"Because of the budget shenanigans, NIH has been forced to cut or delay funding to almost all new projects.... And just to be clear: these are only the best projects. 80-85% of projects submitted to NIH, many of them excellent, don’t make the cut because NIH just doesn’t have enough funding for them....

For readers who might think I’m asking for a lot, think again. The entire NIH budget comes to about $31 billion, which supports research on hundreds of diseases. The total U.S. budget last year was 3,729 billion (3.7 trillion), so the NIH budget is less than 1% of the total. A 10% cut from the NIH budget (the so-called “sequester” plan) would save 0.008% of the federal budget. This matters not a whit in the overall budget debate – but it would be a huge blow to biomedical research, crippling some research programs for years to come.

And for those who want to look at this from an economic perspective , NIH funding is a terrific investment. A nonpartisan study in 2000 concluded:

“Publicly funded research in general generates high rates of return to the economy, averaging 25 to 40 percent a year.”


So I’m asking the leaders of Congress (yes, I’m talking to you, Congressman John Boehner and Senator Harry Reid) to put aside the fighting for a few minutes. Bring up the NIH budget and pass it. Don’t cut it by 10% (the “sequester” plan), which would be devastating to biomedical research and would save only 0.008% of the budget. Don’t bundle it into some omnibus “grand bargain” that everyone knows is neither grand nor a bargain."

Until 1975, wages nearly always accounted for more than 50 percent of the nation’s G.D.P., but last year wages fell to a record low of 43.5 percent. Since 2001, when the wage share was 49 percent, there has been a steep slide.

“....We went almost a century where the labor share was pretty stable and we shared prosperity,” says Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard. “What we’re seeing now is very disquieting.” .... The share of wages going to the top 1 percent climbed to 12.9 percent in 2010, from 7.3 percent in 1979.....

From 1973 to 2011, worker productivity grew 80 percent, while median hourly compensation, after inflation, grew by just one-eighth that amount, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research group. And since 2000, productivity has risen 23 percent while real hourly pay has essentially stagnated. Meanwhile, it’s been a lost economic decade for many households. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, median income for working-age households (headed by someone under age 65) slid 12.4 percent from 2000 to 2011, to $55,640. During that time the American economy grew more than 18 percent.

Emmanuel Saez, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley, found that the top 1 percent of households garnered 65 percent of all the nation’s income growth from 2002 to 2007, when the recession hit. Another study found that one-third of the overall increase in income going to the richest 1 percent has resulted from the surge in corporate profits.

MANY economists say the stubbornly high jobless rate and the declining power of labor unions are also important factors behind the declining wage share, reducing the leverage of workers to demand higher wages. Unions represent just 7 percent of workers in corporate America, one-quarter the level in the 1960s.

Here's a good plan: no cuts to social programs, cut the military by 50%. This will give us MORE THAN DOUBLE the revenues of the sequester, and simply reign in our military spending to the level it was at before we had to spend trillions on a manhunt.




Then we can raise taxes on corporations, and make them pay what Americans pay (they are paying only 12% in taxes, and some are making profits in the hundreds of billions, yet pay no taxes)

We can raise the short term capital gains to the same rate as Americans (their rate was cut to 20% from 39.5% in the last deal).

We can eliminate loopholes that allow large corporations and the wealthy to avoid more than $100 billion in taxes every year by setting up offshore tax shelters

We must also end tax breaks for companies shipping American jobs overseas. THAT'S a real no-brainer!

We can impose a STET tax (securities transaction tax) on securities trades to recoup money from high frequency trading.

"Despite such terminology as "fiscal cliff" and "debt ceiling," the great debate taking place in Washington now has relatively little to do with financial issues. It is all about ideology. It is all about economic winners and losers in American society. It is all about the power of Big Money. It is all about the soul of America.

In America today, we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on earth, and more inequality than at any time period since 1928. The top 1 percent owns 42 percent of the financial wealth of the nation, while, incredibly, the bottom 60 percent own only 2.3 percent. One family, the Walton family of Wal-Mart, owns more wealth than the bottom 40 percent of Americans. In terms of income distribution in 2010, the last study done on this issue, the top 1 percent earned 93 percent of all new income while the bottom 99 percent shared the remaining 7 percent.


.....

My Republican colleagues say that the deficits are a spending problem, not a revenue problem. .........

Republicans like Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who say the revenue debate is over don't want you to consider these facts:

Federal revenue today, at 15.8 percent of GDP, is lower today than it was 60 years ago. During the last year of the Clinton administration, when we had a significant federal surplus, federal revenue was 20.6 percent of GDP.
Today corporate profits are at an all-time high, while corporate income tax revenue as a percentage of GDP is near a record low.
In 2011, corporate revenue as a percentage of GDP was just 1.2 percent -- lower than any other major country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, including Britain, Germany, France, Japan, Canada, Norway, Australia, South Korea, Switzerland, Norway, Italy, Ireland, Poland, and Iceland.
In 2011, corporations paid just 12 percent of their profits in taxes (note: you and I are paying much more), the lowest since 1972.
In 2005, one out of four large corporations paid no income taxes at all while they collected $1.1 trillion in revenue over that one-year period.

We know where the Republicans are coming from. What about the Democrats? Will President Obama fulfill his campaign pledge to "protect the middle class" or will he surrender to right-wing blackmail? Will Democrats in the House and Senate stand with the vast majority of our citizens and such organizations as AARP, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, the AFL-CIO, the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and every other veterans' organization in the fight against cuts to Social Security and veterans' programs, or will they agree to a disastrous corporate-backed "chained CPI" concept which makes major benefit cuts to those programs and raises taxes on low-income workers?

The simple truth is there are relatively easy ways to deal with the deficit crisis -- without attacking the elderly, the children the sick or the poor.

For example, we have got to eliminate loopholes in the tax code that allow large corporations and the wealthy to avoid more than $100 billion in taxes every year by setting up offshore tax shelters......

Further, we must also end tax breaks for companies shipping American jobs overseas. .......

We must also recognize that Wall Street recklessness caused the economic crisis, and it has a responsibility to reduce the deficit. Establishing a 0.03 percent Wall Street speculation fee, similar to what we had from 1914-1966.........

We are entering a pivotal moment in the modern history of our country. Do the elected officials in Washington stand with ordinary Americans -- working families, children, the elderly, the poor -- or will the extraordinary power of billionaire campaign contributors and Big Money prevail?..."

Everything You Need to Know About the Crazy Plan to Save the Economy With a Trillion-Dollar Coin
By Matthew O'Brien
.....................

Congress passed a law in 1997, later amended in 2000, that gives the Secretary of the Treasury the authority to mint platinum coins, and only platinum coins, in whatever denomination and quantity he or she wants. That could be $100, or $1,000, or ... $1 trillion.

.................


Last question. You don't seriously think this is a good idea, do you? If ever there was something that tells the world we're a banana republic, it's --

Choosing to default on our obligations. There is nothing crazier than that. If it it's a choice between defaulting on our obligations, and minting a trillion-dollar coin, I say mint the coin. In an ideal world, Obama would end the platinum coin loophole in return for the House GOP forever ending the debt ceiling, as Josh Barro proposed, but I'll settle for anything that involves us paying our bills as we promised.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-crazy-plan-to-save-the-economy-with-a-trillion-dollar-coin/266839/

Public prefers cutting defense spending: Reuters/Ipsos poll

Wed Mar 9, 2011 2:47pm EST

(Reuters) - A majority of Americans prefer cutting defense spending to reduce the federal deficit rather than taking money from public retirement and health programs, a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday showed.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/09/us-usa-budget-poll-idUSTRE7286DW20110309

A nationwide survey conducted in part by the Center for Public Integrity found strong popular support for deep cuts to the defense budget. Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP file

May 10, 2012 Updated: 8:43 pm, September 5, 2012

Key findings:

Americans want to cut the defense budget deeply to help deal with the deficit, more than they want to cut other programs or raise taxes.

There is broad consensus on this goal, including large majorities of Republicans, Democrats, young, old, males and females.

Around three-quarters of Americans think spending should be cut for air power, ground forces, and naval forces.

Nuclear arms were given the biggest proportional hit, while ground forces took the biggest dollar hit; special forces had the most support.

More than eighty percent of Americans are convinced “there is a lot of waste in the national defense budget.”

While politicians, insiders and experts may be divided over how much the government should spend on the nation’s defense, there’s a surprising consensus among the public about what should be done: They want to cut spending far more deeply than either the Obama administration or the Republicans.

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2012/05/10/8856/public-overwhelmingly-supports-large-defense-spending-cuts

In December, Reuters asked Americans which of six budget items we could “afford to cut back on.” Defense was the most commonly selected option, outpolling education, Medicare, and Social Security.

In February, CBS/New York Times interviewers asked a national sample “which of the following programs would you be willing to change in order to cut spending?” Thirteen percent picked Social Security, 15 percent picked Medicare, and 52 percent picked the military.

A simultaneous National Journal survey offered respondents five areas—Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, Medicaid, and defense—and asked whether, in each case, “spending should be cut back a lot, some, or not at all to help reduce the deficit.” Defense was the only target on which an affirmative majority agreed, with 60 percent endorsing cuts and only 35 percent opposing them.

In April, an academic consortium headed by the Program for Public Consultation asked U.S. adults whether, in view of the federal deficit, Congress should raise some taxes, “reduce national defense spending,” or “reduce non-defense spending.” Respondents were invited to choose any combination of these options. Twenty-seven percent endorsed tax hikes. Fifty percent endorsed cuts in non-defense spending. Sixty-two percent endorsed defense cuts.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/frame_game/2012/08/obama_s_ad_against_military_spending_have_polls_shifted_on_the_defense_budget_.html

“The idea that Americans would want to keep total defense spending up so as to preserve local jobs is not supported by the data,” said PPC director Steven Kull. On average, Democrats supported a Pentagon cut of 22%, while Republicans wanted a cut of 12%. http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/disconnect-public-wants-cuts-in-defense-spending-democratic-and-republican-leaders-dont?news=844813