On 2/8/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
> Home > President Obama's 2016 Budget Is Not A Middle-Class Manifesto
> ________________________________________
> President Obama's 2016 Budget Is Not A Middle-Class Manifesto
> By Eric Laursen [1] / AlterNet [2]
> February 6, 2015
> "Meet the new prez, same as the old prez."
> That bastardization of an old lyric by The Who promptly popped into my head
> upon learning this week that the White House is again floating the "chained
> CPI" as a means to whittle down its benefits obligations, through Social
> Security as well as other programs. Little more than two weeks earlier,
> Sen.
> Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who had been working closely with the White House on
> its fiscal-2016 budget, said President Obama had assured him that the
> budget
> would not contain the controversial change, which would apply a stringier
> formula to the cost-of-living adjustments Washington makes every year.
> Yet here's what White House press secretary Josh Earnest said [3] Tuesday:
> "We're certainly open to that conversation with Republicans if they want to
> have a genuine conversation about strengthening Social Security. But
> frankly, we've not gotten a lot of serious willingness on the part of
> Republicans to engage in that conversation."
> Maybe not-and in any case, the chained CPI is mentioned nowhere in the
> budget [4] that the White House submitted to Congress this week. But the
> fact that Obama told Sanders one thing about this very sensitive matter,
> which could greatly reduced benefits for everyone from Social Security
> recipients to military and civil service retirees to food stamp
> recipients-some 80 million people, all told [5]-and then apparently put it
> back on the table, illustrates an important point about presidential
> budgets: they are bargaining chips, not blueprints.
> The budget is the only matter before Congress that lawmakers-and the
> president-really have to act on every year, even if they do so in a chaotic
> and piecemeal fashion. But the numbers and the principles behind the
> budget,
> once they hit the hard reality of closed-door conferences where decisions
> finally get hammered out, are malleable. Anything goes.
> Obama's budget, like every president's, tells us what he would like us to
> think he wants-and no more. This year, his party's progressive wing of his
> party is applauding him for producing a budget that, the White House says
> [6] "lays out a strategy to strengthen our middle class."
> The storyline here is that, with no more elections to fight, Obama is
> liberated from the need to pacify the deficit hawks and can now fight for
> the progressive vision he always held. The proof is that the chained CPI
> isn't in the budget (oops), and that it calls for rescuing the trust fund
> for Disability Insurance by shifting funds from Social Security's Old Age
> and Survivors Insurance fund, rather than attacking benefits, as
> congressional Republicans would prefer. In fact, Obama makes no proposals
> to
> "reform" Social Security at all. Obama is, at last, "un-chained [7]."
> Not exactly. "It's a mixed bag," Josh Bivens, research and policy director
> at the Economic Policy Institute, says of the president's budget. "The
> irony
> is that the elements that are the most bold and progressive are the ones
> with the dimmest chance of passing, while the weakest stuff is where there
> could be some negotiation with the GOP."
> On the positive side, Obama lays out a plan to raise at least $1.5 trillion
> in new taxes over 10 years by-among other things-boosting the capital gains
> tax rate of the wealthiest households from 23.8% to 28% and applying a
> separate capital-gains levy to some inheritances. He would lower the
> corporate tax rate from 35% to 28% (25% for manufacturers), apply a minimum
> 19% tax to profits that American companies keep overseas, and slap a
> one-time, 14% tax on profits that they repatriate from foreign countries.
> Revenues on that one-time charge-estimated at $268 billion over ten
> years-would be used to rebuild infrastructure at home.
> At the other end of the income scale, Obama would expand the tax credit for
> child care, create a new tax credit for two-earner households, and require
> employers to offer participation in their retirement plans to any worker
> who
> puts in at least 500 hours a year for three years. That would give an
> additional 1 million workers access to employer-based plans like 401(k)s.
> In
> another move to encourage saving by people with no regular employment, the
> president is also asking for $6.5 million for a pilot project that would
> help states to set up their own individual retirement accounts with
> automatic enrollment or 401(k)-type accounts.
> Whatever his longer-term intentions toward Social Security, the president's
> budget would expand it by allowing lawfully married same-sex couples to
> receive benefits regardless of where they live. Currently, if they live in
> a
> state that doesn't recognize same-sex marriage, they get nothing. This is
> an
> important step toward making gay marriages equal to heterosexual marriages.
> Obama is also asking for a $707 million increase in the Social Security
> Administration's operating budget. This would enable it to reverse the cuts
> in hours at local offices that have made it harder for the SSA to serve
> beneficiaries-many of them elderly or disabled-and reduce the backlogs of
> pending hearings on disability benefits.
> What kind of tax system do we want?
> The hard-core Republican congressional leadership will no doubt oppose
> these
> measures for the less affluent, but cost-wise, they amount to peanuts. The
> critical issue is whether Obama really means it when he says he wants to
> make the tax system-distorted by decades of Reagan- and Bush-administered
> "reforms" and riddled with loopholes for the 1%-more progressive. There are
> many reasons to be skeptical. That new, 19% tax rate on foreign profits is
> supposed to make it less onerous for American companies to bring their
> money
> home, generating more tax revenues. That goes a little in the right
> direction-but not very far.
> "We should take the bias out of the system that favors companies taking
> their assets overseas," says Bivens. "For that, we would just apply the US
> corporate tax rate to any earnings wherever received, with no deferral for
> leaving there, as at present. Given that this issue very much in play, I
> wish the president had been bolder." Revamping corporate taxes is one of
> the
> areas where Washington insiders see the potential for an Obama deal with
> the
> Republican, however. Since the Republicans' longtime ambition has been to
> eliminate all taxation on companies' foreign earnings, going to the
> conference table arguing for a 19% rate "is not a very strong opening bid,"
> Bivens says.
> It's another ominous sign that Obama caved almost instantly to demands that
> he reinstate a tax benefit for 529 college savings accounts after
> congressional leaders-including, in an unusual tag-team effort, Boehner and
> Democratic minority leader Nancy Pelosi-applied pressure. As Rep. Chris
> Van
> Hollen, ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, put [8] it, "This
> particular proposal undercuts the message that they were focused on helping
> the middle class."
> Yet about 80% of benefits from 529 plans go to households with incomes
> above
> $150,000 and 70% to households making more than $200,000
> (http://www.offthechartsblog.org/obamas-education-tax-proposals-a-big-step-f
> orward/ [9]). And it's not as though Obama was proposing to wipe out the
> plans. Assets could continue to accrue tax-free; savers would only pay
> taxes
> when they withdraw funds, just as with 401(k)s. As Robert Greenstein of the
> Center on Budget and Policy Priorities told [10] New York Timesblogger
> Thomas Edsall, "The implications of this debacle are troubling. If we can't
> reform a tax break that is highly inefficient and gives the overwhelming
> share of its benefits to high-income people who don't need the benefits to
> engage in the desired activity (in this case, going to college) . then it's
> going to be awfully difficult to address a number of the challenges the
> nation faces in the years ahead."
> Just as troubling, the White House wants to means-test Medicare by raising
> premiums for individuals with higher incomes and adding a premium surcharge
> for new beneficiaries who buy Medigap coverage-changes that would shift
> some
> $70 billion of costs from Medicare to individuals over 10 years. The budget
> also would add a copayment for home health care-adding to the burden faced
> by families with aging relatives. "But more affluent people already pay
> substantially higher premiums," says Bivens at EPI, "and especially with
> projected health care costs already really slowing down, the idea that we
> continue to need to talk about premium fixes just isn't convincing."
> Regarding Social Security, the president hasn't got the message, either.
> While much of his party-including Sanders, now the ranking member of the
> Seate Finance Committee-advocate expanding the program, Obama is again
> toying with the idea of cutting it. His notion of how to help working
> households concerned about their ability to retire in comfort, instead, is
> to some modest moves to encourage IRA and 401(k) savings.
> What remains to be seen is which elements of his budget are there merely to
> appeal to the working households Obama has so often ignored, and which ones
> could form the basis of a budget deal with the GOP. Republican leaders have
> been tossing hints for weeks [11] that a deal on corporate taxes may be
> possible, suggesting the president's proposals for taxation of foreign
> profits-weak as they are-may be a starting point for negotiations. The fact
> that he's proposing to pass on more costs to Medicare recipients, and is
> placing the chained CPI back on the table, signals that a deal to cut
> Social
> Security and Medicare may not out of the question either. We already know
> that Obama and the GOP leadership see eye-to-eye on NAFTA-like trade deals
> in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, even if many lawmakers of both
> parties-and the public-oppose [12] them.
> Maybe the president's budget is a middle-class manifesto. But that may only
> be what he wants us to think.
>
> Eric Laursen is an independent journalist who writes The People's Pension
> [13] blog. He is co-author, with Seth Tobocman and Jessica Wehrle, of
> Understanding the Crash (Soft Skull Press/Counterpoint, Spring 2010) and a
> history of the Social Security debate, The People's Pension: The War
> Against
> Social Security from Reagan to Obama (AK Press, Spring 2012).
> Share on Facebook Share
> Share on Twitter Tweet
> Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@alternet.org'. [14]
> [15]
> ________________________________________
> Source URL:
> http://www.alternet.org/election-2014/president-obamas-2016-budget-not-middl
> e-class-manifesto
> Links:
> [1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/eric-laursen
> [2] http://alternet.org
> [3]
> http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/feb/3/obama-will-talk-social-securi
> ty-cap-with-gop/
> [4]
> http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2016/assets/budge
> t.pdf
> [5] http://www.bls.gov/dolfaq/bls_ques1.htm
> [6]
> http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/02/02/fact-sheet-middle-class-economics-
> president-s-fiscal-year-2016-budget
> [7]
> http://ourfuture.org/20150202/obama-un-chained-his-latest-pledge-to-defend-s
> ocial-security
> [8]
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/obama-drops-proposal-to-cut-t
> ax-benefits-of-529-college-savings-plans/2015/01/27/5f3f429a-a675-11e4-a2b2-
> 776095f393b2_story.html
> [9]
> http://www.offthechartsblog.org/obamas-education-tax-proposals-a-big-step-fo
> rward/
> [10]
> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/04/opinion/the-problem-with-middle-class-popu
> lism.html?_r=0
> [11]
> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/02/us/obama-budget-to-seek-to-stabilize-defic
> it-and-address-income-inequality.html
> [12]
> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/31/business/reid-pushes-back-on-fast-track-tr
> ade-authority.html
> [13] http://peoplespension.infoshop.org/blogs-mu/about/
> [14] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on President Obama's
> 2016 Budget Is Not A Middle-Class Manifesto
> [15] http://www.alternet.org/
> [16] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
>
> Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
> Home > President Obama's 2016 Budget Is Not A Middle-Class Manifesto
>
> President Obama's 2016 Budget Is Not A Middle-Class Manifesto
> By Eric Laursen [1] / AlterNet [2]
> February 6, 2015
> "Meet the new prez, same as the old prez."
> That bastardization of an old lyric by The Who promptly popped into my head
> upon learning this week that the White House is again floating the "chained
> CPI" as a means to whittle down its benefits obligations, through Social
> Security as well as other programs. Little more than two weeks earlier,
> Sen.
> Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who had been working closely with the White House on
> its fiscal-2016 budget, said President Obama had assured him that the
> budget
> would not contain the controversial change, which would apply a stringier
> formula to the cost-of-living adjustments Washington makes every year.
> Yet here's what White House press secretary Josh Earnest said [3] Tuesday:
> "We're certainly open to that conversation with Republicans if they want to
> have a genuine conversation about strengthening Social Security. But
> frankly, we've not gotten a lot of serious willingness on the part of
> Republicans to engage in that conversation."
> Maybe not-and in any case, the chained CPI is mentioned nowhere in the
> budget [4] that the White House submitted to Congress this week. But the
> fact that Obama told Sanders one thing about this very sensitive matter,
> which could greatly reduced benefits for everyone from Social Security
> recipients to military and civil service retirees to food stamp
> recipients-some 80 million people, all told [5]-and then apparently put it
> back on the table, illustrates an important point about presidential
> budgets: they are bargaining chips, not blueprints.
> The budget is the only matter before Congress that lawmakers-and the
> president-really have to act on every year, even if they do so in a chaotic
> and piecemeal fashion. But the numbers and the principles behind the
> budget,
> once they hit the hard reality of closed-door conferences where decisions
> finally get hammered out, are malleable. Anything goes.
> Obama's budget, like every president's, tells us what he would like us to
> think he wants-and no more. This year, his party's progressive wing of his
> party is applauding him for producing a budget that, the White House says
> [6] "lays out a strategy to strengthen our middle class."
> The storyline here is that, with no more elections to fight, Obama is
> liberated from the need to pacify the deficit hawks and can now fight for
> the progressive vision he always held. The proof is that the chained CPI
> isn't in the budget (oops), and that it calls for rescuing the trust fund
> for Disability Insurance by shifting funds from Social Security's Old Age
> and Survivors Insurance fund, rather than attacking benefits, as
> congressional Republicans would prefer. In fact, Obama makes no proposals
> to
> "reform" Social Security at all. Obama is, at last, "un-chained [7]."
> Not exactly. "It's a mixed bag," Josh Bivens, research and policy director
> at the Economic Policy Institute, says of the president's budget. "The
> irony
> is that the elements that are the most bold and progressive are the ones
> with the dimmest chance of passing, while the weakest stuff is where there
> could be some negotiation with the GOP."
> On the positive side, Obama lays out a plan to raise at least $1.5 trillion
> in new taxes over 10 years by-among other things-boosting the capital gains
> tax rate of the wealthiest households from 23.8% to 28% and applying a
> separate capital-gains levy to some inheritances. He would lower the
> corporate tax rate from 35% to 28% (25% for manufacturers), apply a minimum
> 19% tax to profits that American companies keep overseas, and slap a
> one-time, 14% tax on profits that they repatriate from foreign countries.
> Revenues on that one-time charge-estimated at $268 billion over ten
> years-would be used to rebuild infrastructure at home.
> At the other end of the income scale, Obama would expand the tax credit for
> child care, create a new tax credit for two-earner households, and require
> employers to offer participation in their retirement plans to any worker
> who
> puts in at least 500 hours a year for three years. That would give an
> additional 1 million workers access to employer-based plans like 401(k)s.
> In
> another move to encourage saving by people with no regular employment, the
> president is also asking for $6.5 million for a pilot project that would
> help states to set up their own individual retirement accounts with
> automatic enrollment or 401(k)-type accounts.
> Whatever his longer-term intentions toward Social Security, the president's
> budget would expand it by allowing lawfully married same-sex couples to
> receive benefits regardless of where they live. Currently, if they live in
> a
> state that doesn't recognize same-sex marriage, they get nothing. This is
> an
> important step toward making gay marriages equal to heterosexual marriages.
> Obama is also asking for a $707 million increase in the Social Security
> Administration's operating budget. This would enable it to reverse the cuts
> in hours at local offices that have made it harder for the SSA to serve
> beneficiaries-many of them elderly or disabled-and reduce the backlogs of
> pending hearings on disability benefits.
> What kind of tax system do we want?
> The hard-core Republican congressional leadership will no doubt oppose
> these
> measures for the less affluent, but cost-wise, they amount to peanuts. The
> critical issue is whether Obama really means it when he says he wants to
> make the tax system-distorted by decades of Reagan- and Bush-administered
> "reforms" and riddled with loopholes for the 1%-more progressive. There are
> many reasons to be skeptical. That new, 19% tax rate on foreign profits is
> supposed to make it less onerous for American companies to bring their
> money
> home, generating more tax revenues. That goes a little in the right
> direction-but not very far.
> "We should take the bias out of the system that favors companies taking
> their assets overseas," says Bivens. "For that, we would just apply the US
> corporate tax rate to any earnings wherever received, with no deferral for
> leaving there, as at present. Given that this issue very much in play, I
> wish the president had been bolder." Revamping corporate taxes is one of
> the
> areas where Washington insiders see the potential for an Obama deal with
> the
> Republican, however. Since the Republicans' longtime ambition has been to
> eliminate all taxation on companies' foreign earnings, going to the
> conference table arguing for a 19% rate "is not a very strong opening bid,"
> Bivens says.
> It's another ominous sign that Obama caved almost instantly to demands that
> he reinstate a tax benefit for 529 college savings accounts after
> congressional leaders-including, in an unusual tag-team effort, Boehner and
> Democratic minority leader Nancy Pelosi-applied pressure. As Rep. Chris Van
> Hollen, ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, put [8] it, "This
> particular proposal undercuts the message that they were focused on helping
> the middle class."
> Yet about 80% of benefits from 529 plans go to households with incomes
> above
> $150,000 and 70% to households making more than $200,000
> (http://www.offthechartsblog.org/obamas-education-tax-proposals-a-big-step-f
> orward/ [9]). And it's not as though Obama was proposing to wipe out the
> plans. Assets could continue to accrue tax-free; savers would only pay
> taxes
> when they withdraw funds, just as with 401(k)s. As Robert Greenstein of the
> Center on Budget and Policy Priorities told [10] New York Timesblogger
> Thomas Edsall, "The implications of this debacle are troubling. If we can't
> reform a tax break that is highly inefficient and gives the overwhelming
> share of its benefits to high-income people who don't need the benefits to
> engage in the desired activity (in this case, going to college) . then it's
> going to be awfully difficult to address a number of the challenges the
> nation faces in the years ahead."
> Just as troubling, the White House wants to means-test Medicare by raising
> premiums for individuals with higher incomes and adding a premium surcharge
> for new beneficiaries who buy Medigap coverage-changes that would shift
> some
> $70 billion of costs from Medicare to individuals over 10 years. The budget
> also would add a copayment for home health care-adding to the burden faced
> by families with aging relatives. "But more affluent people already pay
> substantially higher premiums," says Bivens at EPI, "and especially with
> projected health care costs already really slowing down, the idea that we
> continue to need to talk about premium fixes just isn't convincing."
> Regarding Social Security, the president hasn't got the message, either.
> While much of his party-including Sanders, now the ranking member of the
> Seate Finance Committee-advocate expanding the program, Obama is again
> toying with the idea of cutting it. His notion of how to help working
> households concerned about their ability to retire in comfort, instead, is
> to some modest moves to encourage IRA and 401(k) savings.
> What remains to be seen is which elements of his budget are there merely to
> appeal to the working households Obama has so often ignored, and which ones
> could form the basis of a budget deal with the GOP. Republican leaders have
> been tossing hints for weeks [11] that a deal on corporate taxes may be
> possible, suggesting the president's proposals for taxation of foreign
> profits-weak as they are-may be a starting point for negotiations. The fact
> that he's proposing to pass on more costs to Medicare recipients, and is
> placing the chained CPI back on the table, signals that a deal to cut
> Social
> Security and Medicare may not out of the question either. We already know
> that Obama and the GOP leadership see eye-to-eye on NAFTA-like trade deals
> in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, even if many lawmakers of both
> parties-and the public-oppose [12] them.
> Maybe the president's budget is a middle-class manifesto. But that may only
> be what he wants us to think.
> Eric Laursen is an independent journalist who writes The People's Pension
> [13] blog. He is co-author, with Seth Tobocman and Jessica Wehrle, of
> Understanding the Crash (Soft Skull Press/Counterpoint, Spring 2010) and a
> history of the Social Security debate, The People's Pension: The War
> Against
> Social Security from Reagan to Obama (AK Press, Spring 2012).
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
> Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@alternet.org'. [14]
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[15]
>
> Source URL:
> http://www.alternet.org/election-2014/president-obamas-2016-budget-not-middl
> e-class-manifesto
> Links:
> [1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/eric-laursen
> [2] http://alternet.org
> [3]
> http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/feb/3/obama-will-talk-social-securi
> ty-cap-with-gop/
> [4]
> http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2016/assets/budge
> t.pdf
> [5] http://www.bls.gov/dolfaq/bls_ques1.htm
> [6]
> http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/02/02/fact-sheet-middle-class-economics-
> president-s-fiscal-year-2016-budget
> [7]
> http://ourfuture.org/20150202/obama-un-chained-his-latest-pledge-to-defend-s
> ocial-security
> [8]
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/obama-drops-proposal-to-cut-t
> ax-benefits-of-529-college-savings-plans/2015/01/27/5f3f429a-a675-11e4-a2b2-
> 776095f393b2_story.html
> [9]
> http://www.offthechartsblog.org/obamas-education-tax-proposals-a-big-step-fo
> rward/
> [10]
> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/04/opinion/the-problem-with-middle-class-popu
> lism.html?_r=0
> [11]
> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/02/us/obama-budget-to-seek-to-stabilize-defic
> it-and-address-income-inequality.html
> [12]
> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/31/business/reid-pushes-back-on-fast-track-tr
> ade-authority.html
> [13] http://peoplespension.infoshop.org/blogs-mu/about/
> [14] mailto:corrections@alternet.org?Subject=Typo on President Obama's
> 2016 Budget Is Not A Middle-Class Manifesto
> [15] http://www.alternet.org/
> [16] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
>
> _______________________________________________
> Blind-Democracy mailing list
> Blind-Democracy@octothorp.org
> https://www.octothorp.org/mailman/listinfo/blind-democracy
>
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