Members Day - FY2023 Budget

HBUD: Fiscal Year 2023 Budget Priorities: Members' Day, May 17, 2022 

The fluid state of the war in Europe and in our inflationary economy will require changes on the fly, as will the inevitable crash of asset markets - which has already started. I will attach an analysis of the latter. The forces identified in January 2020 are still with us. Last year, money in the system kept it afloat artificially. With that money train stopping, the pressure from overfed asset markets will explode.

The best budget is one which helps working class families, generally the 75% of tax filers whose AGI is under $85,000. Do right by them, and the economy will recover. The next 16%, or those households making up to $250,000, don’t need much help. The top 4% need to start paying much more, especially because they also hold most of the assets backed by the Public Debt. 

Taxes need to be high enough so that we no longer have to borrow from them so we can then roll over the interest we pay to the very same people. Continuing as we have is madness. Please see the attachment on debt ownership for more information.

How to channel more money from the speculation sector into household consumption through government purchases, transfers and salaries - and then to the private economy - is addressed in the attached tax reform plan.  

Switching from taxing capital gains and returns in personal income taxation to an asset value added tax ends subsidies for offsetting income with losses - in essence - subsidizing failure and bad speculation. Just this one change will unshield one trillion dollars in loss write offs - half of which offset high salaried income - over the next 10 years. This is the tax gap no one talks about - or wants us to talk about. Talk about it.

The release of the original draft opinion in Jackson Women’s Health v. Dobbs underlines where more money is needed. If the majority opinion is maintained, women who seek abortion services because they are poor or on the edge of poverty - or who would be impoverished by ending their educations will be forced with an impossible choice - where currently their choice is only difficult. To not increase subsidies for work, child income and childcare now would be the height of cruelty.

Build Back Better is a start - but we need to go Bigger as well as Better.

Job one is not budgetary, but it is the thing that will make the budget work: increase the minimum wage. Doing so, and funding the increase as inflation (and projecting payroll tax revenue increases) takes financial pressure off of young people saving for college or starting their careers, the working poor (which are not words which should exist together in the richest nation on earth), families with children, the retired and the disabled.

Job two is to restore the refundability of the child tax credit, restore it to American Rescue Plan Act levels and then double it again - and then encourage states to add to it in their fiscal systems.

Any member of Congress or the Senate - and especially any Democratic member - who consider themselves pro-life - must be held to account for opposing these provisions. Their belief that adequate family pay is an invitation to idleness is subtravuge for maintaining a pool of low wage workers who have to work on low wage jobs so that their children will not starve.

Job three is to fully fund closing the educational deficits which cause poverty. Individuals without adequate training to compete in a higher wage economy should be paid the minimum wage - which is their OPPORTUNITY COST - to further their education. Anyone going to school from ESL, to GED, to apprenticeship and technical training to earning an Associates Degree - and even juniors and seniors in high school from poorer families - should be paid for class time. If such people have children, their training provider should also distribute child tax credit funds to them with payroll as if they were working. 

Clients in occupational health, partial hospitalization for substance abuse and psychiatric rehabilitation programs should also be paid to attend - including and especially those in Drug Court who need education more than low wage work.

Entry into training and rehabilitation programs should be easy, unlike the almost punitive process for applying for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or for Food Stamps. These programs would be eliminated in favor of the reforms proposed here. Doing so will free up social welfare eligibility screening so that these resources can be diverted to case management for training participants. This will also save administrative costs at the state and local levels.

The Medicaid program as we know it should also end. It should be replaced with a subsidized public option under the existing Affordable Care Act for poor families and those with pre-existing conditions. 

Medicaid funding for retirees and the disabled who receive Medicare (Dual Eligibles) and all others in long term care through Medicaid should be entirely federal as a new Medicare Part E. Doing so will take financial pressure off of state governments for the foreseeable future - freeing up resources for better educational programs.

Providing for adequate childcare and family medical leave rounds out the list of improvements. These programs are best funded through employer paid taxes, rather than personal income tax, so that the ultimate consumers of worker labor pay the costs that workers now bear to provide these goods and services.

This is obvious. It is not rocket science (the funding of which I covered in my DoD Budget comments).

These reforms MUST be scored as pro-life legislation. Having served on the staff of a major abortion rights organization in the past, I can assure you that no such organization WOULD EVER OPPOSE HIGHER LIVING STANDARDS FOR WOMEN AND THEIR FAMILIES!

The chief obstacle for funding families is not the feminist movement. It is the so-called right to life movement who would rather women be penalized for having abortions than subsidized so that they are not necessary. 

Over the course of many decades, I have had conversations with conservative members of the pro-life community. When push comes to shove, they oppose the measures above because their objections to abortion are more about sexuality than the welfare of children.

Catholic Charities USA, NETWORK and the Catholic Health Association all stand with working and poor women. They must be very publicly leveraged to get the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops behind them as well - and to have the bishops insist that these measures be considered must-pass legislation for the computation of pro-life voting records. 

Catholic members of Congress and the President should also lead on this effort. 

Video for these comments

Attachment: Depression 2022 Video

Attachment: Debt Ownership as Class Warfare  Video

Attachment: Tax Reform (video links provided)