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ASWF: Gingrich’s Right-Wing Game Plan For ‘Solutions Day’ On September 27

Solutions DayNewt Gingrich’s coal-and-billionaire fueled K-Street 527 corporation, American Solutions for Winning the Future (ASWF), is gearing up the next phase in its campaign to continue the extreme Bush agenda for four more years. Newt’s front group has risen to prominence through his “Drill Here, Drill Now” campaign to redefine energy policy, but he now plans to roll out his right-wing agenda on education, the economy, and health as well. The Wonk Room has obtained Newt’s game plan for “Solutions Day,” September 27, in the form of a 12-page “Action Pack for Activists.”

“Solutions Day” should really be called Pollution Day. The game plan recommends that volunteers to “invite local elected officials” and reach out to “key, state-level bloggers,” and “taxpayer groups, such as Americans for Prosperity” to gather people at “workshops” listening to Newt Gingrich speak (webcast, DISH Network—219, and Direct TV – Channel 577). Americans for Prosperity, as readers of the Wonk Room know, is yet another fossil-fueled right-wing front group.

On September 27, Newt will sell this radical right-wing agenda using talking points designed by propaganda master Frank Luntz:

Energy Gingrich’s Drill, Baby Drill plan to continue our suicidal pollution-based economy will be bolstered by Regnery Publishing’s “Drill Here, Drill Now” book and “We Have the Power,” a movie by Newt’s wife being distributed by Citizens United, the right-wing hate group run by Whitewater hit man David Bossie.

Economy Gingrich claims to be in favor of “real investments for long-term growth to create the best jobs, with the best take-home pay, and with the greatest prosperity for safe pensions and retirements.” However, the economic agenda of ASWF and its allies in fact includes defeat of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would restore bargaining rights to workers against corporate intimidation; the abolishment or slashing of taxes that only affect the superwealthy, such as the estate tax (“death tax”) and corporate tax; and the privatization of Social Security (“Personal Social Security Savings Accounts”).

Education ASWF is promoting Bob Compton’s documentary “Two Million Minutes” and calling for increased science and technology education. This emphasis hides Newt’s radical agenda of privatizing government services, bringing religion into schools and forcing all immigrants to learn English.

Health Under Newt Gingrich’s drug company-funded Center for Health Transformation, ASWF will push its agenda to protect corporate malpractice (“tort reform”), to break down Medicare and Medicaid, and to make health insurance more expensive (“consumerist health care“).

Download Newt’s “Action Pack” here. To fight back on Newt’s day of pollution, join the Green Jobs Now Day of Action, for real solutions, not more pollution.

REPORT: Supply-Side Tax Cuts Fail To Spur Economic Growth

john-mccain-pumps-fist-2-5-2008-small-thumb.jpgSen. John McCain’s economic plan – Jobs for America – is full of tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy. It includes a cut in the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%, and maintaining the 15% rate on dividends and capital gains, which McCain claims will promote growth and create jobs.

Michael Ettlinger of the Center for American Progress and John Irons of the Economic Policy Institute examined the efficacy of supply-side tax cuts on corporations and high-income Americans in a new report, “Take a Walk on the Supply Side.” By comparing the supply-side eras following the 1983 and 2001 tax cuts to the years between 1993 and 2001, they find that, for the most part, supply-side policies don’t work in practice the way that they do in theory.

Among their findings:

- Real investment growth after the tax increases of 1993 was much higher than after the tax cuts of 1981 and 2001.

- Economic growth as measured by real U.S. gross domestic product was stronger following the tax increases of 1993 than in the two supply-side eras. Over the seven-year periods after each legislative action, average annual growth was 3.9 percent following 1993, 3.5 percent following 1981, and 2.5 percent following 2001.

- Wage levels also did better after 1993. Average real hourly earnings following 1981 fell at an annual rate of 0.1 percent and following 2001 rose at a rate of only 0.3 percent. Following the 1993 tax increases average hourly earnings grew by 0.9 percent per year.

- Employment growth was weaker during the supply-side eras than during the post-1993 era. Average annual employment growth was 2.1 percent after 1981, 2.5 percent after 1993, and 0.6 percent after 2001.

And of course, tax cuts lower federal revenue, so supply-side practices necessarily “lead to bigger federal budget deficits and/or spending reductions.”

As a survey of economists released by the Wall Street Journal today notes, “the next U.S. president will be confronted with slow growth, high unemployment and an economy teetering toward recession,” and thus “pumping up the economy will be the first challenge.” Ettlinger and Irons’ data shows that, if history is any indication, cutting taxes on the wealthy and handing out tax breaks to corporations will not provide that much-needed economic jolt.

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