Have you ever wondered why, when politicians are campaigning for our votes, they promise to represent the people’s interests? And, then, when they step over the threshold that is Congress, they represent political parties and not the people?
That’s what we see in Congress now, and have seen for years, resulting in a divisive split that has strangled compromise and killed common sense.
This strident allegiance to party and not to the people has also stalled any real hope that Congress can settle on how to fix the national debt.
Enter: Fix the Debt, a bipartisan, private, grassroots, business-supported, multi-state campaign to wake up Congress and jangle a repayment plan.
The campaign is chaired by Maya MacGuineas, who is president of the nonprofit Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and its members include a range of business, academic, community and political leaders whose motto is, “Inaction is not an option.”
The campaign, which has raised $40 million to staff coalitions and organize public meetings across the country, is supported by leaders who are, quite simply, scared of the consequences of doing nothing to fix the debt.
Two of those leaders, co-chairing the Maine contingent, are former Democratic Gov. John Baldacci and former Republican Senate President Rick Bennett.
These men say that members of the campaign are, collectively, grasping an opportunity to “bring some maturity and leadership to Congress” in the style of Speaker Tip O’Neill and President Ronald Reagan.
Hear, hear.
Baldacci and Bennett, who both say they still bear political scars from their shared battle for Congress in 1994, have come together, they say, to join what they believe is a sincere cause to address the inaction of the United States government. That the Fix the Debt campaign can bring conversation and ideas where there is not and are none in Congress.
They also both say that this campaign will give ordinary people a chance to speak up about why fixing the debt is important to them.
To do that, Fix the Debt will host a series of public meetings over the next several months, including one scheduled at Thomas College in Waterville and additional meetings to be held in Lewiston, Portland and Bangor. The very best ideas and suggestions from these meetings, and similar meetings to be held in other states, will be compiled into some kind of final recommendation to Congress.
Given the expertise that is being poured into the endeavor, our guess is that the final recommendation will be chock-full of good stuff. It will, certainly, follow the prongs of the existing and worthy Simpson-Bowles proposal since Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles launched Fix the Debt and organized its financing.
Even if this is a not-so-transparent campaign to gain public support for legislation that has not yet gained traction in Congress, the broad theory of Simpson-Bowles makes sense: Rein in spending, raise revenue and eliminate entitlements to pay down $4 trillion to $6 trillion debt over the next decade.
It’ll be the details that must be hammered out.
The campaign has been called a “corporate charade” and an exercise in back-scratching because it is composed so heavily of business interests, and there is serious suspicion that any solution reached by this group will favor tax breaks over revenue building, and will favor private over public interests.
But, who knows. Maybe, without political division and party cronyism, Fix the Debt can do what Congress won’t: fight for the people and actually fix the debt.
We hope this campaign can do that, but there is a major stumbling block facing it.
Even if the Fix the Debt campaign hammers out absolutely every minuscule detail with perfection, the campaign has no authority to force Congress to implement its recommendations. Congress can, should it wish, accept the recommendations and put them on a shelf, which is just slightly better than ignoring them altogether.
Bennett and Baldacci don’t think that will happen.
They sincerely believe that Congress, once it hears the grassroots cry to reduce the debt, will act. That cry has not yet been heard loudly enough, they said, to get any real attention.
We’ve heard the cry, so it’s hard to believe Congress has not, but elected leaders aren’t exactly leading the charge to fix the debt, so any advice that motivated people outside Congress feel they can offer should be welcomed.
We welcome it and look forward to the insight, compromise and solutions a group of people not burdened by partisanship can accomplish.
Congress has certainly made it clear it is not up to the task.
Sun Journal, Lewiston (Dec. 9)
“The ‘Fix the Debt’ CEOs are trying to pass themselves off as noble leaders who are willing to compromise in order to save America from financial ruin. In reality, the campaign is a Trojan horse concealing massive corporate tax breaks that would make our debt situation much worse.” Here are some of the findings of the report of the Institute for Policy Studies:
The 63 Fix the Debt companies that are publicly held stand to gain as much as $134 billion in windfalls if Congress approves one of their main proposals — a “territorial tax system.” Under this system, companies would not have to pay U.S. federal income taxes on foreign earnings when they bring the profits back to the United States.
The CEOs backing Fix the Debt personally received a combined total of $41 million in savings last year thanks to the Bush-era tax cuts. The top CEO beneficiary of the Bush tax cuts in 2011, Leon Black of Apollo Global Management, saved $9.9 million on the Bush tax cuts. The private equity fund leader reaped $215 million in taxable income last year just from vested stock.
Of the 63 Fix the Debt CEOs at publicly held firms, 24 received more in compensation last year than their corporations paid in federal corporate income taxes. All but six of these firms reported U.S. profits last year.
The Institute for Policy Studies says that “corporations leading this campaign are contributing to Americans’ retirement insecurity by funneling enormous sums into their CEO retirement accounts while underfunding their employee pension funds.”
Worth reading–“A Pension Deficit Disorder: The Massive CEO Retirement Funds and Underfunded Worker Pensions at Firms Pushing Social Security Cuts.”
The 71 Fix the Debt CEOs who lead publicly held companies have amassed an average of $9 million in their company retirement funds. A dozen have more than $20 million in their accounts. If each of them converted their assets to an annuity when they turned 65, they would receive a monthly check for at least $110,000 for life.
The Fix the Debt CEO with the largest pension fund is Honeywell’s David Cote, a long-time advocate of Social Security cuts. His $78 million nest egg is enough to provide a $428,000 check every month after he turns 65.
Forty-one of the 71 companies offer employee pension funds. Of these, only two have sufficient assets in their funds to meet expected obligations. The rest have combined deficits of $103 billion, or about $2.5 billion on average. General Electric has the largest deficit in its worker pension fund, with $22 billion.
[http://jonathanturley.org/2012/12/10/what-you-should-know-about-the-campaign-to-fix-the-debt-and-the-ceos-involved-in-deficit-talks/]
Ponder this:
“CEOs belonging to what the Fix the Debt campaign calls its CEO Fiscal Leadership Council – most visibly, Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein and Honeywell’s David Cote — have barnstormed the media, making the case that the only way to cut the deficit is to severely scale back social safety-net programs — Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security — which would disproportionately impact the poor and the elderly.”
Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-author of the report, The CEO Campaign to ‘Fix’ the Debt: A Trojan Horse for Massive Corporate Tax Breaks, talked with Amy Goodman onDemocracy Now! about the debt campaign and the CEOs involved in the deficit talks. Anderson told Goodman that they were “doing a massive media and lobbying blitz, portraying themselves as the reasonable ones, because they’re calling for both raising revenues and cutting spending. But if you look at the details of their tax plan, you see that they are really just a Trojan horse. They’re pushing for the same old tax breaks for corporations that they’ve been pushing for for about a decade.”
LizDavies, thanks for keeping it real!! The involvement if the CEO Council spoiled any credibility Fix The DEbt may have had.
Its being touted as a “grassroots” effort but they have a $60 million ad budget. The CEOs love to push big cuts in social safety net but say NOTHING about shrinking our bloated defense budget
And what the author neglected to mention is that the CEOs are pushing the Territorial Tax System which would exempt ALL corporate income earned overseas from US income tax. Exactly how does that tax giveaway help with the deficit? This is where someone will counter with trickle down dribble.
The icing on the cake was Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE on the CBS Morning Show yesterday calling for cuts to earned benefits because “We need revenue”. The nerve of that man when GE paid ZERO on $14 billion profit