Stepping Out on a Limb, Congressional Progressive Caucus offers counter Budget to Ryan.

Finally some signs of life on the Democratic side of the isle.  

The Congressional Progressive Caucus has finally released its response to Rep. Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity.  ”The People’s Budget” raises taxes by $4 trillion over ten years and cutting spending (mostly defense) by $900 billion. (Ryan would cut spending by $6 trillion.) It would take tax revenue as a share of GDP to 22.3 percent vs. a previous all-time high of 20.9 percent in World War Two. 

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