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Saturday, 26 November 2011 |
Congress' failed deficit-cutting supercommittee has faded away, but the pressure on lawmakers to quickly confront a stack of expensive economic issues is only growing. Before leaving town for Christmas and New Year's, lawmakers face decisions on whether to renew payroll tax cuts that have meant an average of nearly $1,000 for more than 120 million families this year. Congressalso must determine whether to extend unemployment benefits for millions of long-term jobless Americans. Without action, both expire Jan. 1.
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Wednesday, 02 November 2011 |
By Judith Samuelson for Huffington Post
Here's the challenge. To our core, going right back to the Dutch East India Company's role in settling America's largest city, we are a country that bleeds commerce and industry. A generation or two ago, it was a business association, the Committee for Economic Development, that called for and led the post-World War II transition from production of war machinery to an economy able to employ service men as they returned from the front. Business leadership, using its influential voice and collaborating across the country, averted another recession and propelled a period of expansion from which many of us are still benefiting.
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Wednesday, 02 November 2011 |
By Igor Volsky
A commenter noted that I was wrong to liken the Domenici/Rivlin "premium support" plan to Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) privatization scheme and suggested that the two are more different than I let on. That's probably true for several reasons, as Alice Rivlin herself explained before the Super Committee yesterday:
1) Under Domenici/Rivlin, future enrollees would have an option of staying in the existing fee-for-service Medicare program, while Ryan would force tomorrow's seniors to choose a private plan from an exchange.
2) The "premium support" that seniors receive to purchase coverage in Domenici/Rivlin will initially be tied to the second highest bid plan or fee-for-service, whichever is lower, and grow at the rate of GDP+1 percent. Ryan's credit would remain independent of actual plan bids and would only grow the government contribution at the rate of inflation. Both indicators fail to keep up with health care spending, so seniors would have to pay the difference between the support and the actual cost of the plan out of pocket. But unlike Ryan, Domenici/Rivlin exempt lower income beneficiaries and dual eligibles are able to use Medicaid funding to pay for Part B premiums.
3) Domenici/Rivlin are likely to go further in regulating the private plans - and what kinds of benefits they can offer - than Ryan.
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Thursday, 20 October 2011 |
Today the business leaders of the Committee for Economic Development and the bipartisan Americans for Campaign Reform released a new poll showing that almost 2/3 of likely Republican Primary voters in the critical swing state of NH strongly disagree with the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United that political spending by corporations and unions is a form of free speech protected under the First Amendment. |
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Wednesday, 19 October 2011 |
Ari Berman
In September the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a bipartisan deficit-hawk group based at the New America Foundation, held a high-profile symposium urging the Congressional "supercommittee" to "go big" and approve a $4 trillion deficit reduction plan over the next decade, which is well beyond its $1.2 trillion mandate. The hearing began with an alarming video of top policy-makers describing the national debt as "the most serious threat that this country has ever had" (Alan Simpson) and "a threat to the whole idea of self-government" (Mitch Daniels). If the debt continues to rise, predicted former New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici, there would be "strikes, riots, who knows what?" A looming fiscal crisis was portrayed as being just around the corner.
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Monday, 17 October 2011 |
By Jonathan Capehart for the Washington Post
New Hampshire-based Americans for Campaign Reform had me up last Thursday to moderate rather interesting panel, “Solving our fiscal crisis: What’s wrong with Washington?” Six panelists took on an aspect of what’s wrong with Washington, but it was two knowledgeable gentlemen affiliated with the nonpartisan groupNo Labels who put the scope of the problem and its impact on the nation into perspective separately from a political and fiscal angle.
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Friday, 14 October 2011 |
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Conservative senators are urging the debt-cutting supercommittee to raise the eligibility age for Medicare and require many retirees to pay more. The top Senate Republican on defense is endorsing some of President Barack Obama's proposed benefit curbs for the military. Even farm state lawmakers are offering cuts to agriculture subsidies and food programs.
Friday's deadline for lawmakers to offer ideas to Congress' bipartisan 12-member panel brought out a flood of advice. Some lawmakers offered up sacred cows. Others just restated political talking points.
Whether it will help the supercommittee make actual progress remains to be seen.
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Thursday, 06 October 2011 |
By Jamie Merisotis and Charles Kolb for the Christian Science Monitor
In fact, the current generation of college-age Americans is on its way to being less educated than their parents - a shameful first in America's history.
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Wednesday, 05 October 2011 |
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CED President Charles Kolb was a guest on MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan Show on Oct. 5. The topic was the CED effort to curb corporate funds going into political campaigns and unregulated, and unreported, "Super PAC" contributions.
Click here to view the segment » |
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Tuesday, 27 September 2011 |
By Dave Levinthal for Politico
An alliance of business executives is posing a challenge to its corporate brethren: stop giving out anonymous cash.
The nonpartisan Committee on Economic Development wants companies to be upfront about their political activity, even though new laws have made it easier for them to do it under the radar. The group, made of about 200 executives, has also called on Congress to pass new disclosure laws.
"Over the last decade, it's fair to say that corporate America has not had the greatest reputation," Charles Kolb, president of the group said Monday afternoon at a rollout of its campaign campaign at the Washington Court Hotel. "Stick with what you do best. Stick to producing goods and services for this country." Read more...
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