Going Back on the Deal
Last year, Republicans refused to renew unemployment benefits unless the high-end Bush-era tax cuts were preserved. After the White House agreed to keep the tax cuts through 2012, they agreed to extend federal jobless benefits through 2011. Now, they want to renege.
The House Ways and Means Committee, on a strict Republican vote, recently passed a bill to let states use federal jobless money for other purposes, including tax cuts for business. This is a very bad idea at a time when the national jobless rate is 9 percent, and higher than that in 22 states. The $31 billion in yet to be paid federal benefits is desperately needed.
State unemployment benefits end after six months. Federal benefits, which average $293 a week, then kick in. In better times six months may be a reasonable period to expect a laid-off worker to find another job. But not these days. Right now, more than four million families depend on extended federal benefits to get by.
The bill would let states use the federal jobless money to pay debt that would otherwise have to be paid by raising business taxes. In particular, the bill could get businesses off the hook for increases that will be needed to repay $41 billion in federal loans that states took to cover shortfalls in their unemployment funds.
The tax increases would be largely automatic, because if a state does not pay back its loans within two years — which states are hard pressed to do — the federal government is required to recoup the money by raising federal unemployment taxes on employers in the state.
That leads to two important points. No one thinks it is a good idea to hit businesses with big tax increases when the economy is fragile. Nor is it necessary to stiff jobless workers to give businesses tax relief. Instead, Congress could delay and reduce the taxes until the economy is stronger, by forgiving loans for states that rebuild their funds — a
fix detailed in a Senate bill by Richard Durbin, Democrat of Illinois.
Republicans, however, aren’t looking to restore the funds to long-term solvency; they want to cut taxes no matter what the cost. And their business constituents — who have resisted paying unemployment taxes in good times as well as bad — don’t want to pay more taxes into the system, even after the economy has recovered.
That’s where the House bill comes in. Its main proponent, Representative Dave Camp, the Ways and Means chairman, says that under the bill, states can keep paying full federal benefits. But he also says they need the “flexibility” to prevent “job-killing tax hikes.”
Arkansas, Florida, Michigan and Missouri have passed their own laws this year that will cut business taxes by reducing the standard 26 weeks of state benefits, starting in 2012. Other states are also weighing cutbacks.
The Ways and Means bill has little chance of passing the Senate with the Democrats in charge. But it provides dangerous fuel to antitax efforts in the states. And it presages more fights to come in Washington.
Joblessness is not expected to fall much this year, so come 2012, federal benefits will need to be renewed. Republicans are sure to resist, even though the arguments for renewal are sound: the benefits bolster the economy by supporting consumption and they are a humane response to economic calamity. There are better ways to help the states and bolster business during tough times. Reducing unemployment benefits is the wrong choice.
Governor Cuomo’s List
Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York began barnstorming the state last week to rally support for three of his campaign promises: ethics reform, same-sex marriage and, unfortunately, his misguided cap on property taxes. He advised voters upstate to tell their representatives: “pass these bills or don’t come home.”
The Legislature plans to end work on June 20. Lawmakers should not be allowed to show their faces — anywhere — if they fail to pass serious ethics reform legislation to end Albany’s corrupt pay-to-play culture.
The state needs an independent ethics commission to oversee both the Legislature and the governor. Self-policing — the Legislature’s method — clearly does not do the job. Outside work by legislators can no longer be a state secret, especially lawyers whose firms have business with the state. Campaign finance laws need to be tightened — and enforced, with real penalties that rise sharply the longer they are not paid. Legislators from both houses are stalling on these vital reforms.
Lawmakers should be shunned if they fail to approve same-sex marriage before the end of the term. Polls show that most New Yorkers support marriage equality, and in recent weeks, two dozen top New York business leaders have spoken out forcefully on the need to pass this bill. There can be no more excuses.
Mr. Cuomo is right to push both of these issues hard. And we would urge him to start barnstorming for two more: creating an independent redistricting commission and strengthening regulations that limit rent increases for more than one million apartments in New York City. Redistricting must be done this year; rent regulations — essential protection for middle- and working-class New Yorkers — expire in mid-June.
At the same time Mr. Cuomo should drop his campaign to cap local property taxes. This one is popular with local homeowners and in many towns taxes are burdensomely high. At a time when Albany is cutting back on education aid and other support for communities, a cap would mean many towns would have to slash basic services — teachers, police officers and firefighters.
The argument that voters can always choose to override the cap is flawed. The only places where that is likely to happen are wealthy communities.
Mr. Cuomo and the Legislature have a month before the summer recess — not a lot of time to get things right. The state needs ethics reform, redistricting reform and marriage equality. The city needs rent regulations. What isn’t needed is a property-tax cap.
The Rush to Secret Money
President Obama should waste no more time and sign an executive order requiring government contractors to disclose any checks they write to the newly legal troughs of secret campaign donations. House Republicans, who in the past loudly supported such transparency, are holding hearings to push the absurd claim that Mr. Obama is aiming to violate donors’ free speech.
Government contractors are already required to disclose their spending through political action committees. The order would extend that requirement, and transparency, to money going to new groups shrouding donors and their true political goals.
Voters certainly have a right to know which companies doing business with the federal government — and paid with tax dollars — are also trying to curry favor with politicians.
If Mr. Obama fails to issue the contractors’ order, he will underline the hypocrisy of his own campaign supporters’ decision to go all out for their piece of the secret money torrent. Representative Steny Hoyer, the Democratic whip, certainly didn’t help when he recently questioned the propriety of the disclosure order.
Politics’ new supersized casino was legitimized by the Supreme Court’s decision to end decades of restrictions on corporate and union campaign spending. As Republicans offer a free-speech smoke screen, it is imperative to note that the Supreme Court also upheld the constitutionality of disclosure, so “citizens can see whether elected officials are ‘in the pocket’ of so-called moneyed interests.” In the pocket, indeed.
Republicans blocked the last Congress from mandating full disclosure. President Obama has the authority and responsibility to shine the light on contractors. That’s not enough, but it is a start.
Remembering the Freedom Riders
Fifty years ago this month, a group of black and white volunteers boarded two public buses in the District of Columbia to travel into the Deep South, where segregated waiting rooms, restrooms, lunch counters and other indignities were a fact of life despite Supreme Court rulings striking down segregation in interstate travel.
These Freedom Riders would be followed by hundreds of others. Their mission was to nonviolently confront local laws and customs that perpetuated illegal segregation. Their aim was to jolt Americans’ consciousness and challenge the Kennedy administration to enforce African-Americans’ constitutional rights.
A new
documentary on PBS stations captures the political complexities and drama of this pivotal chapter in civil rights history. Written and directed by Stanley Nelson, it is based on Raymond Arsenault’s 2006 book, “Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice.”
Fears that the integrated teams would meet with violence proved well founded. The first bus was attacked in the Alabama town of Anniston by a mob of Ku Klux Klansmen who slashed the tires and then firebombed the crippled vehicle. The mob first held the doors shut, and then beat passengers escaping the burning bus. When the second bus arrived in Birmingham, passengers were brutally attacked by another Klan mob.
The violence did not end the Freedom Rides. In all, more than 400 men and women participated. Many were arrested and ended up spending time at Mississippi’s bleak Parchman prison farm. In the end, they could claim victory. Acting at the request of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the Interstate Commerce Commission issued a sweeping order in September 1961 ending segregation in all interstate facilities and calling for all “Whites Only” and “Colored Only” signs to come down.
Five decades later, injustices remain. But the country’s debt to the Freedom Riders is clear.
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