text: It is laughable that anyone would say the current tax code favors the wealthiest Americans when the top 1 percent of income earners pay 40 percent of all federal income taxes. Warren Buffett can continue saying he pays a higher rate than his secretary all day long but that doesn’t make it true. Mr. Buffett always forgets to mention that before he pays the capital gains tax on his gains from the sale of equities, the businesses that generated those gains paid the highest-in-the-world 35 percent corporate income tax. When properly added to Mr. Buffett’s tax rate it is clear his actual rate is much higher than his employees.
  Before considering the notion of universalizing Medicare, Occupy Wall Street should explain how it would propose the United States finance the current Medicare debt. Today, Medicare has $36.8 trillion in long-term unfunded liabilities—promised benefits to current and future generations of seniors that it cannot pay for. To highlight the sheer size of this fiscal mess, that number is more than twice the size of the current national debt. And we’re just talking about one of many federal programs.
  Its massive insolvency is just one of the reasons Medicare is proof that the federal government should not run a single-payer health care system. Its system of central planning through administratively-set price controls and statutory updates to provider payments does not reflect the actual costs providers incur to offer their services and keep their doors open. The consequences include cost-shifting to the privately insured, reduced access to doctors and other providers, and decreased quality in the care seniors receive. Meanwhile, traditional Medicare’s fee for service system has no way to promote value in the health care goods and services seniors use, and consumer insulation from cost contributes to overutilization and unnecessary use of services.
  There are better options to save Medicare and expand access to affordable coverage among the nonelderly population. Transitioning Medicare to a premium support plan would allow seniors to purchase a health plan of their choice using a government contribution based on the cost of the plans available and retirement income. This transformation would unleash the power of the free market to improve the value seniors receive for the taxpayer dollars spent on their health benefit. It would encourage beneficiaries to seek out the highest quality for the lowest cost when purchasing a health plan and seeking out health care providers. Tying the government contribution to the cost of the lowest bid would reflect actual market conditions, meanwhile using competition among insurers to better meet demand and drive down costs. Adjusting the federal contribution according to income would ensure that Medicare dollars were directed to those with the most need, and though the wealthiest individuals would no longer receive a taxpayer-subsidized benefit, they would benefit from access to the same regulated marketplace.
  For the nonelderly population, the creation of tax credits and additional subsidies for low-income families, alongside other commonsense insurance market reforms, would expand access and encourage Americans to obtain and keep health coverage. The plan would pave the way for the creation of a competitive, consumer-driven health care system where insurance was affordable and portable.
  7. New comprehensive regulations to give the Environmental Protection Agency expanded powers to shut down corporations, businesses or any entities that intentionally or recklessly damage the environment and/or criminally prosecute individuals who intentionally damage the environment. We also demand the immediate adoption of the most recent international protocols, including the “Washington Declaration” to cap carbon emissions and implement new and existing programs to transition away from fossil fuels to reusable or carbon neutral sources of power.
  Pretending that companies pollute intentionally and recklessly or pretending that we do not have an existing regulatory and judicial system that protects private property rights and prevents against unchecked pollution makes it difficult to take these demands seriously in the first place. Setting aside that, let’s talk about capping carbon dioxide and the push to transition away from fossil fuels. Since 85 percent of America’s energy needs come from carbon-emitting fossil fuels, capping carbon dioxide would be a massive tax on energy consumption that would have negligible impacts on the earth’s temperature. A tax that increases energy prices would disproportionately eat into the income of the poorest American families since lower income families spend a larger percentage of their budget on energy use. In fact, during the cap and trade debate, Roy Innis, President of the Congress of Racial Equality said, “that the civil rights challenge of our time is to stop extreme environmental policies that drive up the cost of energy and disproportionately hurt low income Americans and the working poor.”
  If Occupy Wall Street is sincere in its fight against crony capitalism, it would be arguing for less government intervention into the economy – not more. Where’s the protest signs with regards to the crony capitalistic nature of the Solyndra loan guarantee? I guess Occupy the Department of Energy Loan Guarantee Program doesn’t have the same ring to it.
  8. Adoption of an immediate plan to reduce the national debt to a sustainable percentage of GDP by 2020. Reduction of the national debt to be achieved by BOTH a cut in spending to corporations engaged in perpetual war for profit, the “healthcare” industry, the pharmaceutical industry and all other sectors that use the federal budget as their income stream AND a truly progressive income tax code that does not allow the wealthy and corporations to evade taxes through excessive deductions, subsidies and loopholes. We agree that spending cuts are necessary but those cuts must be made to facilitate what is best for the People of the United States of America, not multinational and domestic corporations.
  Yes, we do need a plan to reduce the national debt, and it should focus on credible reductions in federal spending, using the right kinds of policies – specifically policies that reduce the incentives and drivers of higher spending, and bend down the trajectory of government spending growth. Contrary to the view of some “mainstream” economists and the current administration – who continue to assert that government spending is necessary to prop up the economy, despite the clear failure of this philosophy – spending reductions are the best way to ease the dead-weight burden of spending on the economy. This will help foster conditions conducive to long-term growth.
  Likewise, crony capitalism should be eliminated; it distorts market functions and diminishes productivity. Today some of the biggest beneficiaries are the health care industry – largely feeding off the government’s medical entitlement programs – and politically favored “green” industries.
  Yes, the tax code should be reformed to eliminate “excessive subsidies, deductions and loopholes”, but also to lower marginal income tax rates – which will promote work, saving, and investment – so that the tax code does not raise more revenue.
  9. Passage of a comprehensive job and job-training act like the American Jobs Act to employ our citizens in jobs that are available with specialized training and by putting People to work now by repairing America’s crumbling infrastructure. We also recommend the establishment of an online international job exchange to match employers with skilled workers or employers willing to train workers in 21st century skills.
  Public works projects will not reduce unemployment. Government spending does not create new wealth in the economy, it reallocates existing spending. Some workers get jobs on the public works project, at the expense of jobs that do not get created elsewhere in the economy. The government could, after all, pay every unemployed worker in America to excavate the foundations of new buildings—with teaspoons. Existing construction projects would easily need millions of teaspoon-diggers. But this would not boost the economy. Building even more bridges to nowhere will not boost the economy either. Want proof? How well did Obama’s construction spending spree in the stimulus work?
  Sadly, government job training programs also do not live up to their hype. Studies show that many federal job training programs do little to help their participants find new jobs. New reports from the Inspector General at the Department of Labor show that Obama has not changed this. Investigations of the new “green job” training initiatives and the youth-oriented Job Corps show that both of them struggle to place workers into new jobs. The government has not learned how to do effective job training. Fortunately, OWS do not have to wait for the government to act. Private sector online job exchanges like Monster.com already match millions of employers with workers every year.
  Taxpayers who have worked hard to pay off their own student loan debt – and who are still making payments – should not be penalized by having to pay-off the student loan debt of those who irresponsibly took out more of a loan burden than they can handle, to earn a degree of questionable value. Raising taxes to pay down the principal on loans that students took out on their own volition penalizes Americans who paid their way through college by working during school, or who now live a modest lifestyle in order to responsibly make their loan payments. And it also penalizes the three quarters of American workers who chose not to attend college at all. Why should the three quarters of workers who did not to go to college – waitresses, construction workers, mechanics and other average Americans – have to finance the college student who took out $100,000 in student loans to finance a degree in, say, women’s studies?
  James Carafano, Deputy Director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies and Director of the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies: