The Hill: Erik Wasson- ‘House Democratic Budget Includes $1.2T in Taxes, $200B New Stimulus’

Source:U.S. Congress- U.S. Representative Chris Van Hollen (Democrat, Maryland) Ranking Member of the House Budget Committee (113th Congress)

“House Democrats on Monday unveiled a 2014 budget proposal that includes $1.2 trillion in new taxes and $200 billion in stimulus spending.

That’s about twice the level of stimulus spending that what was in the Senate Democratic budget, which included $975 million in new taxes.

House Republicans have a budget that would lower tax rates and cut spending by $5.7 trillion compared to the Congressional Budget Office baseline.

The House Democratic budget, authored by Budget Committee Ranking Member Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), would raise $1.2 trillion in revenue over ten years by ending tax breaks for both corporations and individuals.

“We focus immediately on accelerating the economic recovery, on growing jobs rather than shrinking jobs,” Van Hollen told reporters.” 

From The Hill 

This is a better plan then the House Republican budget plan because it moves us past the George W. Bush borrow and spend policies where you can cut taxes indefinitely and increase defense spending indefinitely without paying for any of it.

What House Democrats are trying to do led by Chris Van Hollen (Ranking Member of the Budget Committee) is say we have both a revenue and a spending problem. We are spending too much money in some areas. We aren’t collecting enough money to pay for the things that the Federal Government needs to do and we need to invest more in areas that we should be spending on, that leads to better economic and job growth, like in infrastructure, science, and other research.

So the goals are clear and very laid out and if Representative Paul Ryan wasn’t Chairman of the Budget Committee and Representative Van Hollen was, this plan would probably pass in the House.

The problems with the Van Hollen budget plan are both pragmatic and structural. This is the plan that will be offered by the House Democrats that will be the minority substitute to the Ryan Plan. Which is Congressional speak for House Democrats are currently the minority party in the House, therefor don’t have the members and votes to pass their own bills. They can only offer amendment and substitutes to what House Republicans will be doing. And therefor this plan will never become law, at least not in this Congress.

And then there’s the structural problem with the Van Hollen Plan: they want to raise taxes during a weak economy to pay for more Federal spending. I agree with them on infrastructure, I just don’t think you invest more in in infrastructure in a weak economy that’s barely growing a 1%, by making the cost of doing business in America more expensive. But instead have everyone chip into the new roads and other infrastructure projects that we need, as well as the improvements.

As I’ve written before, Congressional budget plans are generally not worth more than pop culture catch phrases and political slogans and tend not to be anything more than visions and wish lists: “This is what we would do if we just had the power and votes to get it done.” But at least this gives American voters a real choice in who they want to see in control of the House of Representatives two years from now: Republicans or Democrats. 

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Foreign Affairs: Juan de Ornis: Reelect President Dilma Rousseff: Social Democracy in Brazil

"In February, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff announced that she would seek a second term in office. Given the country's poor economic performance, the coming election season will not be an easy one for her."

Source:Foreign Affairs

Professor Conor Gearty: ‘Liberty and Security For All’

Source:Amazon- Professor Conor Gearty's book about liberty and security.

“All aspire to liberty and security in their lives but few people truly enjoy them. This book explains why this is so. In what Conor Gearty calls our ‘neo-democratic’ world, the proclamation of universal liberty and security is mocked by facts on the ground: the vast inequalities in supposedly free societies, the authoritarian regimes with regular elections, and the terrible socio-economic deprivation camouflaged by cynically proclaimed commitments to human rights.

Gearty’s book offers an explanation of how this has come about, providing also a criticism of the present age which tolerates it. He then goes on to set out a manifesto for a better future, a place where liberty and security can be rich platforms for everyone’s life.

The book identifies neo-democracies as those places which play at democracy so as to disguise the injustice at their core. But it is not just the new ‘democracies’ that have turned ‘neo’, the so-called established democracies are also hurtling in the same direction, as is the United Nations.

A new vision of universal freedom is urgently required. Drawing on scholarship in law, human rights and political science this book argues for just such a vision, one in which the great achievements of our democratic past are not jettisoned as easily as were the socialist ideals of the original democracy-makers.” 

From Amazon 

“Watch Professor Conor Gearty, Professor of Human Rights Law at London School of Economics discuss liberty and security as part of Durham Castle Lecture Series on 23rd January 2013.” 

Source:Durham University- Professor Conor Gearty talking about his book about civil liberties and income inequality.

 From Durham University 

To paraphrase Professor Milton Freedom: you can’t have security without liberty. And I would add vice-versa. Whether you are being oppressed by the state or from criminals or terrorists, you are being oppressed. Whether you are in physical danger from your own government or by criminals or terrorists, the result is the same: you are in physical danger.

When government cracks down on individuals civil liberties and rights even to protect the society from attacks by criminals or terrorists or just to protect it’s own regime from people who want a new government and that represents them and promotes and protects their freedom, you are still being oppressed. And you are giving up your freedom or it’s being taken away from you, for the promise of more security, or not being further oppressed and in more physical danger from your own government.

When I talk about liberal democracy and a free society, I’m not talking about people having the freedom to hurt innocent people to to make decisions with their own lives that others have to pay for. But for the right for people to act and think for themselves or not act at all, so long as they’re not hurting any innocent person with what they’re doing. Since the so-called War On Terror was declared in 2001 by the United States, we’ve moved away from definition of a free society, for the promise of more security. 

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You can also see this post at The New Democrat, on Blogger.

Foreign Affairs: Michael Shifter: So Long, Hugo Chávez

Source:Foreign Affairs- Venezuelan Socialist leader Hugo Chavez.

"Two decades ago, following the end of the Cold War, the United States and Latin America seemed more prepared than ever before to forge political and economic partnerships. Latin America was emerging from an era of stagnation and economic crisis and appeared to be moving toward market economies and liberal democracies. In the early 1990s, building on U.S. President George H. W. Bush’s widely applauded vision of a hemisphere-wide free-trade zone, Mexico, Canada, and the United States negotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement. At the Organization of American States’ conference in 1991, which brought together 34 countries, a landmark... 

From Foreign Affairs

MSNBC: Representative Ron Paul: 'Entitlements Are Not Rights'

Source:MSNBC- U.S. Representative Ron Paul (Libertarian, Texas)

"During a debate hosted by NBC asked Paul: "In your opinion, what services are Americans entitled to expect to get from government?" 

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the definition of entitlement is "a right to benefits specified especially by law or contract."

Source:Snaps Back Channel

The word entitlements is use to describe Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, as well as Unemployment Insurance. When as progressive columnist Jonathan Alter pointed out in Monday in his column, that these programs are really social insurances that people collect when they need them. Just because we pay into Unemployment Insurance, doesn't mean we'll ever see a dime directly from it. (To use as an example) And hopefully we would never have to. Medicaid would be another example of that even though it doesn't have a direct revenue source to fund it. 

I actually agree with Ron Paul that constitutionally at least, we're not entitled to anything in America, other than our life and liberty. Everything that government provides or takes from us beyond securing our rights to liberty and life, has to pass the constitutional test and the will of the voters.

The Washington Post: John Wagner: 'Death Penalty Repeal Approved by Maryland Senate'

Source:The Washington Post- Governor Martin O'Malley (Democrat, Maryland)

"The Maryland Senate voted to repeal the death penalty Wednesday after four days of emotional debate, moving the state closer to becoming the sixth in as many years to abolish executions.

The 27 to 20 vote was widely seen as a key step in ending capital punishment in Maryland, which has not executed a death-row prisoner since 2005. The legislation now goes before the House of Delegates, where a vote could come as early as next week.

The House is expected to approve the measure, handing Gov. Martin O'Malley a long-sought legislative victory at a time when he is weighing a run for national office in 2016.

“It’s time to end this ineffective and expensive practice and put our efforts behind crime fighting strategies that work,” O’Malley (D) said in a statement.

Shari Silberstein, executive ­director of Equal Justice USA, a group that is working to end the death penalty, said that Maryland’s action is part of a national trend and that she envisions another half-dozen states adopting the policy in the next several years.

If I was a Maryland State Senator I probably would've voted against this being in favor of a limited use of the death penalty. But its easy to see why Marylanders would be against this with the death row inmates who've been found to be innocent... 

From The Washington Post

The Hill: Russell Berman: 'House GOP to Consider bill On Job-Training Programs'

Source:The Hill Newspaper.

"House Republicans will move off their relentless focus on spending cuts

next week to consider a bill aimed at improving and streamlining

federal worker training programs.

Republican leaders said Tuesday they would bring to the floor the Supporting Knowledge and Investing in Lifelong Skills (SKILLS) Act, which would reauthorize a Clinton-era workforce investment law while consolidating dozens of job-training programs.

{mosads}The bill would mark the first House vote on legislation highlighted as part of Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s “Making Life Work” agenda, a set of proposals unveiled in a speech last month designed to broaden the GOP’s fiscal focus and target measures to issues that more directly affect voters’ lives.

Policymakers in both parties have pointed to improved job training as a priority during the sluggish economic recovery, in which employers have complained that long-term unemployment and technological advancements have resulted in job openings that go unfilled because applicants don’t have the requisite skills.

“That is a bill that I think both sides can come together on,” Cantor (R-Va.) said Tuesday, “and to provide assistance for those who don’t have the right kind of training or skills so they can access the unfilled jobs that are out there in many of the industry sectors.”

In the months following the November election, Cantor and other Republican leaders have spoken of the need for the GOP to avoid being seen simply as the party of austerity by finding other appealing policy ideas that conservatives can rally around.

The ongoing budget wars have made that difficult, and party leaders found themselves once again holding a press conference in front of a banner touting spending cuts.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) acknowledged, however, that like President Obama, the House GOP wanted to tackle other issues.

Obama has called for restructuring job-training programs, a push that has given the Republican legislation the imprimatur of bipartisanship.

Yet House Democrats and advocate groups are pushing separate legislation, and say the Republican bill goes too far in eliminating federal programs.

The opposition could make for a challenging vote next week for House GOP leaders, who did not bring the legislation to the floor in the last Congress.

They have struggled to unite their narrower majority in support of the Republican legislation so far this year.

“This is all related to public relations,” said Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee, which will mark up the SKILLS Act on Wednesday.

“It’s not related to getting people back to work. It’s not related to getting people the training they need, and it’s not related to making sure that those people who need the most help get back into the economy and get taken care of. This is just part of the public relations campaign of Mr. Cantor’s speech.”

Miller predicted there would be “very little, if any” Democratic support.

“This just hasn’t been a bipartisan process at all,” he said. “They may get it off the floor, but it’s unacceptable in the Senate. So it’s unfortunate.”

The author of the Republican bill, Rep. Virginia Foxx (N.C.), dismissed Miller’s criticism, and argued that her proposal was closer to the reform that Obama had envisioned.

“The unfortunate thing is we’re doing what the president asked,” she said. “The president said, get rid of this maze of programs. Come up with a one-stop program. The Democrats’ bill adds two programs and does nothing to consolidate, so it’s about as far away from what the president said he wanted as could possibly be.

“So if they want to continue down that road, then that’s fine,” Foxx said of the Democrats, “but we’re doing what the American people want and what the president wants. That’s bipartisanship.”

A GOP leadership aide said “a significant portion of our members” support the SKILLS Act, but stopped short of guaranteeing its passage on the floor.

“We will have the votes on the committee to pass it, and I think we will have the votes in the conference,” Foxx said.

Rachel Gragg, federal policy director for the National Skills Coalition, praised the Democratic legislation and said the GOP bill went about streamlining training programs in the wrong way by combining them all into a single block grant.

“It’s almost like consolidating for consolidation’s sake,” she said.

Gragg also voiced concern that because the $6 billion authorization in the Republican bill is treated as a ceiling, it would leave the program vulnerable to future cuts, perhaps as soon as when the Republicans unveil their budget for fiscal 2014.

The Democratic bill, by contrast, “at a minimum maintains current funding and in some cases increases funding,” Gragg said." 

From The Hill

This is exactly the direction that the House GOP should be moving in whether this bill is good or not. But these are the things that they should be talking about instead of their whole message being about how do we just the size of the Federal Government, but also talk about how to make the Federal Government work better, so Americans who need public assistance, don't have to stay on it as long and can move to the workforce with a good job instead.