The People’s Budget praised by serious economists, dismissed by the clueless Arizona Daily Star

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Oh geezus, the Arizona Daily Star finally got around to mentioning our local Congressman Raúl Grijalva's "People's Budget" from the Congressional Progressive Caucus, but it was only a mention in the godawful "political notebook" where stories that the Star has not reported on go to die in one paragraph dismissive tones and attempted snarky humor. This is what passes for political reporting in the Star, Political notebook:

Congressional love

U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva would be forgiven if he's getting a case of the lonelies.

When the political director of the National Republican Congressional Committee recently ticked off a list of Democrats they hope to unseat in 2012, Grijalva was right at the top.

Partly, Grijalva acknowledges, the GOP might be sniffing vulnerability because of the too-close-for-comfort margin last cycle. But, he suggested, it's also because "they really just don't like me."

Those closer to his own political persuasion haven't exactly been blowing kisses, either.

The Democratic caucus whipped up opposition to the Grijalva-backed progressive budget alternative, "The People's Budget," which tried to eat into the deficit by cutting military spending, taxing the rich and putting back on the table a public health-care option. Party leaders didn't want it in the mix, muddying up the vote by splitting the caucus.

Then he raised some eyebrows when he told a national reporter the party needs to line up a viable U.S. Senate contender, maybe even within weeks, instead of waiting to see if U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, long considered the heir apparent, wants it. He clarified Wednesday, after it hit the fan, he meant someone to carry on the fight until she decided whether she wants it. But the longer the party waits, the more of a free ride Republican U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake gets.

At least on Monday Grijalva will find himself on friendly ground as the keynote speaker at the local progressives' meeting. And can we say, we think we know somebody who could use a hug.

Every story in the Star about Congressman Raúl Grijalva must, of course, contain the GOP-spin. The Star's Clueless political reporters must still be taking their lede from their former associate, Daniel Scarpinato, who is flacking for the Arizona GOP these days.

The editorial news filter at the Star may dismiss the Congressional Progressive Caucus "People's Budget" because it will not pass in the Tea-Publican Congress, but the same is also true for the "courageous" (sic) Paul Ryan Roadmap to America's Ruin – it is DOA in the Senate. So if the Star is going to waste ink and pixels writing about the Ryan budget plan, equal time is due to the Congressional Progressive Caucus budget plan, which is by the way, the only budget plan that serious economists have given praise (they universally dismissed the Ryan budget plan as "not serious").

Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman – certainly more knowledgeable than any of the news filters at the Arizona Daily Star – writes in the New York Times today, Let’s Take a Hike:

The core of the Ryan proposal is a plan to privatize and defund Medicare. Yet this would do nothing to reduce the deficit over the next 10 years, which is why all the near-term deficit reduction comes from brutal reductions in aid to the needy and unspecified cuts in discretionary spending. Tax increases, by contrast, can be fast-acting remedies for red ink.

And that’s why the only major budget proposal out there offering a plausible path to balancing the budget (emphasis added) is the one that includes significant tax increases: the “People’s Budget” from the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which — unlike the Ryan plan, which was just right-wing orthodoxy with an added dose of magical thinking — is genuinely courageous because it calls for shared sacrifice.

True, it increases revenue partly by imposing substantially higher taxes on the wealthy, which is popular everywhere except inside the Beltway. But it also calls for a rise in the Social Security cap, significantly raising taxes on around 6 percent of workers. And, by rescinding many of the Bush tax cuts, not just those affecting top incomes, it would modestly raise taxes even on middle-income families.

All of this, combined with spending cuts mostly focused on defense, is projected to yield a balanced budget by 2021. And the proposal achieves this without dismantling the legacy of the New Deal, which gave us Social Security, and the Great Society, which gave us Medicare and Medicaid.

But if the progressive proposal has all these virtues, why isn’t it getting anywhere near as much attention as the much less serious Ryan proposal? It’s true that it has no chance of becoming law anytime soon. But that’s equally true of the Ryan proposal.

The answer, I’m sorry to say, is the insincerity of many if not most self-proclaimed deficit hawks. To the extent that they care about the deficit at all, it takes second place to their desire to do precisely what the People’s Budget avoids doing, namely, tear up our current social contract, turning the clock back 80 years under the guise of necessity. They don’t want to be told that such a radical turn to the right is not, in fact, necessary.

But, it isn’t, as the progressive budget proposal shows. We do need to bring the deficit down, although we aren’t facing an immediate crisis. How we go about stemming the tide of red ink is, however, a choice — and by making tax increases part of the solution, we can avoid savaging the poor and undermining the security of the middle class.

Maybe one of the Clueless political reporters at the Star will be assigned to interview our local Congressman Raúl Grijalva about the People's Budget tonight at the PDA meeting of which they are aware.

And maybe the Tucson Weekly could send a reporter to interview Congressman Raúl Grijalva about the People's Budget, just in case.