Public Budgets

Jobs or Wars: We Have to Choose

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Did you know that redirecting a fraction of our military spending to education, green energy, healthcare, and tax cuts would create a job for every unemployed or underemployed person in the country (including those losing war industry jobs during this conversion)?  It’s true.

Did you know we’re fighting read more

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I Just Found 29 Million Jobs

No, not 29 million job offers. I’m no better at applying for jobs than you are, and my town offers nothing but dead-end McJobs or positions in the military industrial complex, just like yours. I mean I just spotted an easy way to create 29 million jobs, one for every unemployed or underemployed U.S. worker.

No, I’m not about to say “Just raise taxes on gazillionaires and hire people to build stuff.” I’m all in favor of that, for lots of reasons, including the political read more

I Just Found 29 Million Jobs Read More »

Drowning Government in a Hurricane (Why Wait for a Bathtub?)

“Shrinking government” in American political discourse has, for decades now, meant the following. We enlarge the government’s budget through taxation and penalties on working people and through borrowing and printing money. We not only tax the wealthy and corporations less, but we massively subsidize them with public funds. We move away from taxes and fees meant to limit the damage greed can do to the world, and we defund regulation of and law enforcement against the oligarchy. read more

Drowning Government in a Hurricane (Why Wait for a Bathtub?) Read More »

How the Budget Cutting Is Going to Go Down

If Snoopy had ever pointed out to Charlie Brown that Lucy was just going to yank the football away again at the last second, Charlie would have only heard barking.

I hope all the good people chattering away about how cutting Social Security would be political suicide, and therefore won’t happen, can hear more than barking in the following.

In the best case scenario, and least likely outcome, the Super Congress will fail to produce a plan or to pass one through the actual Congress.  In read more

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To Whom Do We Now Turn?

“The Democratic Party is running away from its traditional role of protecting the poor, the elderly, and the working class,” writes Congressman Dennis Kucinich.  “To whom do these groups now turn?”

We turn to ourselves, Congressman.  You know that.  And you know I love you.  But we’ve got to stop turning to people, much less parties.  It’s killing us.  We can work with you and all of our friends, but we’re going to have to read more

To Whom Do We Now Turn? Read More »

No Deal

Vote Down the
Debt Deal!

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Dear David,

The debt ceiling deal struck last night does not tax the rich or even allow temporary tax cuts on the rich to expire. Nor does it defund any wars. Yet it requires cuts of $1.2 trillion now and $2.5 trillion over a decade.
 
Tell Congress to reject this deal.
 
read more

No Deal Read More »

How would you spend the federal budget?

Time to take out the good ol’ fashioned paper and pen and create your budget. As George Lakoff once wrote, a budget is a value document. So enter numbers based on your values. When you’re done, scroll down to compare your budget with the one governing United States federal spending.

Directions: Enter a percentage of the budget that you would spend on each of these six broad categories.  (If you’re feeling industrious, fill in each little line item.)  Make sure read more

How would you spend the federal budget? Read More »

Debt Is A Crisis

What if the imminent banging of Uncle Sam’s skull into the looming debt ceiling isn’t a crisis, but the very concept of debt is? The debt ceiling has been lifted numerous times without fanfare or fainting spells. All we face this week is a fabricated opportunity to gut social programs and trusts under the guise of a phony crisis and a discourse constricted to exclude taxation of the wealthy or cuts to the war machine.

But what if more deficit spending isn’t a safe answer? I read more

Debt Is A Crisis Read More »

Balance the Budget on the Backs of Billionaires

By David Swanson, RootsAction.org

The wealthiest nation on earth is not actually obliged to starve our senior citizens.  We don’t need a military 670% more expensive than the next largest one on earth.  We don’t need to fund health insurance corporations instead of healthcare.  And we don’t need tax breaks for billionaires.  In fact, we don’t need billionaires.  That’s the message RootsAction is taking to Congress.

Forbes magazine has read more

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