CHART: Lower Taxes On The Rich Don’t Lead To Job Growth

By Pat Garofalo 

Congressional Republicans — during both last year’s debate over the pending expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the current negotiations regarding raising the nation’s debt ceiling — refused to consider tax increases on even the very richest Americans. In fact, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) blew up debt ceiling negotiations last week due to his insistence that those making more than $500,000 annually be shielded from any tax increase.

The GOP justification for its position — even with income inequality at its worst level since the 1920s — is that raising taxes on the rich will destroy jobs. “What some are suggesting is that we take this money from people who would invest in our economy and create jobs and give it to the government. The fact is you can’t tax the very people that we expect to invest in the economy and create jobs,” said Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH).

However, history doesn’t back up the GOP’s claim. In fact, as Center for American Progress Director of Tax and Budget Policy Michael Linden found, “in the past 60 years, job growth has actually been greater in years when the top income tax rate was much higher than it is now”:

For instance, in years when the top marginal rate was more than 90 percent, the average annual growth in total payroll employment was 2 percent. In years when the top marginal rate was 35 percent or less — which it is now — employment grew by an average of just 0.4 percent.

And there’s no cherry-picking here. Pick any threshold. When the marginal tax rate was 50 percent or above, annual employment growth averaged 2.3 percent, and when the rate was under 50, growth was half that.

In fact, if you ranked each year since 1950 by overall job growth, the top five years would all boast marginal tax rates at 70 percent or higher. The top 10 years would share marginal tax rates at 50 percent or higher. The two worst years, on the other hand, were 2008 and 2009, when the top marginal tax rate was 35 percent. In the 13 years that the top marginal tax rate has been at its current level or lower, only one year even cracks the top 20 in overall job creation.

Contrary to Republican claims, lower taxes on the rich don’t lead to higher economic growth either.

GOP Cuts To Food Aid For Seniors And Food Banks Equals One Day Of Bush Tax Cuts For Millionaires

By Pat Garofalo 

Today, the House is debating the Republican’s 2012 Agriculture Appropriations Bill, which, as we’ve been documenting, slashes funding for food assistance,preventing hundreds of thousands of people from accessing aid. In addition to lopping more than $800 million from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), the GOP’s bill would cut $38 million from the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSIP), as well as $63 million from the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAB).

The CSFP provides food assistance to 600,000 low-income families every month, 96 percent of whom are seniors, while the TEFAP “provides our nation’s emergency food bank network with food commodities and storage and distribution support.” We previously noted that the cuts to WIC are roughly equivalent to the cost of extending the Bush tax cuts for millionaires alone for just one week.

As it turns out, the cuts to CSIP and TEFAB, according to Half in Ten’s Melissa Boteach, are equivalent to the cost of extending the Bush tax cuts for millionaires alone for just one day:

Adding insult to injury, at the same time that they’re slashing food assistance to ribbons, House Republicans plan to increase defense spending by $17 billion.

Motor City Liberal Comment: For those senior citizens that voted Republican in the last election how do you feel now? They're going after your medicaid, they're about to go after your social security and they voting to cut you off of food assistance. How is putting that black president in his place vote workin' out for ya? 

GOP House To Cut Aid For Pregnant Women, Children While Spending $17 Billion More On Defense

By Marie Diamond 

Today, the Republican-controlled House will begin another onslaught on programs designed to help low-income and middle class families. The GOP quite literally wants to take food from the mouths of children, cutting$47 billion — or 10 percent — from domestic programs, to pay for more defense spending. In negotiations to reach a debt ceiling compromise, Republicans have declared defense cuts “off the table,” even though Pentagon spending is notoriously bloated and Secretary of Defense Gates and other top generals have admitted spending should be curtailed:

But the GOP-dominated chamber will soon resume its budget-slashing ways as it kicks off debate Tuesday on a food and farm spending bill that cuts aid for low-income pregnant women and their children and slashes a key overseas food aid program by about one-third below this year’s funding.

At the same time, the Appropriations Committee is set to approve a $649 billion measure that slightly boosts the Pentagon’s operating budget [...]

Once money is added for programs like defense, veterans and homeland security, spending on domestic programs like food aid for the poor, education, health care and housing subsidies falls to levels where lawmakers are going to find it difficult. After a $17 billion increase for the Pentagon is factored in, domestic agencies and foreign aid programs would absorb cuts of $47 billion that would translate into cuts averaging about 10 percent.

Essential programs on the chopping block include the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) and Commodity Supplemental Food programs, which both help low-income people get nutritional food. Hundreds of thousands of people will be cut from the programs if House Republicans get their way. WIC “provides healthy foods like milk, eggs and infant formula to about 9 million poor mothers and pregnant women and their children,” and would absorb a $868 million cut under the GOP bill, which falls $1.3 billion short of what’s needed to adequately fund the program with food prices on the rise.

The GOP measure also calls for cuts to food safety programs, a childhood obesity initiative backed by First Lady Michele Obama, and food aid for senior citizens:

The bill also cuts a program that delivers food to low-income senior citizens 23 percent below current levels. The popular Food for Peace program, which uses taxpayer dollars to buy U.S. commodities and ships them to deprived areas in Africa and elsewhere across the globe, would absorb a $457 million cut of almost one-third. The White House says that would translate into 1.1 million fewer people getting U.S. food aid.

Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA) spoke out against the GOP’s callousness, saying, “Tightening our belts is one thing. But people who depend on supplemental food programs, like WIC, or food stamps, or school lunches, have belts that are already cinched.”

Yesterday, the White House blasted the proposed deep cuts to food programs, saying it would leave children and mothers hungry, but stopped short of threatening a veto.

Motor City Liberal Comment: The  Republican controlled house have passed about 1 billion anti-abortion bills yet these pro-life Republican freaks are trying to slash programs to help women to raise these kids they want them to have.  That's like saying I don't want you to drown but here's a life boat with holes in it.

Failing To Raise Debt Ceiling Could Cause Bigger GDP Drop Than The 2008 Recession

By Pat Garofalo

For months, Republicans have been playing games with the nation’s debt ceiling, threatening to not raise it unless they receive various items off of an ever-shifting list of demands, including cuts to Social Security or cockamamie Constitutional amendments. The GOP evenheld a sham-vote on increasing the debt limit this week, explicitly designing it to fail and then using that failure to up their calls for concessions on the part of Democrats.

As we’ve been documenting, failure to raise the debt ceiling could have several adverse consequences, including threatening the fragile housing market and wiping out economic growth (depending on the duration of the stalemate). On that note, CAP’s Michael Ettlinger and Michael Linden found that failing to raise the debt limit for two months could cause a bigger GDP drop than that experienced during the Great Recession of 2008:

To see just how much, imagine that this debt limit crisis happened last year. The budget deficit last August and September was $125 billion. If the government had been unable to finance that deficit, it would have been forced to cut $125 billion from its spending during those two months—which if translated into a decline of that magnitude in economic activity would have resulted in GDP dropping by 2.3 percent, in nominal terms, from the previous quarter.

To put that kind of drop in perspective, consider that the biggest quarter-to-quarter drop in nominal GDP since 1947, when official statistics began, was 2 percent from the third to fourth quarter of 2008—the middle of the Great Recession, when we lost nearly 2 million jobs. In other words, had the government been unable to borrow last summer, it could have resulted in an economic contraction worse than we experienced during the depths of the Great Recession.

The reason for this drop is simple. If the debt ceiling isn’t raised, “the federal government will be forced to immediately cut nearly 40 percent from its budget,” which would be a significant drag on the rest of the economy. The Wall Street Journal found that failing to raise the debt ceiling for 95 days would wipe out all of the expected 2011 economic growth.

Some Republicans have posited that such a shock to the economic system could actually be a good thing. “By defaulting on the debt, in the short and long term, it could benefit us to go through a period of crisis that forces politicians to make decisions” on major policies that affect the budget, said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA).

Motor City Liberal Comment: This should wake up sane people and those "independent"voters the Republicans in their quest for power and doing nothing but enrich their corporate pimps they're willingly crash not only the United States' economy they're willingly to crash the world's economy just to score political points.

Exxon Makes $30.5 Billion, So GOP Votes Unanimously To Give Them Tax Breaks

By Brad Johnson

Exxon Mobil is by far the most profitable company in the new Fortune 500 list, riding “high oil prices to a staggering $30 billion in income” in 2010. Exxon made over $10 billion more than fellow oil giant Chevron, the third most profitable company (AT&T edged out Chevron for the number two spot). ConocoPhillips’ $11.4 billion in profits put it in the 16th spot, giving the three oil giants a combined $60.9 billion in profits in 2010.

Today, the Republicans in the House of Representatives celebrated this massive redistribution of wealth from American families to oil executives. With the support of 7 oil-patch Democrats, 234 Republicans voted to block a bill to eliminate a $1.8 billion annual subsidy that treats oil drilling as “domestic manufacturing”:

House Republicans rejected an effort by Democrats Thursday to use a procedural maneuver to force a vote on a bill to repeal a key oil industry tax break.

As they did in March, House Republicans voted unanimously to defend these wasteful, unaffordable and unfair oil subsidies, even though several members told their constituents they want to end them.

House GOP Unanimously Passes Anti-Abortion Bill That Redefines Rape, Raises Taxes, And Creates Rape Audits

By Tanya Somanader

In a 251 to 175 vote this evening, 16 anti-choice Democrats joined every House Republican present in passing H.R. 3, the No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act. A chief weapon in the House GOP’s “comprehensive assault” on women this bill proposes some of the most radical and draconian restrictions on women’s rights. They include:

– Redefinition Of Rape: The bill sponsor Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) faced serious backlash after he tried to narrow the definition rape to “forcible rape.” By narrowing the rape and incest exception in the Hyde Amendment, Smith sought to prevent the following situations from consideration: Women who say no but do not physically fight off the perpetrator, women who are drugged or verbally threatened and raped, and minors impregnated by adults.

Smith promised to remove the language and while it is not technically in the bill, Mother Jones reports that House Republicans used “a sly legislative maneuver” to insert a “backdoor reintroduction” of redefinition language. Essentially, if the bill is challenged in court, judges will look at the congressional committee report to determine intent. The committee report for H.R. 3 says the bill will “not allow the Federal Government to subsidize abortions in cases of statutory rape” — thus excluding statutory rape-related abortions from Medicaid coverage.

– Tax Increase On Women And Small Businesses: H.R. 3 prevents women from using “itemized medical deductions, certain tax-advantaged health care accounts or tax credits included in last year’s health care law to pay for abortions or for health insurance plans that cover abortion.” In doing so, the bill forces women and small businesses that provide health insurance that covers abortion to pay more in taxes than they would otherwise. Both economic conservative Grover Norquist and the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce noted that the bill is basically a tax increase.

– Rape Audits: Because H.R. 3 bans using tax credits or deductions to pay for abortions or insurance, a woman who used such a benefit would have to prove, if audited, that her abortion “fell under the rape/incest/life-of-the-mother exception, or that the health insurance she had purchased did not cover abortions.” Essentially, the bill turns Internal Revenue Service agents into “abortion cops” who would force women to give “contemporaneous written documentation” that it was “incest, or rape, or [her] life was in danger” that compelled an abortion.

– Bans D.C.-Funded Abortions: The most recent spending resolution contained a ban on abortions in the District of Columbia by redefining the D.C. local government as the federal government. Thus, health clinics in D.C. are banned from using public funds from D.C. taxpayers to provide abortion services. H.R. 3 “would enshrine the District ban into federal law.” According to the Office of Management and Budget office, such a restriction violates “home rule.”

Despite receiving nearly 135,000 signatures in opposition to the bill, Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and the House Republicans leveled a serious blow on American women and their right to choose. Some Republicans even suggested holding the debt ceiling increase hostage over the passage of H.R. 3. The bill, however, is unlikely to pass as a standalone in the Democratic-led Senate. President Obama has alsothreatened to veto the bill.

M.C.L Comment: This creates jobs how??After a year of the orange bastard screaming "where are the jobs" on every news show  that stuck on a camera in his face, the House GOP hasn't brought up a single jobs bill since taking power in January. All they done since taking power is talk shit and passed wingnut bills that have no chance of going anywhere.

House Republicans Pass Plan To Phase Out Medicare, Slash Medicaid

Brian Beutler

House Republicans voted Friday in favor of a vision of the future without Medicare, with a significantly eroded Medicaid, and with lower taxes on wealthy Americans. By a vote of 235-193, they passed their budget resolution -- an opening bid in a broader partisan fight about spending and taxes that will dominate politics in Washington, DC for the rest of the year.

Four Republicans voted with all Democrats against the so-called "Path to Prosperity." Two Republicans and five Democratsdidn't vote.

It's also political poison. The GOP plan would slowly phase out the current Medicare system and replace it by offering beneficiaries partially subsidized private insurance (ironically, much like Obamacare). It would turn Medicaid into a block-grant program, allowing states to roll back currently guaranteed benefits for the poor and disabled. And it would eliminate most of the savings achieved from cutting these entitlements lowering the tax burden on wealthy Americans.

It was almost worse. Earlier in the day, Republicans fell prey to a Democratic procedural tactic and nearly voted to replace the plan they passed with an even farther-reaching one. Republicans didn't whip any of the alternative budgets, and were caught flat-footed when Democrats voted "present" on a more conservative proposal, leading to pandemonium on the House floor.

As an early salvo in his re-election fight, President Obama criticized Republicans for creating the looming fiscal crisis with reckless policies in the last decade, and for proposing to fix it on the backs of the most vulnerable Americans

"We contribute to programs like Medicare and Social Security, which guarantee us health care and a measure of basic income after a lifetime of hard work; unemployment insurance, which protects us against unexpected job loss; and Medicaid, which provides care for millions of seniors in nursing homes, poor children, those with disabilities. We're a better country because of these commitments," Obama said. "I'll go further. We would not be a great country without those commitments."

Though the budget has no future in the Senate, House Republicans have put themselves on the line for a political whipping as severe the one they received when they tried to privatize Social Security in 2005.

Rep. McDermott: GOP Cuts To Anti-Poverty Programs Are ‘Morally Wrong’ And ‘Fiscally Stupid’

By Pat Garofalo

The current continuing resolution under which the federal government is operating expires on April 8, and at the moment, it seems that budget talks between House Republican leadership and Senate Democrats have broken down. Republicans want their spending bill — H.R. 1 — to “serve as a starting point for all negotiations” (even though Democrats have now upped the amount of spending cuts they’re willing to pass, alongside zero concessions from Republicans).

As we’ve noted, H.R. 1 includes debilitating cuts to programs that benefit women,children, students, and veterans. And by limiting their cuts to the non-defense discretionary portion of the budget, the GOP’s cuts disproportionately fall upon those who depend most on government programs that provide important services like education and health care.

Republicans claim the cuts are necessary to reduce the deficit, but in an interview with The Wonk Room today, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) noted that cuts to anti-poverty programs like the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) are “fiscally stupid” due to their potential for providing savings over the long-term:

On two levels [the cuts are] wrong. One is they’re wrong morally. We need to take care of women and children and WIC program is very important for childrens’ health and healthy babies and for healthy mothers. But on a second level it’s fiscally stupid, because if you don’t feed kids, if you don’t feed mothers and get them up to speed, they deliver a low birth-weight baby that then you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars dealing with in the premie units of hospitals.

If you get a mother healthy through the period of her pregnancy she delivers a normal baby, normal birth-weight, and the child has a decent start and it’s a lot less expensive. So if you don’t care about morals and you just want to talk about money, it’s better on the money side. That’s why what they’re doing makes no sense at all.

Watch it:

According to the Government Accountability Office, every dollar invested in WIC “generated $2.89 in health care savings during the first year after birth and $3.50 in savings over 18 years.” But this isn’t the only way in which Republican cuts could conceivably make the deficit worse: they’re also cutting programs like IRS tax enforcement (which lowers tax receipts) Title X family planning (which leads to higher Medicaid expenditures) and food safety regulations (which leads to more foodborne illness and higher health care costs).

After Congressional Progressives Ask ‘Where Are The Jobs?,’ GOP Rep. Biggert Says ‘Stop Talking About Jobs’

By Zaid Jilani

One of the mantras of congressional Republicans over the past two years has been to ask, “Where are the jobs?” House GOP leader John Boehner (OH) made this into atheme of the campaign last fall. As then-GOP chairman Michael Steele summarized the argument: “Americans are still asking, ‘Where are the jobs?’ … Washington Democrats still have no answers.”

This afternoon, Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) and other progressives took to the floor of the House of Representatives to turn this question back on their Republican colleagues. Ellison and the others asked where all the jobs-creation legislation was, excoriating their conservative colleagues for focusing on legislation like terminating the HAMP program, which would do nothing to create jobs:

– Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN): “The Republicans’ no-jobs agenda has been exposed, Mr. Chair. The majority has done nothing to create jobs or protect homes. All they do is criticize programs that could use some improvement. Rather, they would get rid of them altogether.”

– Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY): “[The Republicans] have no plans of their own to address the foreclosure crisis that is hurting neighborhoods and disrupting lives throughout their country. Like the jobs bills they said they would have. We have yet to see them.”

– Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX): “Your cities have been impacted positively by the HAMP program. Job growth is picking up. Investing and growing jobs should be the mindset of the American Congress for that’s what we were sent back to Washington to do.”

At one point, Rep. Judy Biggert (R-IL) took to the floor to respond to the progressives. She attacked the HAMP program, urging her colleagues to end it, and signaled that she would oppose progressive amendments to the GOP’s bill for ending the mortgage modification program. Then, she incredulously told her colleagues to stop talking about jobs and focus rather on the substance of the amendments:

BIGGERT: I would urge my colleagues to support — oppose this amendment. And stop talking about jobs, let’s focus on the substance of these amendments.

Watch it:

One would have to wonder what a certain congresswoman who asked at a hearing — on February 25, 2010 — “Where are the jobs?” would think about Biggert’s statement. That congresswoman was Biggert herself. Watch it:

GOP welfare bill mostly harms poor children: hunger-relief group

By Sahil Kapur

WASHINGTON – A hunger-relief group expressed deep concerns with a House GOP bill that would cap spending on food stamps, fearing it would target the least well-off and disproportionately harm children.

"We're very concerned that the food stamps provisions take us in exactly the wrong direction given the economic climate and the increased food security needs of Americans," Lisa Davis, vice president of policy at Feeding America, told Raw Story.

The bill, H.R. 1135, was introduced by Republican Reps. Jim Jordan (OH), Tim Scott (SC), Scott Garrett (NJ), Dan Burton (IN), and Louie Gohmert (TX). Its aim, in part, is "to provide an overall spending limit on means-tested welfare programs."

Davis said 44 million people participate in food stamps each month – the figure increased 62 percent between 2007 and 2009.

"Any kinds of changes that start to weaken the food safety net are going to increase the burden on communities across America," she said, noting that half of all beneficiaries of food stamps are children.

A Moody's study found in 2008 found food stamps to be the most economically stimulative federal programduring high unemployment.

The legislation also reaffirms a a controversial law that dates back to 1981, which limits access to food stamps for entire families if a single member is on strike.

Titled "Striking Workers Ineligible," subsection (3) of the legislation's clause (II), section (d) states: "Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no member of a family unit shall participate in the food stamp program at any time that any able-bodied work eligible adult member of such household is on strike."

A qualifier to the provision is that a family cannot lose its eligibility "if the household was eligible immediately prior to such strike," but families will be denied higher allotments that may otherwise result from the drop in income while a member is on strike.

"On Strike? Republicans Don't Want Your Family to Eat," responded the AFL-CIO on its website, calling it another in a series of GOP "attacks on working families and their unions."

Clarification: This article has been revised to reflect that the striking workers provision dates back to 1981, while the impact of H.R. 1135 is to place caps on food stamp spending.

M.C.L Comment: I hope teaching Obama a lesson was worth it.