Today's Massa press conference started with the vets, worked its way through tax cuts, and ended with transparency. More after the break.
Massa began with a discussion of vets and their access to health care. Noting that Randy Kuhl had recently discussed veterans' benefits (and been quoted in the news), he said:
Every veteran I've spoken to is angered and frustrated by professional politicians [...] five years after starting this war, veterans are not getting the benefits promised to them. As a veteran, this is no surprise. Nothing is good enough for our veterans, and that's exactly what Randy Kuhl and George Bush are giving us. They brag about the increase in benefits, but it took a new party and new leadership to make it happen this year.
Massa used the example of a recent amendment to HR 3687, the Small Business Contracting Program Improvements Act, which he said would have hurt the ability of vets to start a new business. Massa noted that Kuhl had voted for the amendment, which was opposed by the American Legion. (Here are the relevant congressional record pages and vote.)
"The VFW and DAV gave Randy Kuhl a rating of somewhere in the vicinity of 7%," he said, and added that Kuhl just "hopes no one is watching"
Massa moved on to the alternative minimum tax, Massa noted that the recently-passed reduction to the AMT will affect 50,000 people in the 29th district, and it would have "closed a lot of the millionaire loopholes."
I asked Massa if he thought that Kuhl's charge that the bill would damage entrepreneurs was correct. He said that, for the 29th district, the 50,000 family members whose taxes would have been reduced would have seen significant increases in net family income.
The problem is multinational corporations, which donate millions to campaigns of people like Randy Kuhl, that didn't want the loopholes closed. We saw it with S-CHIP, where Randy Kuhl said he wouldn't support a [tax on tobacco]. 75% of his money came from corporate PACS last quarter.
Massa added, "How could anyone not want to give tax relief on AMT? It's a no-brainer, but they bring up these scarecrows."
I then asked Massa his take on Governor Spitzer's reversal on his drivers' license plan: "It's a shame that governors all over the country have to do the job that the Commander-in-Chief was hired to do."
It's a shame that George Bush has failed to secure our borders. It illustrates a fundamental reality that Washington is broken. They don't care about illegal immigration. People like Randy Kuhl want immigrants in the country [...] to work for sub-minimum wages. It has been five years since 9/11. This administration and its rubberstamps in Congress have failed to secure our borders.
I also asked Massa if he would follow the lead of Kirsten Gillibrand and publish his schedule on his website, and establish a grants central if he was elected.
I have great admiration for Kirsten Gillibrand. I especially like her idea that once a month her entire DC staff comes to the district and sets up tents, [calling it] "Washington on the Corner". [...] I would like to see Randy Kuhl publish his schedule. [...] When I'm in Congress, I'm going to see how open my schedule can be.
Massa said that he likes the idea of posting grants, and he wants to reach out to "find critical sources of funding that do not add to the deficit and increase quality of life in the district." However, he noted that pork-barrel spending must be brought under control, saying that Randy Kuhl is "more than happy to charge millions of dollars to our children, yet he won't raise the price of tobacco 25 cents and change."
I was the only person who asked questions on the call, but there were others on the call who did not identify themselves.
Now, question to the D&C Editorial Board: Is it your policy to publish cut and paste editorials, or is it too hard to do a simple Google search to verify whether the content of the editorial you have hasn't been published elsewhere?
To understand the dollar's current woes, you have to look elsewhere -- to monetary policy and economic management. The supply of dollars in the world is ultimately controlled by a single source, the Federal Reserve. With its aggressive easing in September, and again in late October, the Fed has signaled to the world that it cares more about creating dollars in the hope of limiting U.S. credit problems than it does about the dollar's value. Investors can see this, and so they are dumping dollars and looking for other assets to hold.When the Journal talks about "monetary excess", they're referring to the insanely low interest rates that were used to stimulate the economy earlier this decade. Those interest rates fueled the mortgage boom. As a Nobel-Prize-winning economist put it in this month's Vanity Fair:
[...]
Our current financial woes are in large part the result of previous monetary excess, which fueled a debt and asset boom that has become a banking bust. The way to emerge from the mess is to slowly but honestly work off the bad debt and write down the losses. The one sure way to make things worse is with more monetary excess.
[...] the job of economic stimulation fell to the Federal Reserve Board, which stepped on the accelerator in a historically unprecedented way, driving interest rates down to 1 percent. In real terms, taking inflation into account, interest rates actually dropped to negative 2 percent. The predictable result was a consumer spending spree. [...] Credit was shoveled out the door, and subprime mortgages were made available to anyone this side of life support. Credit-card debt mounted to a whopping $900 billion by the summer of 2007.This economist was the head of President Clinton's board of economic advisors, so Republicans might want to be skeptical about his views of the economy. But it looks to me that he and the Journal are saying the same thing: lowering interest rates is a trick that isn't going to work much longer.
A large portion [of the monetary crisis] will take decades to fix—and that’s assuming the political will to do so exists both in the White House and in Congress. Think of the interest we are paying, year after year, on the almost $4 trillion of increased debt burden—even at 5 percent, that’s an annual payment of $200 billion, two Iraq wars a year forever. Think of the taxes that future governments will have to levy to repay even a fraction of the debt we have accumulated.
Randy Kuhl, and other members of his party, would rather not think about it. If raising taxes is taboo, what's the alternative? This is the challenge for Republicans, and all their anti-tax rhetoric isn't going to change the fix we're in.
[...]the bill would treat certain income of partners from performing investment management services (called “carried interest”) as ordinary income for tax purposes, rather than as capital gains, which JCT estimates would increase revenues by $25.6 billion over the 2008-2017 period.Translation: private equity fund management fees that are being taxed at 15% will soon be taxed at 38%.
Greens say that under the new system, just like the old, much of the timber exported from Peru (officially $200m last year) is cut illegally, with the connivance of the authorities. They have won the support of the Democrats in the American Congress, who insisted on inserting a “timber annexe” in the free-trade agreement with Peru. This gives Peru 18 months to hire more forestry inspectors, set up a stronger forestry regulator and stiffen penalties for illegal logging. It will also allow American officials to halt suspicious shipments at the border, and to visit Peru to see where they come from.In addition to the notion that free trade "exports jobs", it also is criticized for enabling unsustainable exploitation of natural resources. If Peru actually enforces the treaty (a big "if" considering their track record), at least the latter criticism might be addressed.