By Peter Dreier and Donald Cohen. Published in the Los Angeles Times. August 14, 2010.
Alf Landon, the Kansas governor running as the Republican Party's 1936 presidential candidate, called it a "fraud on the working man" and "a cruel hoax." The New York Times, in an editorial, said it was "ill-considered" and "very questionable." Harper Sibley, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, warned that it would result in "more unemployment in the future, killing the goose that lays the golden eggs."
By Pat Garofalo. Published in Think Progress. August 10, 2010.
The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 are scheduled to expire at the end of the year, and President Obama, just as he did on the campaign trail, has proposed renewing the cuts for all but those in the highest two income tax brackets, allowing tax rates for the wealthiest two percent of Americans to reset to the rate at which they were under President Clinton.
Republicans, however, want to renew all of the cuts, and have been apoplectic about Obama’s plan, claiming that it will kill jobs and cripple small businesses. “This is about stopping a job-killing tax hike on small businesses during tough economic times,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT). “You can’t raise taxes in the middle of a weak economy without risking a double dip in the recession,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH).
If these warnings about double-dip recessions and job-killing tax increases sound vaguely familiar, that’s because they are. TaxVox yesterday pointed to a couple of quotes from Republicans in 1993 employing very similar rhetoric as today’s Republicans, with then Senate Minority leader Bob Dole (R-KS), claiming that “half the tax increase because of the rate increases is going to be paid by small business and they’re not rich,” which is the same false argument employed by today’s Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
By Peter Dreier and Elizabeth Shermer. Posted in the Huffington Post. July 20, 2010.
Perhaps as early as today (Tuesday), the Senate will pass legislation extending jobless benefits for 2.5 million Americans whose unemployment insurance has expired. The House already passed the extension, but Senate Republicans have blocked several attempts this year to do the same. Today, Carte Goodwin (appointed by West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin to replace Sen. Robert C Byrd, who died last month) will be sworn in and the Senate Democrats will have enough votes to stop a Republican filibuster.
By Peter Dreier and Jake Blumgart. Published in the Huffington Post. April 20, 2010.
This is the year of the soda tax.
Last year, the Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, and the American Beverage Association (ABA) spent an unprecedented $37.5 million lobbying Capitol Hill to quash a proposal in Congress to tax soft drinks as part of a plan to pay for health care reform.
The Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906 is today remembered as one of the highlights of Progressive reform. In an urbanizing and industrializing era when Americans no longer lived near the sources of their food and in which unregulated patent medicine promised miraculous cures, this law offered an assurance of safety that consumers, no matter how vigilant, could not provide on their own.
By Tim Fernholz. The American Prospect. September 9, 2009.
I've got a story today on how the Chamber of Commerce and other business interests are trying to kill the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency with 'death panel' tactics -- exaggerating the affects of the legislation and making it seem as though it would harm ordinary Americans. But these kinds of moves aren't unusual. In the 1970s, there was momentum toward creating a Consumer Protection Agency that would act, essentially, as a kind of clearinghouse for consumer complaints, rather than an actual regulator with enforcement powers. But as Lawrence Glickman chronicles, its opponents also reacted with outrageous rhetoric: