FACT: We're better off then we were four years ago

From Pat Garofalo – ThinkProgress

republished by Paddy Ryan

The Romney campaign this week is basing its message off of former President Reagan’s “are you better off?” question from his 1980 campaign, even though Romney himself admitted in an interview earlier this year that “of course [the economy is] getting better” under President Obama. And the numbers don’t lie.

While the economy is only recovering slowly, the trend lines when it comes to jobs, wealth, and the success of American business are all moving in the right direction, as these charts by the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Christian Weller show:

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We're All Subsidizing Free Lunches for America's CEOs

It's time to close the tax loopholes that subsidize runaway executive compensation.

by Scott Klinger and Sam Pizzigati from CommonDreams

republished by Paddy Ryan

A generation ago, on National Secretary's Day, America's top corporate executives used to take their prized office assistants out to lunch.

Times change, and National Secretary's Day has become Administrative Professionals' Day. But something else has changed. These days, CEOs are getting the free lunches. Secretaries and all the rest of us are picking up the tab. And not at Burger King either.

Our current tax code has everyone in America essentially subsidizing the pay of millionaire and billionaire CEOs. Deductions, tax credits, and other executive-compensation loopholes total $14.4 billion annually, the equivalent of $46 for each of America's 311 million citizens.

That figure appears in "The CEO Hands in Uncle Sam's Pocket," a new report we helped write for the Institute for Policy Studies. Our research team dug deep into the tax code's weeds and pulled out one glaring example after another of tax code provisions enriching our already rich — at the expense of average Americans.

Our tax code, for instance, lets corporations deduct all "reasonable" costs of doing business. But what's "reasonable"? Over the years, corporate chiefs have stretched that definition beyond all reason. Years ago, they even claimed three-martini lunches as "reasonable" business expenses.

Congress eventually cracked down on that unpopular giveaway. Back in 1993, amid rising public outrage over sky-high executive compensation, lawmakers also tried to crack down on tax deductions for CEO pay. Under a new rule, corporations could only deduct up to $1 million on their tax returns for any individual executive's annual pay.

Unfortunately, this new rule came with a built-in loophole. Any executive pay over $1 million linked to "performance" could still be deducted. You can guess what happened next: an explosion of "performance-based" CEO compensation.

Corporate titans soon started landing annual performance pay deals worth tens of millions. Last year, Larry Ellison pocketed $76 million in "performance-based pay" for running Oracle, the giant business software company. That ploy saved Oracle $26 million in taxes. Overall, unlimited tax deductions on CEO pay cost U.S. taxpayers nearly $10 billion a year.

CEOs regularly partake in a variety of other tax-avoiding games that all share one element in common: CEOs always win, the rest of us always lose.

How outrageous have these CEO victories become? Try visualizing this: The IRS offers you a refund on all the taxes you've previously paid and then informs you that you also won't have to pay taxes on your future income for years to come. Sweet deal. Corporations get it all the time — by paying their executives in stock options.

That's just what Facebook did in a move that saved the company an estimated $5.6 billion, including an approximately $500 million return of previously paid taxes. But let's not pick on Facebook. Apple used this loophole to save $260 million on its 2011 taxes alone, and hundreds of other corporations have played this same game.

Add up all the Facebooks and Apples out there, compute the cost of the tax giveaways they use to stuff the pockets of their top executives, and you end up with corporate tax bills over $14 billion a year less than they should be. With this $14 billion, our nation could provide health care for 7.3 million low-income kids or rehire over 200,000 laid-off public school teachers.

Warren Buffett famously quipped that he has a lower tax rate than his secretary. But that's an understatement. The secretaries of America's CEOs are actually subsidizing their bosses' pay.

Let's end this free lunch for CEOs. It's time to close the tax loopholes that subsidize runaway CEO pay.

5 Reasons The Romney-Ryan Economic Plan Would Be a Disaster

By Diane Sweet from Crooks and Liars

republished by Paddy Ryan

Robert Reich breaks down the Romney-Ryan economic plan into 5 measures that all spell disaster for America.

1. More unemployment through austerity measures.

2. Taking from the poor to give to the rich. Higher federal taxes on lower income taxpayers, slashing medicaid, food stamps, and children's health care in order to give up to a $500k tax cut to millionaires and billionaires.

3. Turns Medicare into vouchers that won't keep up with the rising cost of health care and shifting the burden onto seniors, ending their guaranteed health care, and leaving them at the mercy of private insurers. By contrast, Obama's Affordable Care Act saves money on Medicare by reducing payments to providers such as hospitals and drug companies.

4. Add money to defense spending. The plan would add money to defense spending while cutting spending on education, infrastructure, and basic research and development.

5. Debt: The Romney-Ryan budget doesn't even reduce the federal budget deficit. While adding to military spending, giving tax cuts to the rich, and stifling economic growth by cutting spending too early, the plan would push public debt to over 175% by 2050.

No wonder Mitt Romney doesn't want to talk about his budget until after the election!

Sen. McCain Admits Government Spending Plays Major Role In Helping Economy, Creating Jobs

By Scott Keyes from ThinkProgress Economy
republished by Paddy Ryan

GREAT FALLS, Montana — Government spending plays a key role in creating jobs and helping the economy.

If that sentence sounds uncontroversial, it should. And yet, the GOP has argued since the day Barack Obama took office that government spending neither creates jobs nor helps the economy.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) inadvertently undercut the GOP message at a town hall on Friday. Discussing the sequestration, which will cut $1.2 trillion in defense and non-defense discretionary spending to help pay down the national debt, McCain warned of the looming consequences of removing that sum from the economy. “That kind of hit can have serious, serious consequences to our economy,” the Arizona Senator said, arguing that “over one million jobs” could be lost without sustained government spending.

McCAIN: We need to make the American people aware of the effects of this draconian measure, not only on our ability to defend this nation, but it means over one million jobs and as I mentioned, about $1 trillion effect on our economy. I don’t have to tell anybody here that our economy is fragile now. That kind of hit can have serious, serious consequences to our economy.