The Senate is scheduled to vote today on the tax cut plan President Obama negotiated with Senate Republicans. Click here to send an email to Senators Casey and Specter to urge them to vote no and encourage President Obama to stand united with Democrats in the House and Senate to seek a better deal.
Urge them to seek a deal that continues extended unemployment benefits, that stimulates the economy, that cuts taxes for working people and the middle class and that stands against unnecessary, wasteful tax cuts for the rich.
Click here to send that message now.
An interesting week
This has been one of the more interesting weeks since I began at Penn ACTION in June. Our actions and emails about President Obama’s tax compromise have created more controversy among the people on our email list than anything else we have done.
So this is a good opportunity for me to explain, in more detail than I’ve done before, where I think things are going in DC and where Penn ACTION fits into them.
What I’ve heard from you
Perhaps the best way to explain what Penn ACTION has been doing is respond the constructive criticism I’ve gotten, by email and phone, from many of you.
The call to action we sent along with Keystone Progress has been criticized from two directions. Some of you have told me we have been wrong to criticize President Obama and the deal he made. Others have said that we should reject any compromise that leaves the Bush tax cuts for the rich in place
Let me start with the critics who say that we should have accepted the “compromise.”
Why we couldn’t accept this compromise
Penn ACTION could not do that, because the compromise is unacceptable both as a matter of policy and as a matter of principle.
As a matter of policy, if Penn ACTION stands for anything, it is economic justice. We stand for a reversal of the growing inequity in the distribution of income and wealth in the United States. A policy that extends tax cuts for the rich and, even worse, drops the tax rate on inherited wealth from 55% to 35%—which would give someone inheriting a billion dollars a 200 million dollar cut—clearly violates our ideals. We have no other choice but to denounce it.
We could, of course, denounce it, and yet say we would accept legislation that includes it as a price for legislation that does good in other respects. But now we come to the politics of the issue. We believe President Obama’s deal with the Republicans is both unnecessary and a political disaster.
It is one thing to compromise with the other side after one has made clear to the American people where you stand and tried to rally them to your side. Polls show that 70% of the public supports our view of the tax cuts for rich. President Obama could and should have stood tall, called out the Republicans, and asked the American people to stand with him There was—and still is—time to do this before the lame duck Congress ends.
I suspect that the Republicans—most of whom appear to live in a right wing fantasy land—would not back down. But a compromise made after the President took a clear stand and mobilized the country would have been better than the one he made in five respects.
First, it would have drawn a bright line between where we stand and where the conservatives stand.
Second, mobilizing our side would have helped us build the progressive movement that we—and the President—needs.
Third, it would set a better political precedent for the next two years. The last thing we, and to Democratic members of Congress need is another President who “triangulates” between left and right over the next two years instead of standing with us to make the best case we can for progressive ideals.
Fourth, it would have gotten us a better deal. I don’t know whether we would have staved off all the tax cuts for the rich. But we might have avoided the appalling estate tax cut, which was added to the deal at the last minute, and to the surprise of almost every member of Congress I spoke to last week.
And, fifth, any deal made about a short term extension of tax cuts for the rich would be less likely to be taken as a precedent for the long term if it were done the right way.
So what we have been asking the Democrats in Congress to do is to say no to this deal, with the hope that this would embolden President Obama to stand up to Republicans and give him the leverage he needs to make a better deal.
Why we’re not opposed to any compromise
Now some of you would say that we should demand, as MoveOn and other organizations are doing, that Congress reject any compromise on extending tax cuts for the wealthy.
The whole US Action network, including Penn ACTION, has decided that we can’t and shouldn’t make that demand. Again there are policy and political reasons for our stance.
There are two elements of the compromise proposal that are very important to our country.
The first is the continuation of extended unemployment insurance. We’ve spent a lot of time at Penn ACTION organizing unemployed people to fight, successfully, for extended benefits. And, as I told you in our last email, our actions have made a huge difference. We took that stand because these benefits make a huge difference to millions of people. We have to stand on our principles, but our first principle is to reduce the suffering of people who, for no fault of their own, are bearing the brunt of our economic crisis.
Second, parts of the package President Obama negotiated—especially the extension of unemployment insurance and the enhanced earned income tax credit—will stimulate the economy and reduce unemployment. This will help reduce suffering from the recession and put Democrats in a better political position going into 2012. These elements of the legislation are not good enough both because spending is a more effective stimulus than most tax cuts and because the best parts of the legislation run out at the end of 2011. But we know Republicans and a few conservative Democrats will block this better policy.
The US Action affiliates are also reluctant to oppose any compromise because, frankly, we are differently positioned in Washington than some of the progressive groups that have been most adamantly against a compromise. We’re always at the table as labor, advocacy groups and member of Congress develop political strategies. So we have to be mindful of the range of concerns among progressives—and that means focusing on the immediate needs of the people we and other organizations represent as well as long term principles.
Last week, at the end of the meeting of Executive Directors of USA Action state affiliates, meetings, we fanned out on Capitol Hill to talk to a wide range of members of the House and Senate. Our efforts helped push members of the House to be more aggressive this week. But we also heard from many members of the House who told us how important it was to get a better compromise that served the immediate needs of the country without sacrificing our ideals. We agreed with them.
Take action today
What should be done in politics is not always as clear as we would like. This is one of those situations. I know that our attempt to find a way between rejecting a bad compromise and rejecting any compromise with the Republicans won’t satisfy everyone. And, it might be mistaken. These are tough and uncertain judgment calls and reasonable people can disagree about them. But as one of our supporters, I want you to know we have carefully considered our position and have chosen a path that makes sense to us given extensive consultation with our coalition partners and leading progressives in Congress.
And I also hope that, whether you agree with our position or not, you will take this opportunity to click here to let Senators Casey and Specter know that we want them, at the very least, to stand with their colleagues in the House and block a bad compromise while working to move tax and unemployment legislation that better represents our progressive ideals.
Marc
PS If you have comments on this email and our position, can I ask you to join a discussion on-line on our website at instead of responding to this email? I’m sure other people in Penn ACTION would like to hear your thoughts. Join our on-line community at www.pennaction.org and post your views as comments to this post.
Marc Stier
Executive Director
Penn ACTION
www.pennaction.org
marcstier@pennaction.org
(215) 880-6142