Thursday Open Thread [12.26.13]

Steve Benen says that even though 2013 was a bad year for President Obama, it is not, as some pundits describe it, the worst year EVAH!!!!! in all history for any human being alive or dead. Indeed, the President did accomplish some important things this past year:

* Twice congressional Republicans threatened debt-ceiling default; twice Obama stood his ground; and twice the GOP backed down before Congress did real harm. The presidential leadership helped establish a new precedent that will benefit Obama, his successors, and the country.

* Congressional Republicans shut down the government to extract White House concessions. Obama and congressional Democrats stood firm and the GOP backed down.

* The Obama administration forged an international agreement to rid Syria of chemical weapons, struck a historic nuclear deal with Iran, and brought Israelis and Palestinians to the table together for the first peace talks in years.

* The economy has steadily improved, and 2013 is on pace to be the best year for U.S. job creation since 2005 and the second best since 1999.

* The “scandals” the media hyped relentlessly in the spring proved to be largely meaningless, and while the president’s poll numbers have dropped, his standing is roughly at the same point as two years ago.

Ian Reifowitz at Daily Kos proposes a Democratic Contract with America in 2014 that is based on combating Economic and Income Inequality in the United States.

1) Increase the federal minimum hourly wage to $12.50 and index it to inflation.
2) Create jobs through federally funded infrastructure spending.
3) Improve education—and save money in the long run—by funding universal pre-kindergarten.
4) Increase the earned income tax credit and make more middle-income families eligible.
5) Increase the personal exemption on federal income taxes by $500.
6) Shore up Social Security by subjecting income over $300,000 to the payroll tax.
7) Implement the Warren Buffett Rule to ensure that people earning over $1 million are paying at least an effective tax rate of 30 percent.
8) Eliminate “Mitt Romney’s favorite tax break” to ensure hedge fund managers pay regular income tax rates on their incomes.
9) Eliminate subsidies that go to millionaire farmers.
10) Close other corporate tax loopholes, including ones that reward corporations for moving jobs overseas.

WHY WE PROPOSE TO DO THIS:

This bold plan will restore equality of opportunity in our country. It enshrines the central value of the American Dream, that every American child should have an equal chance at achieving the good life: a job that allows him or her to support a family, and eventually enjoy a safe, secure retirement.

Our plan is fiscally responsible. First of all, increasing the minimum wage will directly save our government money by leaving fewer working people in need of government support. Today, millions of people who work full-time still need Medicaid, food stamps, and other aid because the minimum wage is too low to bring them out of poverty. McDonald’s is even telling its employees to seek out government assistance.

Not only will raising the minimum wage will save the government money, so will funding universal pre-kindergarten. In the long run, every dollar invested in pre-kindergarten generates about $7 in overall savings to federal, state, and local governments according to a study out of the University of Texas and Rice University. And—don’t forget—kids who otherwise wouldn’t have access to pre-school do better for themselves as well. A National Institutes of Health study found a payoff of “$11 of economic benefits over a child’s lifetime for every dollar spent initially on the program.”

We Democrats also want to directly create jobs by undertaking desperately needed spending on roads, bridges, the electrical grid, and other parts of our long-neglected infrastructure. Both parties used to recognize the need to keep our infrastructure strong in order to support economic growth. If Democrats have to go it alone on that front, so be it.

The other proposals we’ve made here simply and directly undo the favoritism that trickle-down policies showered on the top 1 percent. They will shore up Social Security’s long-term future, help reduce the radically high levels of income inequality back down to where we stood before 1980, and make sure our contract doesn’t require more government spending overall.

One of our greatest Supreme Court Justices, Louis Brandeis, once said: “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”

Children born to a middle-income or poor family should be able to rise as high as their abilities and efforts will take them. That’s the American Dream, but it hasn’t been the case for too many of the 99 percent in recent decades. We Democrats pledge to fight to restore equal opportunity for every American.