Jonathan Kantrowitz

I wish it didn’t, but in this case it’s not his, and it shows incredible early support.

From Chris Murphy:

Powered by 1,600 contributors – 1,100 of which gave $100 or less – we surpassed all of our fundraising goals for the first 10 weeks of the campaign for U.S. Senate.

When we file our campaign finance reports with the Federal Election Commission, we’ll show that we’ve raised $1.1 million in just over two months.

But the amazing part is how we got there:

* 1,600 people donated, and 1,100 of them were small donors who gave $100 or less
* 94% of the contributions we received were from individual donors
* 85% of our contributions came from Connecticut residents

Truer words were never spoken:

Beyond Austerity by William Mitchell in The Nation

With some well-known exceptions (for example, Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman and William Greider), progressives think that advocating fiscal constraint makes them appear responsible. What they fail to see is that their economic stance largely undermines their capacity to pursue enlightened social and environmental policies.

What Is to Be Done?

Austerity is not the only alternative. The major economies are suffering from a collapse of private spending and a massive overhang of private debt. Consumers won’t spend if they fear unemployment; firms won’t hire and produce if sales are flat. Persistently high unemployment means that our economies are forgoing massive production and income-earning opportunities. Unemployment also causes other problems, such as family breakdown, increased alcohol and substance abuse, increased crime rates and community dislocation. An economy with high unemployment is unhealthy. Austerity will worsen unemployment. It beggars belief that a government entrusted with advancing the well-being of its citizens would deliberately introduce policies that force people into joblessness.

As long as private spending is subdued, the greatest need is to expand budget deficits. That’s the only way the advanced economies will drive growth fast enough to absorb the huge pool of unemployed. Inflation is low, and there is considerable slack in the economy, which can be brought back into productive use by further government stimulus. The current obsession with inflation control and austerity (using unemployment to discipline wage demands) is very costly.

In advocating further fiscal stimulus, I would use the increased public spending to directly target job creation. I would introduce an open-ended public employment program—a Job Guarantee—that offers a job at a living (minimum) wage to anyone who wants to work but cannot find employment. These jobs would “hire off the bottom,” in the sense that minimum wages are not in competition with the market-sector wage structure. By not competing with the private market, the Job Guarantee would avoid the inflationary tendencies of old-fashioned Keynesianism, which attempted to maintain full capacity utilization by “hiring off the top” (making purchases at market prices and competing for resources with all other demand elements). Job Guarantee workers would enjoy stable incomes, and their increased spending would boost confidence throughout the economy and underpin a private-spending recovery. There is no reason the government could not afford this program. The labor is available for work, and the government can easily supply the jobs. There were no questions asked when the government, in the early days of the crisis, instantly provided billions for the banks. Let me repeat: the government has no financial constraint on its spending and should immediately allocate funds to a massive job-creation program.

Sustainable growth requires that the private sector save overall and avoid ever-increasing levels of indebtedness. It is possible that strong net exports could allow high levels of domestic activity with both private saving and the government’s budget in surplus. But that situation cannot hold for all countries. Normally, budget deficits will be required. Progressives should stop apologizing for them.

Complete report

The federal Earned Income Tax Credit, a tax credit for low- and moderate-income working families, has been widely hailed for its success in increasing work and lowering welfare receipt, reducing poverty, and making the tax code fairer.

President Ronald Reagan called the EITC “the best antipoverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress.”* Similarly, Mark Everson, who served as IRS commissioner under President George W. Bush, called the EITC “one of the government’s most successful anti-poverty programs.”**

The research bears them out. In a paper issued several years ago, Janet Holtzblatt, then an official in the Treasury’s Office of Tax Analysis and a widely recognized expert on the EITC, reviewed the research on the EITC’s impact on work and poverty. Holtzblatt reported:

Several recent studies have found that the EITC encourages work, as well as alleviates poverty…. Grogger (2003) concludes that the EITC may be the “single most important” policy parameter for explaining recent declines in welfare and increases in work and earnings among female-headed families. Meyer and Rosenbaum (2001) found that more than 60 percent of a nine percentage point increase in the employment of single mothers between 1984 and 1986 was due to expansions of the EITC. Dickert, Houser, and Scholz (1995) estimated that expansions of the EITC between 1993 and 1996 would induce more than half a million families to move from welfare to work. Eissa and Liebman (1996) find that the EITC expansion in the Tax Reform Act of 1986 significantly increased labor force participation among single mothers, especially less educated women.***

Similarly, in the mid-1990s, at a time when Congress was considering proposals to cut the EITC, two of the nation’s leading conservative economists rallied to the EITC’s defense. In a 1996 Wall Street Journal column, conservative Harvard economist and then Journal contributing editor Robert J. Barro observed: “There exists a serious program in the form of the earned income tax credit that actually helps the working poor in a way that promotes work and discourages welfare. The EITC was originally a Republican idea — started by the Ford administration in 1975 and expanded by the Reagan administration during the glorious 1980s and the Bush administration in 1990. . . . Mr. Clinton’s support is not sufficient reason to regard the program as mistaken. In fact, it has a well conceived structure that ought to be retained and perhaps expanded.”****

Similarly, in a 1996 Business Week article, Nobel laureate Gary S. Becker praised the EITC for aiding poor families without reducing employment, discouraging work, or increasing reliance on public assistance. Becker wrote that the EITC “rewards rather than penalizes poor families with working members. . . . Empirical studies confirm the prediction of economic theory that the EITC increases the labor force participation and employment of people with low wages because they need to work in order to receive this credit.” Becker also applauded the EITC for being “fully available to families with both parents present, even where only one works and the other cares for their children [i.e., for being available to low-income working families with stay-at-home mothers].”*****

________________

* The Chicago Tribune, October 23, 1986.

** Testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, March 9, 2006.

*** Janet Holtzblatt, “Trade-offs Between Targeting and Simplicity: Lessons from the U.S. and British Experiences with Refundable Tax Credits,” 2004.

**** Robert J. Barro, “Workfare Still Beats Welfare,” Wall Street Journal, May 21, 1996.

***** Gary S. Becker, “How to End Welfare ‘As We Know It’ — Fast,” Business Week, June 3, 1996.

A new study, “Paid Sick Days: Measuring the Small Costs for Connecticut Businesses,” was released yesterday by the Economic Policy Institute, a non-partisan Washington DC think tank to examine the cost to businesses of providing paid sick days. Their research found that the cost to businesses of a paid sick leave policy is minimal — far smaller than some opponents of the legislation have claimed.

The study’s key finding is that the cost to an employer of providing paid sick days amounts to just 0.19% (less than two tenths of one percent) of sales, on average.

“In my 14 years in human resource management, I’ve often encouraged clients to implement paid sick leave policies. They’re often surprised at how inexpensive such leave turns out to be,” said Scott Macdonald, an employer-side labor/employment lawyer and HR management consultant from Middletown. “This new data confirms what I’ve long known — that providing paid sick days is inexpensive for employers, and the benefits for both employees and for businesses far outweigh the cost, especially in terms of productivity gains, enhanced employee morale, and decreased turnover.” Scott Macdonald is also a member of the Small Business Network for Paid Sick Days.

“Lobbyists who claim paid sick days legislation is costly simply haven’t done the math,” said Jon Green, Executive Director of Connecticut Working Families. “Darden Restaurant Group, owners of the Olive Garden and Red Lobster, made nearly $400 million in profit last year. To claim they ‘can’t afford’ a fraction of a penny on the dollar to protect the health and well-being of their employees and customers is absurd,” said Jon Green, Executive Director of Connecticut Working Families.

Legislation to create a basic workplace standard for paid sick days has passed out of the Connecticut General Assembly’s Labor Committee. The legislation would require large businesses with 50 or more employees to allow employees to earn up to 5 paid sick days per year. This year, advocates say they are cautiously optimistic because of the support of Governor Dan Malloy.

Well worth reading the whole thing for the gory details an great links:

Today, all 47 Senate Republicans introduced a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget. Presumably, this is the amendment that Republicans plan to demand as their price for increasing the federal debt limit. Of course, simply refusing the raise the debt limit would balance the budget overnight — the nation would default on its debt and we would be plunged into the worst fiscal crisis in history, but the budget would be balanced. I have previously explained the idiocy of right wing advocates of debt default and the idiocy of a balanced budget amendment. However, the new Republican balanced budget proposal is especially dimwitted…

This is really mind boggling in its insanity… In short, this is quite possibly the stupidest constitutional amendment I think I have ever seen. It looks like it was drafted by a couple of interns on the back of a napkin. Every senator cosponsoring this POS should be ashamed of themselves.

Please notice the date on yesterday’s post.

Leaves Divisive Social Issues and Overheated Political Rhetoric Behind

In the face of a looming deficit and a challenging economic climate, the Connecticut Republicans have decided to focus on finding real solutions to our state’s most pressing problems. Ending a pattern of exclusively launching personal attacks on our governor and relying on divisive and worn-out political rhetoric, the GOP has decided to begin working constructively to create jobs and balance the budget.

After realizing that it is impossible to get the deficit under control simply by slashing the safety net and eliminating key social programs, Republicans are now willing to have respectful conversations about shared sacrifice rather than using the politics of fear to create hysteria around the Governor’s budget.

As a sign of their new approach, the CT GOP and all Republican elected officials have recently condemned disgusting and ignorant remarks by one of their own candidates, Peter Schiff, when he compared a .2% tax increase on our wealthiest citizens to “getting raped.” Our state will greatly benefit from a grown-up dialogue about pragmatic tax policies and sensible budget priorities in order to put us on firm financial footing.

And instead of having Speaker John Boehner – the leader of the Republicans’ efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency and allow insurance companies to once again deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions – headline their annual fundraiser next week, the CT GOP decided to use the event to get serious about solving Connecticut’s fiscal and economic challenges. The Republicans recognize that continuing to rely on divisive social issues and cheap political rhetoric will not move this state in the right direction and have decided to re-direct their efforts to creating jobs and responsibly controlling our deficit.

Holding signs with slogans like “No Boogers In My Burgers” and “No Coughing in our Coffee,” the EverybodyBenefits.org campaign for paid sick days legislation held a rally outside McDonald’s at 1900 Fairfield Ave in Bridgeport to highlight the need for paid sick days legislation to protect both the public health and low wage workers.

“McDonald’s made close to $5 billion last year,” said Lindsay Farrell, legislative director for Connecticut Working Families. “Is it worth pinching a few pennies to deny people the time off they need to recover, and instead have them come to work sick and risk our health?”

Hundreds of thousands of workers in Connecticut lack paid sick days, with most concentrated in sectors that require a high level of public interaction, like food service, retail and health care.

“I’ve seen plenty of sick students in the Bridgeport schools, coming to school when they should be at home recovering or even at the doctor. But they’re at school because they’re parents couldn’t miss a day of work to take care of them.” said Maria Periera, a member of the Bridgeport Board of Education from the Working Families Party. “It’s not fair to those students or to their classmates who they might infect.”

Periera added that she herself had spent three years working at McDonald’s. “They may like to pretend employees never get sick, but I can tell you from experience, they do. And it’s not healthy for any one,” Pereira said.

Especially in difficult times like these no one should have to choose between their job and their health, advocates say. But when workers come to work sick it threatens not only the health of those workers, but also the public health.

McDonald’s, which made $5 billion in profit last year, has a policy advocates call unhealthy and unfair, by failing to provide paid sick days to most of their employees. Nationally, about 4 in 5 food service workers lacks paid sick days. The results are startling and unhealthy.

One recent study published by the Journal of Food Protection found that one in eight food service workers reported coming to work sick twice in the last year, with symptoms including vomiting and diarrhea. The study also found that workers with paid sick days came to work sick much less often.

During major health epidemics, the lack of paid sick days exacerbates the crisis. During the H1N1 (swine flu) outbreak of 2009, data show that 8 million Americans came to work while infected with the virus, infecting another 7 million people in the process.

Legislation to create a basic workplace standard for paid sick days has passed out of the Connecticut General Assembly’s Labor Committee. The legislation would require large businesses with 50 or more employees to allow employees to earn up to 5 paid sick days per year. This year, advocates say they are cautiously optimistic because of the support of Governor Dan Malloy.