Each morning, Bill Scher and Terrance Heath serve up what progressives need to effect change on the kitchen-table issues families face: jobs, health care, green energy, financial reform, affordable education and retirement security.
MORNING MESSAGE: Conservative Tax Tricks
OurFuture.org's Dave Johnson: "Conservative ideology says cutting taxes makes the economy grow. This Tax Day let's explore whether this is, in fact, the case. In the last few decades we as a country have conducted textbook scientific experiments with taxes. Under Reagan we dramatically cut taxes at the top, under Clinton we raised them a bit, and then under Bush we cut them again. So now we can look at what happened: Did cutting taxes make the economy grow?"
President Revs Up Deficit Reduction Pitch On Tax Day
IRS provides new data on how much taxes for the wealthiest have been slashed in the past decade. AP: "The Internal Revenue Service tracks the tax returns with the 400 highest adjusted gross incomes each year. The average income on those returns in 2007, the latest year for IRS data, was nearly $345 million. Their average federal income tax rate was 17 percent, down from 26 percent in 1992."
President will travel country this week rallying support for his deficit reduction strategy. W. Post: "With his deficit speech Wednesday, some analysts say the president has provided himself political cover as Congress debates the debt limit and later the 2012 budget. But some also see Obama as being forced to discuss deficit reduction when the priority for his administration should be job creation ... Any proposal by the Obama administration to spur immediate job creation through some form of stimulus requiring new taxpayer funds would probably be dead on arrival because of opposition from Republicans in Congress."
Hopes that President's tax message will resonate: "Democrats, [Robert Reich] said, will also respond to Mr. Obama’s vow to raise taxes for higher-income Americans when the Bush administration’s tax cuts finally expire in 2012. 'His language had a kind of "read my lips" quality that will make it hard to retreat from,' Mr. Reich said. 'The question remains whether he has closed the enthusiasm gap.'"
Robert Kuttner lists the "worrisome" aspects from Obama's deficit reduction address: "The president proposes roughly two dollars in cuts for every one dollar in taxes. Most of these cuts will have to come out of the very areas Obama proposes to defend ... Obama's welcome change of tone had almost nothing to say about jobs and recovery ... if the Gang of Six, three of whom are Senate Democrats, agrees on a deal that includes Social Security cuts, the pressure will be overwhelming for both houses to pass it and Obama to sign it. And it will definitely be worse than what Obama proposed Wednesday."
Senate "Gang of Six" members suggest Social Security cuts will be included in their proposal. HuffPost: "'You know, part of this is just math -- 16 workers for every one retiree 50 years ago, three workers for every retiree now,' Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), a member of the group, told CBS ... 'What we're doing is we're saying everything has to be on the table,' he said. 'Entitlement reform, dramatic spending cuts, looking at tax reform.'"
NYT's Paul Krugman warns against a rigged but "civil" debate over deficit reduction: "...the two parties don’t just live in different moral universes, they also live in different intellectual universes, with Republicans in particular having a stable of supposed experts who reliably endorse whatever they propose. So when pundits call on the parties to sit down together and talk, the obvious question is, what are they supposed to talk about? ... right now 'bipartisan' is usually code for assembling some conservative Democrats and ultraconservative Republicans ... and having them proclaim that low taxes on high incomes and drastic cuts in social insurance are the only possible solution."
Pressure On GOP To Back Debt Limit Increase
Treas. Sec. Geithner suggests GOP won't prevent debt limit increase. NYT: "...Mr. Geithner said the Republican leaders made it clear to President Obama in a White House meeting last Wednesday that they would go along with the administration’s efforts to raise the debt ceiling to avoid a financial crisis."
Corporate America pressuring and educating Tea Party-backed lawmakers on the necessity of raising the debt limit. W. Post: "'We say: "Guys, if we breach it, if we default on our debt, it would make it even harder to pay it back because of the interest costs. And we know that’s not your goal, so just FYI,"' said one financial industry executive ... Members of the Financial Services Forum[,] the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other industry groups have fanned out across Capitol Hill to press lawmakers ... when they see lawmakers at trade gatherings or dinner parties, Wall Street chief executives seek them out: 'Hey, Congressman, I know you have to do what you need to do, but this debt ceiling vote is coming up, and I just want to take 10 seconds and talk about the economic consequences,' one executive said..."
House GOPers prepare to defend votes for radical budget that dismantles Medicare, by claiming that it "saves Medicare." Bloomberg: "House Speaker John Boehner said Republican lawmakers should tackle head-on the Medicare issue during the recess ... Republican leaders circulated a package of charts ... a document countering the main attacks on the plan. The document encourages lawmakers to highlight how the budget 'saves Medicare,' and offers 'future beneficiaries access to the same kinds of health-care options now enjoyed by members of Congress.'"
Time's Michael Grunwald argues 2011 budget deal simply preserves "status quo": "It doesn’t roll back President Obama’s agenda, not at all, but it doesn’t let him expand it, either. It didn’t dismantle his high-speed rail program, notwithstanding the obituaries in the media, much less his health care or Wall Street reforms. It didn’t shred the safety net ... and it didn’t really invest more in winning the future..."
Breakfast Sides
Some progress in foreclosure fraud settlement with state attorneys general. Bloomberg: "Significant progress has been made on a deal with lenders ... with agreements in principle reached on several issues, said the person, who didn’t specify the areas of accord ... [A final] accord remains out of reach because states want principal reductions for borrowers, which is more than banks agreed to in deals reached with U.S. regulators last week ..."
Supreme Court to consider climate policy case Tuesday pitting WH against states. WSJ: "At issue is whether a state can seek a federal court order to force power plants in another state to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to climate change on grounds that those emissions create a public nuisance ... The Obama administration takes the position that federal regulations trump the states' approach."
Conservatives are renewing push for private school vouchers, after evidence piles up that they haven't worked. American Prospect's Pema Levy: "Underwhelming studies of voucher programs have damaged their reputation, even among conservatives prone to liking them ... [Speaker John] Boehner bringing vouchers back to D.C., shows how conservative proponents are trying to keep vouchers alive by integrating them into the larger school-reform movement."
