Jared Polis' budget workshops this weekend.

[carolyn Bninski]

This is the info on Polis' budget workshops this weekend. Please pass
this on and come if you can. Because Jared is good on some social
issues, he is given a pass on his economic issues
which in many cases benefit the wealthy not ordinary people. Thanks
for getting it out to your contacts if you can.

Carolyn

This Saturday, July 14, Congressman Jared Polis will be having budget
workshops in Boulder, Westminster and Erie. The RMPJC is concerned
about Congressman Polis’ positions on the budget and the fact that he
has invited the Concord Coalition to lead the workshops. We encourage
you to come and express your opinions and to voice your support for
the People’s Budget put forth by the Congressional Progressive Caucus,
rather than the approach of the Concord Coalition which advocates
cutting Social Security and Medicare, austerity budgets, and
pro-corporate, anti-government policies. Below we have provided
information about the time and place of the budget workshops, an
article by Ron Forthofer on the People’s Budget, and information on
the Concord Coaliton. Your presence is important. Please note that
Rep. Polis’ website (http://polis.house.gov/) encourages people to
RSVP.

TIME AND PLACE OF JARED POLIS’ BUDGET WORKSHOPS

Saturday, July 14 Boulder Budget Workshop with Jared Polis. 11:00 AM
-1:00 PM University Memorial Center (UMC), Room 382, 1669 Euclid
Avenue Boulder 80302. RSVP: polis.house.gov - or call (303) 484-9596.
Includes public participation.

Saturday, July 14 Westminster Budget Workshop with Jared Polis 2:00
PM - 4:00 PM Front Range Community College, Rocky Mountain Room 3645
W. 112th Avenue Westminster 80516 RSVP: polis.house.gov - or call
(303) 484-9596.Includes public participation.

Saturday, July 14 Erie Budget Workshop with Jared Polis 5:00 PM -
7:00 PM Erie Community Center 450 Powers Street Erie. RSVP:
polis.house.gov - or call (303) 484-9596. .Includes public
participation.

Jared Polis: August Town Halls Aug. 14 - Boulder Aug. 16 - Lyons Aug.
18 - Louisville Aug. 18 - Superior Aug. 20 - Nederland Aug. 23 - Erie
Aug. 28 - Broomfield Aug. 29 - Lafayette Aug. 30 - Frisco

__________________________________

The People’s Budget
by Ron Forthofer
This Saturday, July 14th, Rep. Jared Polis is hosting an exercise on
the federal budget. The session will be on the CU Boulder campus from
11am to 1pm in UMC Room 382 and will be led by the Concord Coalition.
Rep. Polis’ website (http://polis.house.gov/) encourages people to
RSVP. The website also says that we need a fresh, new approach to
fixing the budget. However, the Concord Coalition, like several other
groups, fixates on the costs of Social Security and Medicare. Thus
this exercise may fail to offer a new approach.
We’re in luck though -- a fresh, new approach already exists. It’s
‘The People’s Budget’
(http://cpc.grijalva.house.gov/the-peoples-budget/). According to the
Congressional Progressive Caucus, “The People’s Budget eliminates the
deficit in 10 years, puts Americans back to work and restores our
economic competitiveness. The People’s Budget recognizes that in order
to compete, our nation needs every American to be productive, and in
order to be productive we need to raise our skills to meet modern
needs.”
Other excerpts include:
“Our Budget Creates a Fairer Tax System
• Ends the recently passed upper-income tax cuts and lets Bush-era tax
cuts expire at the end of 2012
• Extends tax credits for the middle class, families, and students
• Creates new tax brackets that range from 45% starting at $1 million
to 49% for $1 billion or more
• Implements a progressive estate tax
• Eliminates corporate welfare for oil, gas, and coal companies;
closes loopholes for multinational corporations
• Enacts a financial crisis responsibility fee and a financial
speculation tax on derivatives and foreign exchange”
“Our Budget Brings Our Troops Home
• Responsibly ends our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to leave America
more secure both home and abroad
• Cuts defense spending by reducing conventional forces, procurement,
and costly R&D programs”
Support for the People’s Budget
Erik Kain wrote in Forbes that: "instead of gutting programs for the
poor like Medicaid and Medicare, food stamps, and the new healthcare
law, the People’s Budget focuses on cuts in defense. It also doesn’t
scrap new financial regulations designed to at least partly stave off
another massive financial collapse like the one that put us in this
mess in the first place."
(http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/04/08/progressive-democrats-release-the-peoples-budget/)
This proposal is not perfect, but it represents a good starting point
for discussion. If the People’s Budget is not addressed, be sure to
raise it.
_____________________________

What is the Concord Coalition?

Ari Berman, in the November 7, 2011 edition of The Nation, wrote:

“Groups like the CRFB (Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget) and
the Concord Coalition, founded by former Congress members in the 1980s
and ‘90s, have long presented themselves as non-partisan,
penny-pinching critics of wasteful government spending, when really
they are anti-government, pro-corporate ideologues whose boards are
filled with K Street lobbyists and financial executives. The goal of
much of this austerity class is to see government funds redirected to
the private sector.”
http://www.thenation.com/article/164073/how-austerity-class-rules-washington#

Note that both the Concord Coalition and the CRFB receive major
funding from Pete Peterson. For more information about Peterson and
his groups, see
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peter_Peterson

Robert Kuttner’s January 7, 2007 article in the Boston Globe said:
“As for Social Security and Medicare, the Concord Coalition is an
ideological attack on social insurance masquerading as a concern for
the common good. The projected shortfall in Social Security, over the
long term, is about 1 percent of payroll. That's an adjustment
problem, not a terminal crisis. If you project it out into the
indefinite future, you can make the "unfunded liability" seem like a
very large number. On the other hand, as economist Dean Baker
observes, the Pentagon is going to spend huge sums of money over the
next century too, and nobody calls that obligation an unfunded
liability.” http://zzpat.tripod.com/cvb/jan_2007/the_concord_coalition.html
Another good piece on this topic by Kuttner is at
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/fiscal-follies_b_158938.html
Ezra Klein’s October 15, 2008 column included:

“The Concord Coalition -- and the editorial board consensus it powers
-- is not understood as a distinct school of thought. But Concord
Coalition types are ideologues of the sort that would make Cato and
EPI blush. They believe in deficit elimination the way Cato believes
in government reduction, the way EPI believes in raising median
incomes. It's not one of their things. It's the whole thing.”
“But the problem with the Concord Coalition is that it’s become the
Washington establishment ideology, an ideology that’s also an
extremely convenient posture, as it lets you bash both parties, and
thus it’s not recognized as an ideology at all. But it is, and at this
moment, it’s more pernicious than most, in part because it’s less
visible than the others.”
http://prospect.org/article/concord-coalition-ideologues

[Dave Anderson]

Carolyn, you do an enormous amount of work on all the issues. But not
all of us have given Jared Polis a pass on economic
issues. Those of us in the CD-2 chapter of Progressive Democrats of
America raised these issues when he first ran
in the Democratic Party primary (we ended up supporting a different
candidate). During the stupid budget showdown last
year, I sent out this email...


Dave Anderson
7/22/11


Jared Polis Finding New and Creative Tax Dodges for the Rich (that is,
himself and his friends)... three articles

I keep getting these emails from various progressive groups urging me
to pressure my U.S. Congressman Jared Polis on debt ceiling issue. Get
him to promise that he won't cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid
or any other essential safety net programs (which have suffered quite
a few cuts already). Get him to support the People's Budget of the
Congressional Progressive Caucas.

I find this somewhat annoying. Not the message from the progressive
groups. I have emailed him, phoned his office, posted on his Facebook
page a number of times on this. No, what I find annoying is having to
do it. You see Jared Polis claimed to be Mr. Superprogressive when he
ran in the Democratic primary and spent enormous amounts of money
unfairly trashing his main opponent, Joan FitzGerald, for being
corrupt. Polis is a progressive on many issues and he wrote an
interesting opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal arguing that the
federal government could raise revenues by legalizing marijuana,
instituting immigration reforms (now that is in the Progressive
Caucas' People's Budget) and legalizing Internet gambling. He has
played an excellent role on gay and lesbian civil rights issues.

But the three stories below (furnished by friends... including one who
supported him in the Democratic primary) are quite disturbing.

Dave Anderson



from the New Republic blog

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/92191/least-convincing-advocate-ever

Least Convincing Advocate Ever
Matthew Zeitlin
July 18, 2011 | 6:51 pm


An under-remarked upon aspect of the debt ceiling debate is the
so-called “carried interest” loophole. The way this works is that the
managers of a private equity, hedge, venture capital, or private real
estate fund pay the capital gains rate on the income they accrue from
the profits of an investment, even from the money that other people or
organizations or people put into the fund. Typically, the fee
structure for an investment fund is “two and twenty,” so that, if
Jonathan Chait gives me $100 and I then produce a 100 percent return
on this $100, I, the investment manager, would get $2 for managing the
fund and then $20 of “carried interest” on the gains of the fund. On
the $20, I would then pay the capital gains rate, not the income rate,
even though it is not my own capital—it is my management of other
people’s—that is generating the investment gains (investment managers
also contribute to these funds in order to have “skin in the game,”
though that’s immaterial to the carried-interest question). At one
point, it seems, the White House supporting treating carried interest
as normal income as part of a debt ceiling deal.

By way of Ben Smith (who describes the carried-interest tax treatment
as capital gains rates on “bonuses,” which does not strike me as quite
right) comes the not-exactly-surprising news that two House Democrats,
Mike Quigley and Jared Polis, have come out against adjusting the
taxation of carried interest so that it is taxed at the normal income
rate instead of the capital gains rate. Putting aside the policy
merits, it is hard to imagine a worse representative for the
Democratic opposition to adjusting carried-interest taxation than
Jared Polis. That’s because he’s incredibly rich. According to 2009
data from the Center for Responsive Politics (CPR), his net worth is
somewhere between $36 million and $285 million. Moreover, over Polis’s
career, three of the top-five sources of donations have been
“Securities & Investment,” what the CPR calls “Miscellaneous Finance”
and “Real Estate,” all of which are affected by the capital gains
treatment for carried interest.

Not only does it seem as though Polis is protecting his contributors;
it also seems he is an incredibly rich individual going out of his way
to protect other incredibly rich individuals. For example, according
to research done by Steven Kaplan and Joshua Rauh, “the top 25
individual hedge fund managers in the U.S. earned a combined total of
$5.2 billion, $6.3 billion and over $9 billion, respectively, in 2003,
2004 and 2005”and that “nine times as many Wall Street investors
earned in excess of $100 million as public company CEOs. In fact, the
top 25 hedge fund managers combined appear to have earned more than
all 500 S&P 500 CEOs combined.”

There may very well be good reasons to tax carried interest at the
capital gains rate, but Jared Polis’s open support for maintaining the
tax preference sure looks like protecting his own.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

from Citizens for Tax Justice

http://www.ctj.org/taxjusticedigest/archive/2011/06/what_is_congressman_jared_poli.php



What Is Congressman Jared Polis Thinking?

June 22, 2011 3:19 PM

The latest idea from Congressman Jared Polis (D-CO) is to protect the
ability of tax professionals who have thought up creative tax
avoidance schemes to get as much profit from these schemes as they
possibly can.

Rep. Polis first made a name for himself in the tax world during the
health care reform debate, when he drafted and circulated a letter
that was signed by several freshmen House Democrats who opposed the
surcharge that the Democratic caucus was considering to help finance
health care reform.

Recently, Polis joined a group of five lawmakers in cosponsoring an
amnesty for corporate tax dodgers, which he and other proponents call
a “repatriation holiday.”

Now Rep. Polis is going to bat for lawyers and accountants who want to
patent the creative tax avoidance schemes they have dreamed up. Tax
strategy patents have to be one of the worst ideas of the last couple
of decades. These patents allow tax professionals to obtain a patent
on a particular tax planning strategy and charge royalties to
taxpayers to allow them to use it.

The Senate has passed a major patent bill (H.R. 1249, the America
Invest Act) that includes a provision banning the issuance of patents
for tax strategies. Colorado representative Jared Polis has offered an
amendment changing the effective date of the ban to allow patents to
be issued in cases where the applications have already been filed.
About 160 tax strategy patent applications are pending. A spokesman
for the congressman said that it was a matter of protecting applicants
that had already revealed their strategies.

No one should be able to have a monopoly over part of the tax code and
taxpayers shouldn't have to pay royalties or defend themselves against
lawsuits for legally using the tax laws. None of these types of
patents should ever have been issued and there's no good reason to
allow the patent office to issue any more

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

from Citizens for Tax Justice

http://www.ctj.org/taxjusticedigest/archive/2011/05/three_republicans_and_three_de.php


Three Republicans and Three Democrats Introduce Amnesty for Corporate
Tax Dodgers


On Wednesday, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX) introduced a bill (H.R. 1834) to
provide a tax holiday for corporations that repatriate offshore
profits, similar to the widely panned repatriation holiday enacted in
2004. The holiday is essentially a temporary tax exemption for
corporate offshore profits, which some corporate leaders see as a
second best alternative to a permanent exemption.

Brady’s bill, like the 2004 measure, would reduce the federal
corporate income tax rate on repatriated offshore profits from 35
percent to a token 5.25 percent.

Most companies with offshore profits would not actually have to pay 35
percent even under current law if they repatriated them, because they
receive a credit for any foreign taxes that they have already paid.
The final section of CTJ’s recent report explains that the
repatriation holiday therefore provides the greatest benefits to those
corporations that shift their profits to countries with no corporate
income tax (tax havens).

A recent report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
summarizes the various studies concluding that profits repatriated
under the 2004 measure largely went to shareholders in the form of
increased dividends or stock buybacks rather than job creation.

Rehashed Trickle-Down Economics

Some business leaders say that increased dividends is itself a
positive result because it means increased income in the U.S.

The problem is that this tax cut comes at a huge cost and is funneled
to wealthy shareholders. Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation
recently found that a repeat of the 2004 repatriation holiday would
cost over $78 billion over the course of a decade. In other words,
the argument in favor of a repatriation holiday that boosts dividends
is simply a rehash of trickle-down economics.

Encouraging Companies to Shift More Profits and Jobs Offshore

But even if Congress wanted to encourage corporations to repatriate
their offshore profits (regardless of what those profits are used for)
the repatriation holiday fails at that goal in the long-run.

Enacting a second repatriation holiday will send a signal that
Congress is willing to call off almost the entire corporate income tax
on offshore profits every few years. This would actually encourage
companies to shift even more profits offshore to countries where they
are not taxed very much (tax havens) and then simply wait for the next
repatriation holiday.

Democrats Supporting Repatriation Holiday Have Long History of
Opposing Fair and Responsible Taxes

Brady’s bill has five co-sponsors, and the three Democrats among them
are likely to receive the most attention.

One is Jared Polis (D-CO) who famously drafted and circulated a letter
in 2009 that was signed by several freshmen House Democrats who
opposed the surcharge that the Democratic caucus was considering to
help finance health care reform.

The letter, which included factual inaccuracies, argued that higher
taxes on the rich hurt small businesses. The Democrats changed their
surcharge so that it would only affect millionaires, as a result of
this letter.

The other two Democratic co-sponsors are Jim Cooper (D-TN) and Jim
Matheson (D-UT). Both signed a letter last year calling for the
extension of the Bush tax cuts even for the richest taxpayers. Both
also signed a letter calling specifically for the extension of the
special low rate of 15 percent on capital gains and dividends, perhaps
the most indefensible provision among the Bush tax cuts.

Dave Anderson
7/22/11