It’s Time To Restore Rules For America
It’s Time To Restore Rules For America
Our guest blogger is Todd Darling, a documentary filmmaker whose film, “A Snow Mobile For George,” is a cross country look at how deregulation affects individuals and the environment.
For eight years the Bush Administration’s chief domestic priority was to deregulate everything they could get their hands on. In the Bush view, the free market, left unregulated, would solve anything that needed solving; the rich would get richer, and, as Grover Norquist put it, the federal government would shrink down to be “small enough to drown in a bath tub.” So they worked to remove regulations that safeguarded the public’s control over the myriad resources and concerns from the airwaves and energy, to land, water, wildlife, drugs, pesticides, and toxic waste, all the way to the public’s money in the banking and financial system.
Watch one rancher’s story of the effects of the Bush rampage, taken from my documentary, A Snow Mobile For George: More »
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New Thinking for the Next Science Adviser
New Thinking for the Next Science Adviser
Our guest blogger is Rick Weiss, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Fund.
Here’s a wild proposition for the transition: Choose a life scientist or a climatologist for the presidential science advisor.
Maybe that doesn’t seem like a radical move to you, but in fact it would be a major break with tradition. The presidential science advisor (who doubles as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy) has traditionally been a physicist or nuclear scientist. After all, the biggest science-based threat to the nation has long been the threat of nuclear war. So of course the president needed someone at his side who knew about bombs and fallout and such.
But while atomic physics is still a field with great national security import (think dirty bombs and the suitcase-sized nuclear devices that terrorists are purported to be trying to get their hands on) there is a good case to be made that molecular biology (which has so simplified the tools for making bioterror weapons, for example) or even ordinary earth science (the specialty that best understands global climate change) are the fields that are today most relevant to our national and economic security concerns.
The presidential science advisor (which used to be a cabinet level position until Bush demoted it, but is likely to get elevated again under Obama) is just one of hundreds of science policy-related openings that the new president and his appointees will soon be filling and that officials in the new administration need to think about in new, out-of-the-box ways.
Imagine a surgeon general selected from one of the nation’s gang-busting food activist groups, ready to take on obesity the way C. Everett Koop took on smoking. Or a Food and Drug Commissioner who’s maybe not a medical doctor (as is usual) but has great expertise in international trade law (trillions of dollars-worth of food and drugs are today imported from abroad with precious little inspection or oversight). Or a Secretary of Energy who has real business experience and expertise in cap-and-trade economics or in solar or wind technology or low-loss transmission lines—the keys to an energy-independent America.
Now multiply that times all the science-based openings in Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency, Interior and even Defense. To learn more about what the Obama administration has to think about when filling out its technical ranks, see below, drawn from my recent column on Science Progress, “A Taxonomy of Scientific Appointments:” More »
Testing Iran
Testing Iran
Yesterday the Iranian press reported that the Islamic Republic “successfully test-fired a new generation of long range surface-to-surface missiles with a range of 1,200 miles.”
Some weapons experts have disputed whether this was, in fact, a new missile. Andrew Brookes of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies told The London Times, “I think the Iranians just keeping on rejigging the same missile and putting a new logo on it. It’s basically the Shahab 3 with a different name, and the purpose of the test firing is to tell the world, ‘don’t forget us’, we have missiles that can reach 2,000 kilometers.”
The White House responded with the requisite denunciation, with spokesman Gordon Johndroe saying “Iran’s development of ballistic missiles is contrary to United Nations Security Council resolutions and completely inconsistent with Iran’s obligations to the world.”
Iran’s missile test should be considered in light of the fact that Iran’s economy, which had been kept afloat on high oil revenues, is collapsing. The high price of oil — which was partly a consequence of the Iraq war — had enabled Iran to sidestep economic sanctions, but with the recent drop in oil prices Iran is in serious trouble. They’ve got double-digit unemployment, double-digit inflation, there’s a whole generation of young Iranians whose future prospects are very dim. And they are very, very unhappy with their government right now.
The missile test should be therefore viewed less as an attempt to “test” the new president-elect, more as an attempt by hardliners to rally Iranians round the flag, as they have done consistently over the past few years, by provoking a crisis to draw attention away from their failure to manage the economy. More »
Change For America: The National Energy Advisor
Change For America: The National Energy Advisor
In Change for America: A Progressive Blueprint for the 44th President, a work now in publication, two top members of President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team recommend the creation of a “new National Energy Council to drive the transformation to a low-carbon economy.” The Wonk Room offers this exclusive preview of their recommendations. Todd Stern and David Hayes write:
Transforming the energy base of the economy will demand top-level participation across the executive branch. It will require the concerted engagement of the president, and the kind of single-minded attention that only a fully empowered national energy advisor and council can bring. The National Energy Council would serve as the new president’s agent in driving both policy and strategic options with respect to energy and climate change. At the first cabinet meeting, the president should make clear the centrality of this issue and the authority of his new national energy advisor.
The national energy advisor, an idea talked about in the press as a “climate czar” or “energy czar,” would have “stature comparable to the national security advisor and the national economic advisor.” Stern and Hayes recommend that the Council involve most of the Cabinet as well as the chairs of the National Security Council (NSC), National Economic Council (NEC), and the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). The advisor should have a “lean staff” shared with other White House offices, including the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Here’s how the council could be constructed: More »
Iraqis on the SOFA: Definitely Maybe!
Iraqis on the SOFA: Definitely Maybe!
The New York Times’ Alyssa Rubin declares that the election of Barack Obama “is already beginning to shift the political ground in Iraq and the region.”
Iraqi Shiite politicians are indicating that they will move faster toward a new security agreement about American troops, and a Bush administration official said he believed that Iraqis could ratify the agreement as early as the middle of this month.
“Before, the Iraqis were thinking that if they sign the pact, there will be no respect for the schedule of troop withdrawal by Dec. 31, 2011,” said Hadi al-Ameri, a powerful member of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a major Shiite party. “If Republicans were still there, there would be no respect for this timetable. This is a positive step to have the same theory about the timetable as Mr. Obama.”
Buried in the middle of the article is what I think is a more accurate rendering of the scene:
Mr. Obama’s election also coincided with the American negotiators’ acceptance of many of the changes Iraqis demanded in the agreement, which created an overall picture that was easier both for the Iraqis and their neighbors — Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia — to accept.
The American negotiators sent a new version of the agreement to Iraqi leaders on Thursday that included many of the changes Iraqis had demanded. In public, Iraqis said merely that they were studying the document.
By contrast, the Washington Post reports that Iraq’s chief spokesman said with unusual forcefulness Thursday that his government will continue to insist on a firm withdrawal date for U.S. troops, despite American demands that any pullout be subject to prevailing security conditions.”
“Iraqis would like to know and see a fixed date,” spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in an interview in which he also reiterated Iraq’s position that American forces be subject to Iraqi legal jurisdiction in some instances.
Iraqi officials, who see President-elect Obama’s views on the timing of a U.S. withdrawal as consonant with their own, appear to be leveraging his election to pressure the Bush administration to make last-minute concessions.
While I think there’s little doubt that Obama’s election has had an effect on the calculations of Iraq’s political leaders, and strengthened their position against the Bush administration, there’s a danger in overstating the amount of influence that U.S. leaders themselves have in Iraqi politics, a consistent problem with Bush’s approach.
The SOFA in its previous form was effectively scuttled by prominent Shia clerics with influence on Iraq’s leading Shia parties, and it remains to be seen whether the changes accepted by U.S. negotiators will be enough to satisfy the ayatollahs. Unsurprisingly, several Sadrist leaders have already indicated that they are not.
The Bush administration has wasted a huge amount of time and political capital basically bargaining with Iraqi government to stay in Iraq. Rather than accept the inevitability of a U.S. exit, and then leverage that withdrawal to pressure Iraqi leaders to confront the difficult political issues which still persist, President Bush instead clung to a fantasy of a long-term military presence in Iraq, and now finds the impending arrival of a new administration being used as leverage against him.
Obama Plans Green Economy ‘Listening Tour’ Before Inauguration
Obama Plans Green Economy ‘Listening Tour’ Before Inauguration
Dan Kammen, the director of the Renewable & Appropriate Energy Laboratory at UC Berkeley and a top adviser to President-elect Barack Obama (D-IL), has told E&E News that Obama may conduct a nationwide “listening tour” to allow his team to hit the ground running for a green recovery:
The incoming Obama team is considering a “listening tour” around the country on energy and environmental issues before Inauguration Day in an attempt to build momentum for its policies and legislative plans.
Last month, Obama told Time’s Joe Klein that an “Apollo project” for a “new energy economy” is his top priority:
That’s going to be my No. 1 priority when I get into office.
In yesterday’s victory speech before a crowd of 125,000 in Chicago’s Grant Park, Obama indicated that listening to all people of this nation will be central to his administration:
There are many who won’t agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government can’t solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way its been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years - block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.
In the 75 days before Obama takes office, he will also have to weigh in on major events already on the calendar: More »
McCain And Obama Criticize New Coal Plants — Right Wing Goes Insane
McCain And Obama Criticize New Coal Plants — Right Wing Goes Insane
Both presidential candidates, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) have called for a mandatory cap on carbon emissions in the United States. Coal-fired power plants, which produce about 49 percent of U.S. electricity, account for 83 percent of power-sector emissions. Because of the global warming footprint, the cheapness of coal-fired electricity is illusory. Under a cap-and-trade system, the cost of those emissions — now a market externality — would have a dollar cost. In a January 2008 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, Obama used blunt language to describe how a cap and trade system would change the future of the power sector:
That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants are being built, they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted-down caps that are imposed every year. So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel, and other alternative energy approaches.
The right wing has gone insane over these remarks, falsely claiming that Obama said he “will bankrupt the coal industry.” This false claim is the headline of a Newsbusters story — the same right-wing front group that falsely attacked Al Gore using doctored audio clips. This time, the piece is based on an anonymous YouTube video. After being pumped by a top link on the Drudge Report, the right-wing — including the Weekly Standard, Michelle Malkin, and Power Line — went wild and repeated the lie that Obama talked about “bankrupting” the “coal industry.”
In reality, Obama’s statements, while blunt, are neither revelatory nor controversial. At a September 15 townhall meeting in Orlando, FL, McCain warned against building new coal plants:
We’re going to build new plants that generate energy, my friends, we’re going to build them. We’ve got to. There’s an increased demand for it. And it seems to me, it’s going to be coal, which I believe will increase greenhouse gas emissions dramatically, or it’s going to be nuclear, or it’s going to be clean coal technology.
In the San Francisco Chronicle interview , Obama similarly stated that the future of power involves coal:
But this notion of no coal, I think, is an illusion. Because the fact of the matter is, is that right now we are getting a lot of our energy from coal. And China is building a coal-powered plant once a week. So what we have to do then is figure out how can we use coal without emitting greenhouse gases and carbon. And how can we sequester that carbon and capture it. If we can’t, then we’re gonna still be working on alternatives.
Under either candidate’s cap and trade program, constructing new coal plants that do not employ “clean coal technology” — that is, carbon capture and sequestration technology — would raise costs “dramatically.” Independent analysts have found that new coal plants would “create significant financial risks for shareholders and ratepayers” because of the likely cost of their greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, energy providers will have a financial incentive to pursue alternative energy and energy efficiency. McCain explained the market signal of a cap and trade program in his May 12 speech on climate change:
And the same approach that brought a decline in sulfur dioxide emissions can have an equally dramatic and permanent effect on carbon emissions. Instantly, automakers, coal companies, power plants, and every other enterprise in America would have an incentive to reduce carbon emissions, because when they go under those limits they can sell the balance of permitted emissions for cash. As never before, the market would reward any person or company that seeks to invent, improve, or acquire alternatives to carbon-based energy. . . A cap-and-trade policy will send a signal that will be heard and welcomed all across the American economy. Those who want clean coal technology, more wind and solar, nuclear power, biomass and bio-fuels will have their opportunity through a new market that rewards those and other innovations in clean energy.
McCain emphasized who the winners under a carbon cap-and-trade system are: “clean coal technology, more wind and solar, nuclear power, biomass and bio-fuels.” The market “incentive,” “reward,” or “signal” is a euphemism that the winners will make money because the losers will pay more. And the losers, above all, are traditional coal plants — no matter who is elected president.
UPDATE: Ed Driscoll calls Obama’s quotes a “blockbuster story,” the Corner’s Mark Steyn hyperventilates that this was a “****-me story,” and Hugh Hewitt’s Bill Dyer calls it “madness masquerading as policy.” This video from Jed Lewison puts matters into perspective:
Rubin Tries Punching Above His Weight
Rubin Tries Punching Above His Weight
Michael Rubin snipes at Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi from the Corner:
Since Rashid Khalidi has, by his close friendship to Senator Obama, returned to prominence, it may be worth revisiting the quality of Khalidi’s scholarship and how he subordinates scholarly integrity to polemic.[…]
Khalidi’s influence upon Obama might subordinate basic human rights to the virulent form of Arab nationalism that led to the Anfal.
First, Khalidi hasn’t “returned to prominence,” he is prominent by virtue of being one of the leading Middle East scholars in the United States.
Second, the idea that Rubin would accuse anyone of “subordinat[ing] scholarly integrity to polemic” is pretty funny, given that Rubin himself formerly worked in the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, helping Doug Feith shape dubiously-sourced intelligence into dishonest arguments for a disastrous war, and now edits the Middle East Quarterly, helping right-wing polemicist Daniel Pipes warn Americans about the Islamic terrorists lurking underneath their beds.
Third, Rubin’s lazy and baseless slander of Khalidi — suggesting that Khalidi somehow espouses an ideology sympathetic to Saddam Hussein’s 1986-89 genocide against the Kurds — is really contemptible, degenerate stuff. (Those kinds of unsubstantiated insinuations might have flown in Feith’s shop, pal, but not out here in the world.) In reality, Khalidi is a big supporter of human rights. The real problem, at least as Rubin and assorted Corner nuts are concerned, is that Khalidi is also a supporter of human rights for Palestinians.
I understand Rubin’s hostility toward Khalidi, though. Rashid Khalidi is a highly regarded academic whose work is taken seriously, whereas Michael Rubin is a second-tier neocon hack known for having served as one of Doug Feith’s oompa-loompas. That’s got to sting a little.
Better Job Growth Under ‘Tax and Spend Liberals’
Better Job Growth Under ‘Tax and Spend Liberals’
John McCain has been attacking Barack Obama as a “tax-and-spend liberal” for his plan to roll back the Bush tax cuts for people making over $250,000 in order to pay for middle class tax cuts and investments in alternative energy, health care, and education.
McCain, for his part, has proposed doubling the Bush tax cuts by adding an additional $300 billion in budget busting tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.
Both these approaches have been tried, and only one created real job growth and widespread prosperity.
Under President Bush, whose economic agenda consisted almost entirely of massive tax cuts heavily skewed to the wealthy, job growth was sluggish, creating only 4.8 million jobs over the course of his entire presidency.
By contrast, in the first months of his administration, President Clinton proposed a budget that raised income tax rates slightly on the very rich and “new ‘investment’ spending for education, job training, social services, health, science and technology and community and regional development.” The resulting budget lay the groundwork for a balanced budget and stunning economic growth that created 23 million jobs over the course of his presidency.
At the time, the Washington Post reported that conservatives “blasted [the Clinton plan] as more of their old ‘tax and spend’ policies.”
Biden: ‘No Coal Plants Here In America’
Biden: ‘No Coal Plants Here In America’
At a campaign stop today in Maumee, OH, Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) talked to Carolyn Auwaerter, a young 1Sky campaigner, about energy policy. Questioned about his campaign’s support for “clean coal,” Biden vigorously defended his record in favor of renewable energy, and outlined what he sees as the key challenge: developing carbon capture and sequestration technology (which he calls “clean coal”) to limit the pollution from China’s rapidly increasing fleet of coal plants. In his words, captured on video by the Energy Action Coalition:
No coal plants here in America. Build them, if they’re going to build them over there make ‘em clean because they’re killing you.
Watch it:
Both 1Sky and the Energy Action Coalition are opposed to the development of new coal-fired power plants. Energy Action Coalition is running Power Vote, a national youth based campaign to get 1,000,000 youth voters voting for clean energy this election season. They are also working with Green For All and the Center for American Progress on the Green Jobs Now Day of Action, this September 27.
Transcript: More »
McCain Rep Lies: McCain’s Global Warming Targets ‘Consistent With International Scientific Consensus’
McCain Rep Lies: McCain’s Global Warming Targets ‘Consistent With International Scientific Consensus’
I’ll be appearing on the live Meet the Bloggers webcast this Friday, September 19, at 1 PM: meetthebloggers.org.
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Sen. John McCain’s “I’m a Ph.D. economist” adviser, is evidently having a mental meltdown, perhaps brought on by the collapse in the financial markets engineered by McCain’s other “economic brain,” Phil Gramm.
Although his comment giving Sen. McCain credit for the miraculous invention of the Blackberry is meriting deserved ridicule, Holtz-Eakin’s column in yesterday’s Financial Times on climate change includes unambiguous lies to defend McCain’s polluter-friendly climate plan. Holtz-Eakin lies about McCain’s cap and trade plan:
His policy would reduce emissions to 2005 levels by 2012 and ultimately 66 per cent below 2005 levels by 2050, and would cover sectors responsible for just below 90 per cent of all emissions. These targets are consistent with the international scientific consensus and reflect the balance between environmental objectives and the need for economic growth. . . . Despite this, Mr Obama has chosen an unrealistic target for emissions reductions, and opposes measures to ease the transition.
The numbers are accurate, but everything else is a lie. The international scientific consensus in 2007, as clearly defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report (Working Group III, Chapter 13, Box 13.7), calls for the United States and other industrialized nations to reduce emissions 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, and 80 to 95 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
McCain’s targets are totally inconsistent with the international scientific consensus, and Obama’s are also insufficient, though less so. Holtz-Eakin’s claim that Obama’s targets are “unrealistic” is bizarre, considering that McCain and Obama have proposed the same emissions target for the year 2020.
McCain’s plan has major loopholes which would make achieving such targets unlikely. Furthermore, McCain supports giveaways of pollution credits to industry, guaranteeing massive windfall profits for polluters at the expense of American families.
But this analysis is likely giving too much credence to the words of Holtz-Eakin directed to the international audience of the Financial Times. Speaking to the American public, McCain surrogates like Steve Forbes and Tim Pawlenty have denigrated cap-and-trade legislation. In 2000, candidate Bush claimed he’d regulate carbon dioxide pollution, but put Dick Cheney in charge of energy policy. In an eerie replay, McCain today has tapped Sarah Palin — who doesn’t believe in global warming — to be in charge of energy policy.
McCain Doesn’t Want You To Retire
McCain Doesn’t Want You To Retire
Our guest blogger is Christian E. Weller, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Public Affairs at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Social Security’s anniversary – August 14 – is the perfect time to consider policies that could raise retirement security for tens of millions of Americans, who have seen their wealth decimated by crashing financial and housing markets. Cutting Social Security benefits – Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) favorite approach – would exacerbate what is already a crisis by reducing the last sure thing in retirement safety. Maybe his answer to the retirement crisis is to do as he does: work until you’re well into your 70s. Working becomes the new retirement with Sen. McCain.
Policymakers need to protect Social Security benefits, especially for vulnerable groups and create more wealth, especially for low-income and moderate-income families.
How do the presumptive presidential candidates address these goals? Sen. McCain’s mantra is “cut, cut, cut.” He sees a world of higher retirement age, smaller cost-of-living adjustments, and fewer benefits for moderate-income and higher-income earners, among other possible, yet unspecified cuts. And, it is not clear that he has abandoned the costly and ineffective idea of privatization that he championed in 2000 and that President Bush unsuccessfully peddled in 2005.
This is no way to get started on addressing the retirement crisis. Household wealth dropped by a whopping $3.0 trillion from the middle of 2007 to the first quarter of 2008, but who is counting? Apparently, a lot of people are. The Employee Benefits Research Institute reported in April 2008 that only 18 percent of workers were very confident that they will live comfortably in retirement – the primary reason for people to build wealth. This is the lowest level of retirement confidence since 1993.
Contrast this with Sen. Obama’s proposals. Sen. Obama has proposed to protect Social Security by opposing privatization and a higher retirement age, while also looking to increase revenues by expanding the cap, above which earnings are not subject to Social Security taxes, currently $102,000.
Moreover, Sen. Obama wants to make it easier for people to save. He would require that employers automatically enroll their employees in retirement savings plans and, if employers don’t offer such plans, they would have to offer employees an easy way to contribute to Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs) through payroll deduction. On top of this, he would vastly improve the current system of public matches for people’s contributions to their retirement savings accounts, at least for families making less than $75,000. Sen. McCain has no such proposals.
The candidates need to tell voters how they will address their concerns. It is clear that wanting to cut Social Security amid rapidly dwindling wealth doesn’t accomplish that.
Rove Whines That McCain And Obama Are ‘Economically Illiterate And Irresponsibly Populist.’
Rove Whines That McCain And Obama Are ‘Economically Illiterate And Irresponsibly Populist.’
It’s not often that Karl Rove, former adviser to President Bush, has something negative to say. JUST KIDDING! But even Karl Rove outdid himself in an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal, in which he criticizes aspects of both Senator Obama and Senator McCain’s economic plans by calling the candidates “economically illiterate and irresponsibly populist.”
McCain is economically illiterate… and has conceded as much. But Rove’s critique of Obama, however, focuses on one central element: The senator’s support of a windfall tax profit on American oil companies. In Rove’s view:
Why should we stop with oil companies? They make about 8.3 cents in gross profit per dollar of sales. Why doesn’t Mr. Obama slap a windfall profits tax on sectors of the economy that have fatter margins? Electronics make 14.5 cents per dollar and computer equipment makers take in 13.7 cents per dollar, according to the Census Bureau. Microsoft’s margin is 27.5 cents per dollar of sales. Call out Mr. Obama’s Windfall Profits Police!
There are a couple things wrong with Rove’s logic here. First is his misunderstanding of the phrase ‘windfall profit.’ According to the dictionary definition, a windfall profit is a “profit that occurs unexpectedly as a consequence of some event not controlled by those who profit from it.” So something like, let’s say, a huge and unexpected increase in the cost of oil over the course of six years, might fall into those parameters. And these price increases occurred due to factors that big oil had no control over — the plunging value of the dollar, speculators gone wild, and growing demand from the developing world. They do have control over one factor linked to skyrocketing oil prices: stagnant demand. Despite record profits, oil companies are only investing $10 billion annually into new exploration – or about 10 cents for every dollar of profit.
Something like profits made on increased computer sales or cell phones, does not.
To back this up with numbers, the five largest American oil companies have seen their average profits increase from $37 billion in 2001, to $81 billion in 2004, to $123 billion in 2007–a total annual increase of $86 billion in six years. Since Bush became president, the big five companies made mroe than $600 billion. As a point of reference, between 1977 and 1983, oil company profits increased by $3.6 billion. Between 1990 and 1996, profits increased $.3 billion. A $86 billion increase in six years, coupled with a quadrupling in price for a barrel of oil is the epitome of a windfall profit — and is not the same as a Best Buy making money on flat screen televisions.
Secondly, if Rove really wants to compare profits between industries, then let’s actually compare profits between industries. According to US News and World Report
Exxon Mobil’s profits are 80 percent higher than those of General Electric, which used to be the largest U.S. company by market capitalization before Exxon left it in the dust in 2005. The new economy? Microsoft earns about a third as much money. And next to Exxon, the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart, looks like a quaint boutique, with annual profits of about $11 billion.
So if Rove wants to know “why isn’t [Obama] targeting other industries?” the answer is simple: none of these other industries are suddenly reaping the largest profits claimed in corporate history, and benefiting from record prices while American families suffer.
Conservatives Start Fearmongering Campaign About Obama’s Health Care Plan
Conservatives Start Fearmongering Campaign About Obama’s Health Care Plan
There they go again. Conservatives are already trying to demagogue Senator Obama’s health care plan. No sooner has Obama become the presumptive Democratic nominee then they have dusted off their playbook for trying to kill health reform. Their number one tactic? Fear-mongering.
In a Washington Times op-ed by the disinformation crew at the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, conservatives tipped their hand: try to convince people that the big bad government is going to take over health care. Never mind the truth.
As they prepare to launch an anti-health reform campaign, CMPI’s op-ed (oh so cleverly titled “Obamacare,”) implies that Obama would enroll everyone in Medicaid and SCHIP:
Rather, Mr. Obama plans to make Medicaid and State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) expansion the foundation of his proposal to expand coverage.
In reality, Obama’s plan would expand both private and public insurance options and make coverage more affordable. As more and more employers drop coverage, Obama would extend public insurance options to lower and middle class Americans, strengthening the existing safety-net of coverage for those who would otherwise become uninsured. His plan would also provide sliding-scale assistance to help families purchase comprehensive private coverage. More »
Analyzing The Candidates’ Tax Plans Using Two Real Families: The McCains And The Obamas
Analyzing The Candidates’ Tax Plans Using Two Real Families: The McCains And The Obamas
The Center for American Progress Action Fund released a new report by Michael Ettlinger, Vice President for Economic Policy, showing the stark difference between the tax plans offered by Senators John McCain and Barack Obama using two real families as examples: the McCains and the Obamas. Based on information from their 2006 tax returns, Ettlinger shows, line by line, the tremendous savings offered under the Bush tax cuts. He contrasts this with the even greater savings under McCain’s plan and the substantial, albeit smaller, savings under Obama’s plan.
How Rich Are They?
Neither the McCains nor Obamas are doing badly. In 2006, the Obamas had an almost entirely earned income–the bulk coming from Senator Obama’s success as an author. The McCain’s financial situation is more cloudy. Senator and Mrs. McCain filed their returns separately — Mrs. McCain, the primary source of wealth for the family, did not disclose her entire tax record, making it more difficult to determine exactly the amount of their income. In the end, both couples are in the top 1% of all tax payers, the McCains in the top one tenth of a percent.
The Bush Tax Cut
Taking a quick glance at how the McCains and Obamas fared under the Bush tax cut, we see that both families recouped a relatively large savings under Bush’s plan in 2006 — the McCains saving 4.87% and the Obamas saving 3.85% of their annual incomes, the McCains benefiting greatly from new tax breaks on dividends and capital gains. All in all, the McCains saved over $313,000 thanks to Bush, and the Obamas saved nearly $40,000. Had Bush’s tax cuts been fully phased in, the savings would have been even greater for both families.
McCain And Obama’s Tax Plans
Senators McCain and Obama have starkly different tax proposals. McCain favors making the Bush tax laws permanent, and also plans to repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax, double the dependent exemption and offer tax breaks on business income. Senator Obama looks to reverse provisions benefiting the best-off tax payers (such as himself and Senator McCain), and retain the parts that reduced taxes for middle and lower income tax payers–offering an additional tax credit for these wage earners amounting to $500 per worker.
Had McCain’s tax proposal been in place in 2006, both families would have done incredibly well–saving even more than they did under the existing Bush plan. John and Cindy McCain would have walked away with $373,429 in their pocket, while the Barack and Michelle Obama would have saved $49,392.
Under Obama’s plan, both families would have saved, but substantially less. The McCains would have enjoyed an estimated savings of $5,641, due to the lower tax rates; the Obamas registering a $6,124 savings.
A Forecast For The Future
This examination of the tax returns of these two prominent wealthy couples, the McCains and the Obamas, shows that both received substantial tax breaks under president Bush — and those tax breaks will be continued in a McCain Administration. The McCains’ returns particularly show how tax breaks on capital gains and dividends, hallmarks of McCain’s plan, benefit the wealthy far more than they possibly can for middle-income families. Such tax breaks, of course, have a cost in lost public investments for the present and the future — investments which could benefit everyone, rich, poor, or in the middle.
Read the full report here.
Obama’s Tax Plan, Not McCain’s, Helps Americans Who Actually Need It
Obama’s Tax Plan, Not McCain’s, Helps Americans Who Actually Need It
The Wonk Room is always looking for new and interesting studies, and luckily a paper by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center fell into our laps. The report compares the tax plans of both 2008 presidential candidates and shows precisely who will benefit under the proposals put forth by Senators Obama and McCain. Here is a chart from the report:
And here is what it means:
| Increases (after-tax) income for poorest taxpayers 5.5% | No benefit for poorest taxpayers |
| Increases (after-tax) income for middle taxpayers | Modestly increases (after tax) income for middle taxpayers |
| Increases taxes for top richest 1% of taxpayers | Increases (after-tax) income for richest taxpayers 3.4% |
Essentially, the Tax Policy Center shows what we already know–Obama’s tax plan provides the heaviest benefits to the poorest Americans — the ones who need the most help — while McCain’s heavily favors the richest. And while McCain’s plan provides only a nominal benefit to the middle class, Obama’s gives solid middle class relief.
McCain’s Health Care Spending Doubles Obama And Clinton
McCain’s Health Care Spending Doubles Obama And Clinton
The New York Times today did a good job pointing out that some people “could” pay more in taxes under the McCain plan. But the reality is that there is growing evidence that McCain has a massive new health tax as part of his plan, as this blog first discussed earlier. While the press typically portrays Democrats as the tax-and-spenders, McCain is on the verge of changing that paradigm with a plan that could have American’s spending $334 billion more in taxes over 10 years.
McCain’s advisors have confirmed that the spending under his tax credit plan is $3.6 trillion over 10 years, roughly the same amount that the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated would be spent by President Bush when he announced a similar policy. In the first year, the JCT estimated that the Bush policy would spend $220 billion in the first year.
This means the McCain’s spending on health reform is twice the price tag as Senators’ Clinton plan and Senator Obama’s. (Note: Senator Obama only describes his plan’s costs net of savings, but the Washington Post has published a cost estimate.)
Not only is the spending level very different between the Democrats and McCain, but the sources of funds vary as well. McCain would roll back the longstanding tax break for all 160 million Americans who obtain insurance through their employer. In contrast, the lower spending Democratic plans pay for health reform by rolling back President Bush’s tax cuts on the highest income Americans. More »
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