Every candidate for the Republican nomination for president, consistent with their Party's leadership, favors, as ThinkProgress reports today, "an economic agenda that will benefit the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans at the expense of the other 99 percent," policies that will increase economic inequality, exacerbate joblessness, and further erode the safety net. The current President and his fellow Democrats must do more than play defense, and they need to offer more than a kinder and gentler version of these failed Bush-Era policies. Travis Waldon at ThinkProgress provides a great list of progressive policies that not only would help boost the economy but would also be good politics, focusing on jobs, housing, education, consumer protection, education, income equality and financial regulation -- issues that go directly to the grievances that have energized the Occupy movement
Seven Economic Policy Goals For 2012
By Travis Waldon, cross-posted from ThinkProgress
At best, 2011 can be described as a middling year for progressives
when it comes to the economy. Though the economy continued its modest
recovery, and despite recent positive signs of improvement, many
progressive goals went unfulfilled.
Thanks to GOP obstruction, no widespread jobs package passed, the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is still without a director, and
important areas of investment faced unnecessary budget cuts on both the
state and federal level. Progressives were, however, able to block much
of the House GOP’s radical agenda — preventing Republicans from gutting
Medicare and thwarting repeated efforts to repeal the Affordable Care
Act and Wall Street reform laws.
In a perfect world, Congress would make job creation its highest
priority when it returns in 2012. But that is unlikely given Republican
control of the House, where the GOP continues to push an agenda that
would actually kill jobs.
With that in mind, ThinkProgress compiled a list of seven goals for
progressives that could boost the economic recovery over the next year:
Address the housing crisis: The housing crisis continues to threaten America’s economic recovery, but while Republicans continue to offer no solutions, multiple state attorneys general have launched investigations into deceptive and fraudulent
foreclosure processes. Those investigations could lead to prosecutions
and fines for banks that knowingly defrauded customers. And while they
could help homeowners who were hurt by predatory banks and lenders,
other solutions — like expanding mortgage relief programs, ensuring that settlements with banks and lenders includes substantial money for homeowners, and pressuring federal regulators
to punish predatory lenders — should be on the agenda for 2012,
especially with millions of Americans owing more on their homes than
they are worth.
Keep focusing on income inequality: Occupy Wall
Street thrust income inequality onto the political radar in the last
half of 2011, making it such a hot topic that even conservative budget
hawks like Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) were talking about it. With American income inequality now worse than in many poorer countries (and maybe even worse
than it was in Ancient Rome) and dragging the recovery, it is an area
that must be addressed. Furthering the 99 Percent Movement and keeping
the issue of income inequality alive should keep Congress focused on the
lower and middle classes who were hit hardest both by the recession and
the GOP’s widespread budget cuts that followed.
Confirm Richard Cordray: President Obama nominated
former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray as the first director of
the CFPB in 2011, but his confirmation process stalled in the Senate
when Republicans, who spent the last year trying to gut the Dodd-Frank
law that created the CFPB, refused to relent
on their opposition to the agency. Confirming Cordray would allow the
agency to actually progress toward its mandate of protecting consumers
from the predatory financial practices that hurt so many through the recession.
Protect and restore state education budgets: Republicans across the country took the axe to state education budgets
in 2011, leaving school districts with less money to run schools,
maintain after-school programs, and hire teachers than they had even before the recession.
At the same time, many of those states preserved tax breaks for the
wealthy and corporations. Unemployed teachers make up a large portion of
the half-million
public sector workers who have lost jobs since 2009, a problem Obama
sought to fix with a state aid package included in the American Jobs
Act. Restoring and preserving state education budgets is important for
two major reasons: it allows more teachers to be hired, thus reducing
unemployment, and it ensures that American children will be better
prepared to compete in the global economy of the future.
Raise the minimum wage in more states: Eight states are boosting their minimum wage in 2012, benefiting 1.4 million workers
and creating roughly 3,000 jobs, according to the Economic Policy
Institute. Raising the minimum wage across the country is and important
and necessary step in the recovery. The federal minimum is currently
$7.25, but it would take a minimum wage of $9.92 to match the buying power of the minimum wage in 1968.
End the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy: The Bush tax cuts for the wealthy have blown a hole in the federal budget since their passage in 2003, carrying a 10-year cost of $2.5 trillion
that prevented us from investing in many vital areas. Even though the
wealthy are paying historically low tax rates, Congress passed a
one-year extension last December. Preventing another such extension in
2012 would both address the federal budget deficit and allow Congress to
avoid painful cuts to programs that benefit the lower and middle
classes.
Boost funding for the CFTC: Under Dodd-Frank, the
Commodities Futures Trading Commission is responsible for policing the
derivatives market — the investments that played a major role in the
financial crisis. Despite that daunting task, House Republicans
succeeded in their efforts to gut the CFTC budget, cutting about a third
of the funding requested by President Obama. Increasing the CFTC’s
funding would allow it to better regulate investment banks and financial
institutions, decreasing the odds of another such crisis in the future.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Subscribe to:
Post Comments
(
Atom
)
0 comments :
Post a Comment