A Progressive Deficit Reduction Plan

This should play well in San Francisco:

Overview of Our Policies

Individual Income Tax Policies

• Allow the Bush-era tax cuts to expire at the end of 2012, but extend marriage relief, credits, and incentives for children, families, and education
• Immediately rescind the upper-income tax cuts in December’s tax deal
• Index the AMT for inflation for a decade (the AMT patch is fully paid for)
• • Schakowsky millionaire tax rates proposal (adding 45%, 46%, 47%, 48%, and 49% top rates)
• Tax all capital gains and qualified dividends as ordinary income
• Progressive estate tax (Sanders’ estate tax, repeal of Kyl-Lincoln)
• Limit the rate at which itemized deductions can reduce tax liability to 28%for high earners
• • Replace the tax exclusion for interest on state and local bonds with a subsidy for the issuer

Corporate Tax Reform

• Tax U.S. corporate foreign income as it is earned
• Eliminate corporate welfare for oil, gas, and coal companies
• Enact a financial crisis responsibility fee
• Financial speculation tax (derivatives, foreign exchange)
• • Reinstate Superfund taxes

Health Care

• Enact a public option
• Negotiate Rx payments with pharmaceutical companies
• CMS program integrity and other Medicare and Medicaid savings in the president’s budget
• Prevent a cut in Medicare physician payments for a decade (maintain doc fix)

Social Security

• Raise the taxable maximum on the employee side to 90% of earnings and eliminate the taxable maximum on the employer side
• Increase benefits based on higher contributions on the employee side

Defense Savings

• End overseas contingency operations emergency supplementals starting in     Fiscal Year 2013, providing $170 billion in FY2012 to fund redeployment, while saving more than $1.8 trillion from current law spending levels over ten years.
• Reduce baseline defense spending by reducing strategic capabilities, conventional forces, procurement, and R&D programs

Comprehensive Jobs Program

• Invest $1.45 trillion in job creation, education, clean energy and broadband infrastructure, housing, and R&D
• Infrastructure bank
• Surface transportation reauthorization bill ($213 billion)

No this isn’t an outline of proposals included in President Obama’s speech scheduled for tomorrow. Rather it is the budget proposals from his fellow travelers, the Congressional Progressive Caucus. It is aptly or unfortunately named, depending upon your point of view, “The People’s Budget.”

At least now those railing against Obama for allowing Simpson-Bowles to become the Democrats deficit reduction plan of choice have an option. Let’s see how many adopt the Progressive’s budget proposal.

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