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Did you know Obama’s health care bill contained a $20 billion a year tax on the richest Americans? I didn’t until I stumbled onto a mention of this the other day, although writing about politics is my life and I was angry at the loss of a national public option. I asked a dozen other friends, half of whom work in health care and most of whom are fellow political junkies. None of them knew either. If those who follow these issues intensely don’t know about something that all of us would cheer as a step toward getting the wealthiest to pay their fair share, most American voters sure aren’t going to know either.

The tax supports Medicare and low-income health care subsidies. Beginning in 2013, it will bring in $210 billion over 10 years by charging households that make over $250,000 a year 3.8% on everything over that amount instead of the current 2.9%. More important, the provision applies to investment and dividend income for those in that category, a key precedent toward ensuring that billionaires pay at least the same share of taxes as self-employed carpenters. It got some modest coverage when it passed, and accountants certainly know about it. But the rest of us don’t, which frustrates me. (more…)

Most Americans, the 99 percent, feel the pressure of indebtedness. When they owe a friend a buck, their conscience bothers them until they’re square. They pay their bills, working second jobs if necessary. They meet mortgage obligations even when underwater.

That’s why there was a deficit Super Committee. Americans don’t like debt, including bills owed by their government. It weighs on them, even when it’s borrowing by Washington to create jobs and speed recovery.

But for the majority of millionaires – the 1 percent — incurring debt does not evoke anxiety. They’re numb to the feeling of responsibility that indebtedness induces in the 99 percent. They believe they owe nothing to their country or society despite all they’ve gained. They feel no duty to repay America for creating the environment that enabled them to amass all that wealth.

Thus the Super Committee failed.

The committee was searching for $1.2 trillion over 10 years. The Bush tax cuts, which disproportionately benefited the rich, cost $2.8 trillion over the past decade. But the 1 percent obstructed a return to the pre-Bush-balanced-budget-era tax rates and would sneer at the mere suggestion that they pay the much higher marginal rates the wealthy accepted after World War II to settle those government debts. In fact, Republicans on the Super Committee actually proposed additional tax cuts for the rich. (more…)

I want to thank you, thank you
Thank you, thank you,
Thank you, thank you,
Thank you, thank you. ~ Natalie Merchant, “Kind and Generous”

This week’s holiday mandates giving thanks. For many Americans, that is complicated by the harsh years since 2008.

There’s the bitterness of lost jobs, foreclosed homes and diminished opportunity.  There’s the resentment over bailing out Wall Street, then watching banksters grant themselves sensational bonuses while denying Main Street loans to save businesses.  There’s the fear generated by county club conservatives demanding draconian cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

It’s hard to muster gratitude while suffering, to feel appreciative while dreading a meaner future.

The past two months, though, produced glimmers of hope — the occupation, the election and the mid-November demonstrations. These events suggest empowerment of the 99 percent and emergence of change. They’re reason for thanks giving, especially by those formerly in the middle class who will for the first time experience this holiday without the traditional feast.

Change began in September with the launch of Occupy Wall Street. Previously, the disaffected had rallied and protested. The newly-homeless had held signs. The jobless had marched on Wall Street, the epicenter of the economy’s crash. But this was different. These rabble-rousers didn’t protest and go home. They dug in. They offered no end date for their cries for justice. Like the sit-down strikers who inhabited the General Motors plant in Flint, Mich. for 44 days in 1936 and 1937, these protesters are determined to stay as long as necessary.

The New York occupiers’ gumption and message – “we are the 99 percent” — inspired a movement worldwide. Activists encamped in more than a 1,000 cities. And when police tried to rout them, the occupiers defied the official oppression, just as the sit-down strikers did. Emblematic is the 84-year-old Oakland, Calif. protester who said after police pepper sprayed her in the face that the experience energized her.

Before this movement began, country club conservatives had confined political discussion and concern to government deficits. No one acknowledged the unemployed, the impoverished or the foreclosed on – except to condemn them. The occupations changed this. Suddenly, the media talked of the problem of sharply higher income inequality and wrote about highly profitable corporations dodging taxes. Abruptly, politicians recalled the agony of joblessness and homelessness. Amazingly, there was new emphasis on polls showing massive majorities opposing austerity for the 99 percent and supporting higher taxes on the 1 percent.

For those of us in warm homes, Natalie Merchant’s words send a perfect message to those encamped:

“For your kindness, I’m in debt to you,
And I could never have gone this far without you,
For everything you’ve done,
You know I’m bound – I’m bound to thank you for it.”

On Election Day, the majority put the 1 percent and their purchased politicians on notice. The problem for the 1 percent in a one-person-one-vote democracy is that they’re outnumbered. In referendums on Nov. 8, the majority rebuffed attempts to restrict the ability of citizens to vote and to collectively bargain.

Mainers reversed a Republican attempt to limit balloting. The majority there restored Election Day voter registration – a right they’d exercised without problem for 38 years before the state’s GOP-dominated legislature and GOP governor passed a law eliminating it. The 60 percent vote for reinstatement served as public censure to Republican lawmakers nationwide who have worked to suppress voting.

In Ohio, citizens reversed a Republican attempt to sharply constrict the right of public employees to collectively bargain for better wages, benefits and working conditions.  Ohio citizens affirmed their belief in unionization as a way to move workers into the middle class. The vote was 61 percent in favor of union rights, a margin that chastened country club conservatives, including Ohio’s GOP Gov. John Kasich, who said afterwards that he would “pause” to reflect because: “The people have spoken clearly. You don’t ignore the public.” (more…)

Wall Street waged war on the American economy and middle class with its reckless gambling.

It wasn’t Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac that crashed the economy. It wasn’t the federal government. It wasn’t hapless homeowners who were sold mortgages they couldn’t afford. It was Wall Street financiers that aggressively sought and bought mortgages to package and sell as derivatives, which the banks could wager on.

Americans bailed out Wall Street, handing it a Marshall Plan for reconstruction after its bad bets blew up the world economy.  Now, three years later, happy days are here again for the Wall Street banksters. They’re hauling in big profits and paying outrageous bonuses. But the American middle class continues to suffer high unemployment, record foreclosures and rising poverty.

So it’s time for Wall Street to pay reparations. It’s time for a crash tax, a tiny sales tax on Wall Street transactions, the revenues from which would pay for Main Street restoration. It’s time for the 1 percent to repay the 99 percent, for Wall Street to share in the sacrifices necessitated by its rogue behavior.

The levy, sometimes called a Tobin Tax after the American economist and Nobel Laureate James Tobin, who endorsed it in the 1970s, is far from shocking or novel.  A financial transaction tax is advocated by a huge range of groups and individuals, from billionaires to conservative heads of state. Thirty nations, including Great Britain and Switzerland, already tax some financial transactions. The United States imposed a similar tax from 1914 to 1966. In addition to raising revenue in a time of government deficits worldwide, the tax would suppress the very kind of risky speculation that got the global economy into this mess.

Supporters of the tax include the expected — the AFL-CIO, Democratic benefactor George Soros, consumer advocate Ralph Nader, and economist Dean Baker, one of the few who saw the housing bubble and predicted its bursting. The unexpected include billionaires Bill Gates and Peter G. Peterson; former Goldman Sachs chairman John Whitehead, and former chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker. Conservative political leaders behind it include German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Nicolas Sarkozy. Experts promoting it include Nobel Laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman. Moral leaders advocating for it include Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

Here’s what Archbishop Williams wrote in support of imposing the levy:

“There is still a powerful sense around – fair or not – of a whole society paying for the errors and irresponsibility of bankers; of messages not getting through; of impatience with a return to “business as usual” represented by still soaring bonuses and little visible change in banking practices.”

The European Commission recommended in September that the 27 European Union member countries adopt a .1 percent tax on financial transactions beginning in 2014. It estimated that the tax would raise $78 billion a year. Europe hesitates to institute the tax without a similar levy in the United States.

Earlier this month, two U.S. lawmakers who have long supported the levy introduced legislation to impose a smaller tax — .03 percent or 3 cents on $100 in transactions. The tax proposed by U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore, and Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, would raise about $350 billion over a decade. (more…)

Voting doesn’t work anymore. If it did, Americans would get what they want — or at least some of it — from Washington.

But they don’t.

Instead of the people’s priority, which is jobs, country club conservatives in Congress stubbornly fixate on deficits. Instead of ensuring millionaires and corporations pay their fair share, House Republicans passed a budget that would destroy Medicare and Medicaid.

Corporate and clandestine campaign contributions have undermined the power of traditional voting, the kind done at polls on election day. Rather than voters, politicians now serve donors — billionaires and banksters — who invest untold millions and demand returns in the form of self-serving policy.

This is demoralizing to those who cherish democracy and the sanctity of one person, one vote.

Hope, however, arrived with the debit card fee victory. The 99 percent forced Bank of America to back off its proposed fee. Average Americans accomplished this by voting differently, not at the ballot box but at the twitter account, the Occupy march and the teller window, where 1 million depositors went to move $4.5 billion from the big Wall Street banks to community banks and credit unions. They found another way to exercise their franchise and force the powerful to respond.

The 99 percent must exploit the method of this triumph to get what they need. Because politicians sure as hell aren’t giving them what they want.

The numbers don’t lie. Coin-operated conservatives in Congress have rejected President Obama’s jobs plan, parts of the jobs plan and Obama’s pitch to raise taxes on the rich to pay for it.

And yet, the electorate strongly supports both surtaxing millionaires and the elements of the jobs plan. In a CNN poll in October, 75 percent favored sending federal money to the states to hire teachers and first responders and 72 percent favored infrastructure investments.

A whopping 76 percent wanted millionaires to pay higher taxes.

In that same CNN poll, there’s another compelling statistic. Sixty-one percent said reducing unemployment was the most important issue. Reducing the deficit didn’t even come close at 35 percent.

The numbers aren’t flukes. Another survey, taken a week later by CBS found the same thing. (more…)

Roger Hickey of Campaign for America’s Future goes on The Thom Hartmann Show to urge Americans to stop the “Super Committee” from cutting social safety net programs like Social Security and Medicare.

The AFL-CIO is launching a campaign and gearing up its 700,000 online activists to tell Congress that the proposals by both Republicans and Democrats on the federal budget deficit “Super Committee” to slash Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are “simply unacceptable,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a telephone press conference this morning.

He told reporters that the union movement will:

continue to mobilize in communities to ensure that working Americans aren’t asked to bear even more of the brunt of Wall Street greed. Now is the moment to restore balance in our economy. The absolute wrong way to do that is to take a machete to the safety net that we’ve spent years building.

You can join the action to fight the proposed cuts to these essential middle-class provisions by texting DEBT to 235246  to send a message to your lawmakers.

Trumka said the Super Committee:

holds the economic future of millions of Americans in their hands with the potential to dramatically impact how middle and low income families make do….Any person even loosely connected to reality can see that working people have already given up too much while Wall Street and the wealthiest Americans have done all the taking. Inequality is at historic levels.

The middle class has already “given their homes, given their jobs and given back in wages, it’s time for the rich to give a little so we can get back to balance,” said Trumka. (more…)

Last Thursday’s Washington Post headline blared: “Debt panel’s lack of progress raises alarm on Hill.”

In fact it is far better for everyday Americans if the so-called Super Committee fails entirely to get a deal.

The overarching reason is simple: any deal they are likely to strike will make life worse for everyday Americans — and worsen our prospects for long-term economic growth.

Of course that’s not the view of many denizens of the Capitol who are still obsessed by the notion that it is critical for the Congress to produce a “compromise” that raises revenue and cuts “entitlements.” There are three reasons why these people are wrong:

1). Any deal would likely slash the income of many everyday Americans. You could design a plan to substantially reduce the deficit without big cuts in Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. My wife, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, who served on President Obama’s Fiscal Commission, designed just such a proposal last year. And, of course, Social Security has nothing to do with the deficit in the first place.

Unfortunately, however, in order to get Republican support any large-scale deal in the Super Committee would almost certainly require big cuts in either Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid — or all of them. Substantial cuts in any of these programs will make life harder for everyday Americans and reduce the likelihood of long-term economic growth.

Without a “deal” in the Super Committee, the current budget plan does not cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — and that’s a good thing.

According to the Social Security Administration, the average monthly Social Security check now averages the princely sum of $1,082 — or about $13,000 per year. Next year, for the first time since 2009, payments will increase by $39 per month to offset inflation, but $18 a month of that increase will go right back out the door in the form of Medicare premium increases.

Already under current law, Medicare Part B premiums, that cover services like doctors, outpatient care and home health services, must be set annually to cover 25% of program costs. And remember that Medicare recipients aren’t getting an “entitlement” — they are getting an earned benefit that they paid for throughout their working lives. The same, of course, is true of Social Security.

Mean while, Medicaid is the principle means of assuring that America actually begins to provide health care for all — including nursing home and home care. (more…)

The Very Serious People in Washington are busy trying to find creative ways to cut Social Security and Medicare and take other benefits from middle-class and moderate-income families. The refrain here is that we just can’t afford this level of generosity any more.

There are two parts of this story that should drive the rest of us crazy. And it is difficult to determine which one is the more infuriating.

The first is that we know that many people in this country are fabulously rich. And as Elizabeth Warren beautifully reminded us, none of them did it on their own. But Professor Warren is actually far too generous in her account.

While some number of the wealthy may have succeeded by working hard and being smart or creative, many of the very wealthy got their money directly or indirectly through the big hand of the government tilting the playing field in their direction. Their hard work involved rigging the rules to ensure that they ended up on top.

Nowhere is this better seen than on Wall Street, which is chock full of multimillionaires and billionaires who got to the top by taking advantage of items like “too big to fail insurance” for their banks, gambling with government insured deposits, ripping off state and local governments on pension management fees and, of course, the trillion dollars in bailout bucks given at interest rates that were way below market levels. These people know the role of government very well, even if they pretend this is all about a free market. (more…)

Two appellate judges in Atlanta — one appointed by President Bill Clinton and one by George H.W. Bush – have just decided the Constitution doesn’t allow the federal government to require individuals to buy health insurance.

The decision is a major defeat for the White House. The so-called “individual mandate” is a cornerstone of the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s 2010 health care reform law, scheduled to go into effect in 2014.

The whole idea of the law is to pool heath risks. Only if everyone buys insurance can insurers afford to cover people with preexisting conditions, or pay the costs of catastrophic diseases.

The issue is now headed for the Supreme Court (another appellate court has upheld the law’s constitutionality) where the prognosis isn’t good. The Court’s Republican-appointed majority has not exactly distinguished itself by its progressive views. (more…)