly, reduce military and other corporate wasted spending, increase the government role in health care, etc, etc .... You get the idea. I've quoted a bit but there is more at this title link:

Schakowsky Offers Alternative to Simpson-Bowles Deficit Reduction Plan

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 $17.2 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.