Report

by James K. Galbraith, Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations, Lyndon
B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin, and Vice President, Americans for Democratic Action. June 30, 2010.

Mr. Chairmen, members of the commission, thank you for inviting this statement. more »

A majority of Americans are highly concerned about the state of manufacturing in America and would support a new, government-led manufacturing policy, according to a poll conducted during the spring of 2010 for the Alliance for American Manufacturing .

Key findings of the poll:

• Voters are anxious about the economy—specifically China debt, spending and loss of manufacturing. more »

Throughout the financial reform debate, the finance industry has waged an unprecedented assault on the democratic process, spending an estimated $1.4 million per day to influence Congress and hiring 70 members of Congress and 940 former federal employees to lobby on their behalf. Many of the current big-bank lobbyists were architects of the too-big-to-fail banking regime while they were employed in Congress or elsewhere in the federal government. They are now drawing lucrative salaries from the banking behemoths they helped create and are scoring victories that assure the continued existence of Wall Street’s casinos, despite the threat they pose to the American economy. more »

With billions in profits on the line, banks have waged an intensive, multimillion-dollar political and lobbying campaign against changes in the federal student loan program that would end billions in subsidies for the banks. They have enlisted six Democratic senators to raise concerns about the reform effort with Senate leadership. This report documents the extensive ties between the six senators—Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark.; Mark Warner, D-Va.; Tom Carper, D-Del.; Ben Nelson, D-Neb.; Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Jim Webb, D-Va.—and major players in the student loan industry. more »

We can’t go back to the economy of the past—a high-consumption, low-wage economy based on asset bubbles and foreign borrowing. Our response to the current crisis must plant the seeds for the economy of the future. America needs an industrial policy to shape that future. From workforce development to component manufacture, we need a strategic collaboration between the private sector and the government to reach our shared national goals. This report makes the case for that policy and explains what should be the key elements. more »

It is fitting that the G-20 summit meets in Pittsburgh in late September 2009. Pittsburgh has come back from enormous setbacks in its dominant industry, steel, through a combination of deliberate planning, public investment, and partnerships between government and private industry. But Pittsburgh’s comeback reveals the limitations of local efforts. In the absence of a national industrial strategy and a different approach to trade, the U.S. will be lucky to end up where Pittsburgh is now. This report examines the lessons national policy leaders should learn from Pittsburgh's experience. more »

Who pays taxes, and who reaps the benefits of an unfair tax code? Income inequality between 1980 and 2006 has gone up 144 percent between the top one percent of taxpayers and the middle 60 percent, even as top-end tax rates have declined 15 percent for the top one percent during that same period. This is the result of bad policy choices that can be reversed. This report explains how three decades of tax policy have led to Gilded Age inequality and outlines some steps to make the tax code more progressive. more »

This Policy Note assesses intergenerational accounting and related aspects of what we call “the accounting campaign against Social Security and Medicare.” more »