Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Cutting the Deficit the Progressive way


Did you ever wonder how progressives would cut the deficit? Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), a member of the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, has offered her alternate proposal for reducing the deficit. She claims the plan would cut deficit spending by $426.95 in fiscal year 2015. Progressive Rep. Schakowsky wants to reduce the deficit by socking it to corporations, the wealth and the Defense Department.

The plan includes (pdf):

$276.8 billion in new taxes; including $52 billion from Cap-and-Trade (she calls some of the new taxes "tax expenditure savings")

$110.7 billion in defense cuts

$10 billion in magical savings from implementing in a robust health insurance "Public Option"

$7.5 billion from reducing federal agricultural support by 50%

$200 billion in new stimulus spending that takes place before 2015 and isn't subtracted off any alleged deficit reduction amount

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