An photograph illustrating Romney’s view that we need to shower corporations with even more tax cuts.

The policies politicians propose and enact represent both priorities and trade-offs. So when Mitt Romney proposes cutting corporate taxes at the cost of $1 trillion over the next ten years, he’s telling us that it’s more important for him to reduce the tax rates paid by Big Business than to have that trillion dollars in the Treasury to fund public priorities.

Here’s one of those priorities. Using data from the National Priorities Project (NPP), I calculated what else we could finance with a trillion dollars. I found that we could fund four-year scholarships for 31million students over the next ten years instead. Each student could go to a “flagship” state school for one year and have their tuition and fees fully subsidized.

Here’s a few other things we could finance for a trillion dollars instead of tax cuts for well-off corporations:

Veterans Administration care for 126 million veterans for one year
Hiring 14.5 million teachers for one year
Hiring 14.1 million police officers for one year

These are just a few alternatives to cutting corporate taxes by a trillion dollars over the next ten years. It’s up to us to choose what’s a better use of our tax dollars.

As poll after poll shows bold progressive Elizabeth Warren leading Scott Brown (R) in the Massachusetts Senate race, he is growing increasingly desperate to distract voters from his pro-corporate record.

He’s attacking Warren for having a small consulting role to Dow Chemical back in 1995. He claims this shows that she’s not on the side of ordinary people.

But if Dow Chemical is so toxic (no pun intended) then why is Brown happy to engage in fundraising with the corporation?

Brown has taken $6,000 from the company’s Political Action Committee (PAC) in the current election cycle. He took $1,000 when he was running in 2010. Warren hasn’t gotten a dime from the company’s PAC.

Corporations don’t just like to give away free money. Dow is likely rewarding Brown for his 2011 vote to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases, an issue Dow intensely lobbied on the same year. In fact, he got a $1,000 check from the PAC the month after the vote.

They say those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. It seems like Brown just threw a boulder.

Help Warren win her race, click here to chip in a few dollars to her campaign.

During his debate with President Obama last week, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney said that although he likes Big Bird, he would cut off all federal funding to PBS. (He would, however, advocate for corporate tax cuts that would cost 238 times as much as all federal subsidies for public broadcasting put together.)

This brought understandable outrage from most Americans, who treasure public goods like CBS. During a visit to Detroit today, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan was greeted by a cadre of protesters, including Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and a man dressed as Big Bird. Watch a local news report about the protest:

Show your support for public priorities like PBS. Donate today and we’ll send you a “Save Big Bird” bumper sticker!

Tommy Thompson’s has some really odd corporate donors.

As we told you this weekend, Wisconsin Republican Senate candidate Tommy Thompson is a health care profiteer. While serving as the Bush Administration’s Health and Human Services Secretary, he cut a sweetheart deal with Big Pharma that cost taxpayers $20 billion a year, and then left to go profit off of a variety of health care interests.

One of the — let’s say, creepier — clients that Thompson had was the Verichip Corporation (which is now known as PositiveID). This corporation — which was a subsidiary of Applied Digital, which installed Thompson on its board shortly after he left government — specialized in producing microchips that are implanted into humans for various reasons.

Here’s a 2007 CNBC clip where Thompson went on TV to shill for Verichip and the benefits of implanting human beings with microchips. He even promised to get one himself (to our knowledge, he never followed through):

The makers of these human microchips are paying Thompson back for his propaganda work. Verichip is actually Thompson’s eleventh-biggest single donor.

Thompson’s bold progressive opponent Tammy Baldwin could use your support. Chip in a few dollars to help Baldwin get elected.

Rep. Charlie Bass (R-NH)

Rep. Charlie Bass (R-NH) is facing off with bold progressive candidate Annie Kuster on the November ballot, and he is desperately trying to avoid losing by trying to repair his image with voters who are steamed at the Republican Party.

At a recent candidate’s forum, he tried to portray himself as being fairly bipartisan:

Calling the election ai???very, very significant,ai??? Bass said Congress needs bipartisan cooperation, and argued heai??i??s been among the congressmen who most frequently reached across the aisle to cooperate with colleagues from the other party.

Bass noted that because of his backing of a failed bipartisan debt-reduction budget, he was one of the few congressmen endorsed jointly by Erskine Bowles, the former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and a two-time Democratic Senate candidate, and Alan Simpson, an ex-Republican U.S. senator from Wyoming.

Bass also noted the he has broken ranks with the GOP on the issues of softening environmental standards and on womenai??i??s health care issues.

The first thing that should be mentioned is that the Simpson-Bowles plan to cut Social Security and Medicare benefitsAi??was rejected along a very bipartisan 382-38 vote. Additionally theAi??vast majority of AmericansAi??reject its key proposals — a recenty McClatchy poll found that 80 percent of Americans oppose cuts to Medicare and Medicaid — as well. Bass is bragging about being on the fringe.

But the other major flaw in what Bass is saying is the idea that he frequently reaches across the aisle. He votes with his own party 83 percent of the time.

Click here to help Annie Kuster air a TV ad shining a light on Charlie Bass’s extreme views.

The industry-funded American Beverage Association is leading the opposition the the Richmond soda tax.

When Big Business wants to get its way on a ballot referendum or voter-approved constitutional amendment, it starts to spend big to influence public opinion and flood the airwaves with propaganda.

Take the case of Richmond, California. There, voters will be asked on their November ballots to approve a levy a sales tax on soda products. The Contra Costa Times reports today that the beverage industry is spending $2.2 million to kill the measure:

In Richmond, campaign finance statements released Friday show the pro-Measure N campaign has spent $25,293, a pittance compared with the No on N campaign’s wave of $2.2 million. The anti-tax figure, which some expect to double by Nov. 6, is aimed at turning out about 15,000 voters, the expected number needed to pass or defeat the measure. That comes out to nearly $150 per voter.

That’s not only $150 per voter, it’s also an 87-to-1 spending advantage over tax proponents. Whatever your position is on the soda tax, it’s fair to say voters are not getting a fair debate when one side can outspend the other by that much.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Join PCCC’s Take Back Democracy Campaign and help kick Big Money out of our politics.

Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA)

Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) is in national headlines for remarks he made recently where he labeled evolution a lie from the “pit of hell.”

But Broun’s loony antics aren’t limited to what he said about evolution. Here’s five other things — in no particular order, but feel free to order them yourselves! — he said that will have you scratching your head:

Funding NPR and Planned Parenthood is “Unconstitutional”: Broun once offered a truly astounding critique of federal funding for National Public Radio (NPR) and Planned Parenthood, saying that it’s simply unconstitutional to give them money. [4/6/2011]
Federal Employees Don’t Have Real Jobs: During an appearance on a radio job, he shrugged off the firing of 250,000 public employees that would’ve resulted from failing to hike the debt ceiling. He said they should get a “real job.” Does Broun not realize he is one? [6/7/2011]
The Civil War Was A “War Of Yankee Aggression,” Which Is Just Like Health Reform:This one just has to be seen to be believed. [3/18/2010]
We Should Repeal The 16th And 17th Amendments To Stop The “Socializing” Of America: Putting aside the fact that “socializing” simply means gathering with others and communicating, Broun was under the impression that allowing Americans to freely elect their Senators and allowing those Senators to levy an income tax will have us heading down the road to the Soviet Union. [7/2010]
The Federal Government Will Be Calling You Every Day To Make Sure You Eat Your Vegetables: Apparently this was supposed to be one of the effects of Obama’s health care overhauls. And no, Broun was not kidding. [9/2010]

What’s your favorite Broun crazy quip?

If you want elect some progressives to be the antidote to Paul Broun in Congress, …

A just-released Western New England University poll finds that bold progressive Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren leads Sen. Scott Brown (R) among likely voters:

Warren leads Brown 50 percent to 45 percent among likely voters in a Western New England University pollAi??conducted for the Springfield Republican newspaper and Masslive.com.Ai??The Democratai??i??s lead is mostly unchanged from an early September poll showing her leading Brown 50 percent to 44 percent. Other recent polls have mostly shown Warren with a single-digit lead over Brown.

Warren maintaining her lead is likely at least partially explained by the fact that voters are beginning to wake up to Brown’s extreme pro-corporate positions. As one example, in his most recent debate with Warren, Brown admitted that his “model” Supreme Court Justice is the far-right figure Antonin Scalia — who has all but embraced the corporate dominance of American democracy as a matter of “free speech.”

The right is growing increasingly desperate, and that’s why super lobbyist Grover Norquist just dropped $162,000 into the race to help Brown. Help Warren win her race, click here to chip in a few dollars to her campaign.

Tommy Thompson personally cost taxpayers $20 billion a year.

Wisconsin’s Republican Senate candidate Tommy Thompson has been in hot water since video surfacedof him admitting that he wants to “do away with Medicare” and Medicaid. This shocking clip has gone viral, but what is less known about Thompson is how he helped Big Pharma rip off Medicare and how he later tried to help insurers get a piece of Medicaid, too.

In 2003, the Bush administration aggressively pushed for the creation of Medicare Part D, a subsidized drug benefit. Thompson was the “point man” for the administration during these negotations, serving as Bush’s Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary.

While helping seniors afford prescription drugs was a laudable goal, the Bush administration, via Thompson, pushed for a specialAi??carve-outAi??for the pharmaceutical industry. The part D bill specifically barred Medicare from negotiating drug prices with Big Pharma, meaning that it essentially told the government it can’t even ask for a good deal.

This made the new law wildly more expensive than it should be, and most Democrats in the House voted against it. After the benefit was passed, Big Pharma rewarded its most fervent congressional supporter, Louisiana congressman Billy Tauzin, with a $2 million-a-year lobbying job.

But while Tauzin was getting a payoff, taxpayers were losing out. Authoritative studies on the issue estimate that drug negotiation could save as much as $20 billion a year for Medicare.

Thompson, having negotiated this great deal for the industry, soon left his role in the Bush administration. He became a partner atAi??Ai??Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, a leading lobbying firm, where the firm’s clients included leading bio-tech and pharmaceutical companies. He even went on television to shill for one company that was …

A screenshot of the Fix the Debt campaign’s logo.

The so-called Ai??”Campaign To Fix The Debt” is being run by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles and is designed to pressure Congress to enact an austerity plan that cuts Social Security and guts investments in Main Street America while lowering corporate taxes.

To pass this unpopular plan, Simpson and Bowles have amassed a massive $25 million war chest. As the Huffington Post just reported, it is likely that the group is being funded by the right-wing billionaire Pete Peterson; its steering committee includes billionaire CEOs like Honeywell’s Dave Cote.

If you sign up as a volunteer for the group, you’ll be e-mailed a “toolkit” that you’re supposed to use to engage in pro-austerity activism on behalf of the billionaires who run the group.

One of the instructions in the tool kit is to “bird dog” campaign events and town halls that feature Members of Congress. Here’s the sample questions that the campaign is asking people to dog lawmakers with. Notice that they are designed to pressure legislators to agree to cuts to Social Security and enact other devastating spending cuts:

The took kit also instructs activists to “get to the event early to hold signs or pass outAi??literature about the debt,” and to “have somebody ready to record the answer with video, if possible.” Finally, it reminds you to “raise your hand as quickly as possible when theAi??candidate takes questions, speak clearly andAi??confidently!”

This bird-dogging isn’t too different from what a lot of grassroots activists do. The difference, however, is that this group is run by billionaire CEOs who are trying to cut Social Security. They …

Photo credit: Flickr user juggernautco

As cities across the country grapple with tough budget decisions thanks to the economic crisis caused by Wall Street, progressives continue to demand a balanced approach that does not rely solely on cuts.

But Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is disregarding any sense of balance in grappling with the city’s $300 million budget deficit. “No new taxes, fines and fees,” he told the Chicago Tribune recently.

His comment shocked some budget analysts. ai???Absent some reform of the benefits that are paid out, a tax increase is just simple math — it has to occur,ai??? said Shawn Oai??i??Leary, who is a senior research analyst in Chicago at Nuveen Asset Management. ai???You canai??i??t cut your way to that kind of balance.ai???

If Rahm rules out tax increases, it’s likely that the only savings to be found would be through harsh cuts to the city budget, and perhaps rollbacks in pensions for public workers. That’s the cost of taking the Grover Norquist approach to budgeting, and it’s one that Chicago residents should demand that Emanuel back down from.

Disclosures released today from the Federal Election Commission show that Grover Norquists’s Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) just droppedAi??$162,418.26 on direct mail pieces to attack bold progressive Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren. Here’s a screengrab from the disclosure:

When Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) pledges not to raise taxes on the wealthy, ATR is the reason why. It is a powerful lobby that is funded largely by corporations and billionaires.

When the right corporations pay off Norquist, he’ll even violate his own supposed free market conservative principles.Ai??Earlier this year, I confronted him about why ATR opposes letting Americans buy cheaper drugs from Canada — a free market idea. When I mentioned that his organization has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from Big Pharma, he struggled to maintain his composure. Then, when my colleague and I asked him why he lobbied for Fannie Mae in the past even though he attacks it now, he quit the interview altogether.

Norquist is a powerful lobbyist and his organization is seeking to sink Warren because she’s dedicated to holding corporate America accountable. Help defend Warren from Norquists’s attack, click here to chip in a few dollars to her campaign.

Join PCCC’s Take Back Democracy campaign.

A new piece by Alec MacGillis in The New Republic looks at Republican mega-donorAi??Robert Murray, who runs the Murray Energy Corporation.

Within the piece is a stunning nugget. MacGillis talks to several workers who say that they were pressured to donate to the company’s Political Action Committee and to the Republican Party. If they resisted, they were made to feel that their jobs were at stake:

The accounts of two sources who have worked in managerial positions at the firm, and a review of letters and memos to Murray employees, suggest that coercion may also explain Murray staffersai??i?? financial support for Romney. Murray, it turns out, has for years pressured salaried employees to give to the Murray Energy political action committee (PAC) and to Republican candidates chosen by the company. Internal documents show that company officials track who is and is not giving. The sources say that those who do not give are at risk of being demoted or missing out on bonuses, claims Murray denies.

The Murray sources, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution, came forward separately. But they painted similar pictures of the fund-raising operation. ai???Thereai??i??s a lot of coercion,ai??? says one of them. ai???I just wanted to work, but you feel this constant pressure that, if you donai??i??t contribute, your jobai??i??s at stake. Youai??i??re compelled to do this whether you want to or not.ai??? Says the second: ai???They will give you a call if youai??i??re not giving. .ai??i??.ai??i??. Itai??i??s expected you give Mr. Murray what he asks for.ai???

The energy corporation’s PAC gave 100 percent of its campaign contributions to Republicans this cycle, and its employees have given 4 times as much money as the PAC, almost all of it to …

Former senator George Allen always is a long-time foe of net neutrality — the rules by which Internet-providing telecom companies can’t discriminate against access to certain websites. He voted to virtually eliminate net neutrality in 2006, and got $113,000 from big telecom companies like AT&T during his last election cycle.

But corruption’s the gift that keeps on giving. Allen is once again running for a Senate seat, and he will be hosted by numerous Verizon lobbyists tonight for a huge fundraiser.

The fundraiser will be held at the home of Tom Tauke, who is himself a former congressmen who walked through the revolving door to become the Executive Vice President, Public Affairs, Policy and Communications for Verizon — one of the company’s top government affairs (lobbying) positions.

Also attending will be Peter Davidson, the former General Counsel to the House Majority Leader Dick Armey, who now works for Verizon as the Senior VP for Federal Government Relations.

Each host will be donating $2,000 on behalf of a Political Action Committee (PAC) and/or $1,000 individually. Additionally attendees are invited to attend if they donate $1,000 as a PAC or $500 as an individual.

It should be noted that Verizon isn’t just a stark opponent of net neutrality. It has also moved in recent years to put down unions such as the Communication Workers of America and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. It’s likely that if Allen is elected on the back of Verizon cash, he will be hostile to both Internet freedom and organized labor.

Don’t let Big Money and lobbyists run our country. Join PCCC’s Take Back Democracy campaign.

Don’t co-host a debate Rep. Richard Hanna (R-NY) doesn’t like. Or else.

Local media stations make big bucks off of campaign dollars. So it’s particularly revolting when a Member of Congress uses the allure of campaign funding to try to intimidate the media.

The story just broke that Rep. Richard Hanna (R-NY) apparently threatened to stop advertising on a local radio station because it was co-hosting a debate he had chosen not to participate in:

U.S. Rep. Richard Hanna, a Republican, told WUTR-TV in Utica he would not run ads with the station unless it dropped plans to co-host a debate in which Hanna refused to participate, according to an email written by the stationai??i??s general manager.

WUTRai??i??s Stephen Merren said Thursday he accidentally sent the email recounting the conversation to the spokesman for Democratic candidate Dan Lamb, reports Brian Tumulty of Gannettai??i??s Washington bureau. […] Ai??ai???He (Hanna) indicated to me that we would not be considered for his ad dollars and our level of cooperation in the future could be affected,ai??? Merren said in his email.

ai???Congressman Richard Hanna should be ashamed of himself for using his money to influence the journalistic decisions of a local news station,ai??? said Hannah’s Democratic Party opponent Dan Lamb said in a press statement. ai???If this isnai??i??t a violation of FCC rules, it should be. What Hanna did is the moral equivalent of bribing a cop. If the news media can be bought off, our entire democracy is at risk.ai???

Does Josh Mandel support the auto rescue? He’ll get back to you on that.

Out of any of the federal interventions into the economy over the past four years, one of the most successful was the auto rescue, which is so popular that a RomneyAi??adviserAi??even ludicrously tried to claim that it was Mitt Romney’s idea (remember that the candidate wrote an op-ed titled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt“).

It’s notable that Ohio Republican Josh Mandel — who is trying to defeat bold progressive incumbent Senator Sherrod Brown (D) — can’t even take a position on it.

The Vindicator newspaper (Youngstown, Ohio) asked Mandel six times whether he would’ve supported the auto rescue, and each time he dodged the question:

Asked a half dozen times using different scenarios, Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, wouldnai??i??t give a yes-or-no answer as to whether he supports the $82 billion federal government bailout of the American auto industry.

During a Wednesday editorial board meeting with The Vindicator, Mandel was repeatedly asked the question.

Each time, Mandel either said it was wrong for the bailout to not help Delphi salaried retirees ai??i?? who lost their health and life insurance and had their pensions cut by 30 percent to 70 percent ai??i?? or dismissed various scenarios offered by the editorial boardai??i??s members as not being legitimate questions.

It’s kind of a given that a U.S. Senator should be able to tell you whether or not they would’ve supported a major policy like the auto rescue.
UPDATE: Here’s the video of Mandel dodging the question for five minutes:

Pitch in a few bucks to help out bold progressive candidate Sherrod Brown by clicking here.

Alan Simpson

Earlier this week, former senator and corporate lobbyist Alan Simpson and banking mogul Erskine Bowles, the authors of a plan to cut Social Security and gut programs for the poorest Americans, took out an ad attacking bold progressive congressional candidate Annie Kuster.

Last night, we got a look into the mind of Simpson during a forum held at Harvard University. During the panel, Simpson went off on the critics of his plan to cut Social Security:

SIMPSON: I get so damn sick and tired of listening to the little guy, the vulnerable, the veteran — I am a veteran, and the seniors and this and this and this and the meanwhile this country is headed for second-class status while everybody just babblesAi??into the vapor.

Watch Simpson’s rant:

Simpson might be sick of listening to “the little guy,” veterans, and the vulnerable, but Annie Kuster is not. Click here to chip in a few dollars to defend her from Simpson’s attacks.

Rep. Steve Buyer (R-IN) served in Congress until 2011.

When you’re a congressman looking for your next job, selling out and becoming a lobbyist is an attractive option. You can even get a 1,452 percent raise. That’s why a lot of lawmakers start shilling for corporate interests while they’re still in office, so they can get generous payouts after they leave.

ProPublica’s Justin Elliot has an example of one such legislator. In 2009, Republican congressman Steve Buyer gave a speech defending smokeless tobacco, fighting back against lawmakers who wanted to regulate it. He argued that only the smoke kills people, not nicotine:

BUYER: You could have smoked…lettuce and you still end up with the same problems. You could cut the grass in your yard, dry it, and roll it up in aAi??cigaretteAi?? and smoke it ai??i?? and youai??i??re still going to have aAi??lot of problems. It is the smoke that kills, not the nicotine.

Watch it:

A new federal disclosure filing shows that Buyer and his former chief of staff, Mike Copher, recently registered as lobbyists for the “Reynolds American subsidiary calledAi??RAIAi??Services as of the beginning of September.”

Reynolds American makes all sorts of tobacco and nicotine products.

So the next time you see a Member of Congress make some crazy defense of corporate wrongdoing, remember this: Maybe it’s just their version of a job interview.

Don’t let Big Money and lobbyists run our country. Join PCCC’s Take Back Democracy campaign.

Alan Grayson must defeat one far-right radio host before he returns to Congress.

Bold progressive Alan Grayson is currently campaigning to return to the House of Representatives. His opponent in the race is right-wing radio host Todd Long. Last year, Long appeared at a rally for the so-called “Fair Tax,” which would enact a 23 percent sales tax on all goods sold. Long said this tax would treat everybody “the same”:

LONG: Does anybody here think we should all be taxed the same? That we should all be treated the same under the tax code? We are all created equally by God we should have the same rights and benefits and privileges? […] The Fair Tax is brilliant!

Watch it (the relevant remarks are at 03:00):

Something Long didn’t tell the audience about what the “Fair Tax” would do is that it would dramatically increase the tax liability for the middle class while reducing it for the most wealthy Americans. Former Bush economist Bruce Bartlett ran the numbers, and I compiled them into a chart for ThinkProgress last year. Here’s how the Fair Tax would change the tax responsibility distribution in the United States:

As you can see, the highest quintile of earners — those who earn more than $200,000 every year — are the big winners under the so-called “Fair Tax.”

(Photo credit: Flickr user Adam Glanzman)

During his debate with President Obama last night, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney boasted of being governor of Massachusetts while the state was ranked best in the nation in education.

Romney is likely referring to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test, which the Department of Education uses to grade states based on student knowledge in reading and mathematics.

Indeed, Massachussetts’ ranking has been impressive, and it ranked first in the nation in 2005 and 2007 in math and reading scores for 4th and 8th graders, both years under which Romney was governor. What Romney didn’t note was that the state also ranked first in 2009 — long after he had left his position.

In fact, it was also that way before Romney ever became governor. Here’s a table showing NAEP scores for Massachusetts from 1992 to 2003, drawn from a UMass Amherst report by researchers Stephen Jirka and Ronald Hambleton (click on it to expand it):

As you can see, Massachusetts significantly outperformed the nation every year tested. Some of this has to do with the public policies followed by the state, but it also has a number of social benefits that boost its educational potential. That includes the lowest number of uninsured individuals and the second-highest per capita income among all states.

Can Mitt Romney really take credit for his state’s educational results when they were already high before he took office and remained high after? No, the most he can take credit for is not catastrophically ruining an already good system.

Tommy Thompson’s health “reforms” are ones we already have.

On Monday, Wisconsin Republican Tommy Thompson and bold progressive Tammy Baldwin debated about their competing visions for the country as they both run for the state’s Senate seat.

As Thompson continued to rail on the Affordable Care Act, one moderator asked him about his own vision for health care. The candidate went on to the normal Republican proverbs about the need for tort reform and other non-reforms, but also bizarrely mentioned that we need to be able to buy health insurance online:

THOMPSON: What I want Bob is I want a health care system that’s affordable…let’s base it on quality. Number 2, let’s allow individuals be able to purchase health insurance over the Internet. Be able to put in what they want in there. Number three let’s do away with the liability problems.

Watch Thompson’s response (it begins at 24:38):

It’d be interesting to know why exactly Thompson thinks purchasing health insurance over the Internet will make health care cheaper (is he confusing health insurance with Amazon.com deals on consumer products?), but what’s even more important to point out is that consumers are already getting that option. There are already websites where you can shop for quotes and then purchase insurance online and one of the main features of the Affordable Care Act that Thompson opposes is the provision of health insurance exchanges where people will be able to directly shop for insurance online.

As for tort reform, a number of states have already enacted it. When Texas did, it did absolutely nothing to reduce overall health care costs.

Tammy Baldwin has an actual solution — and not just gimmicks about online purchasing and tort reform — to the health care crisis. She …

Romney’s view on who deserves federal help — big corporations, hedge funders, private equity managers, and every else who’s already wealthy.

Tonight, Mitt Romney set off an avalanche of criticism and satire following his remarks that at the Republican convention that he likes “Big Bird,” but he will be cutting all funding to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).

Here’s the clip of him saying that:

It’s worth pointing out that federal subsidies only account for a tiny minority of public broadcasting budgets. Only 15 percent of PBS’s budget comes from the federal trough.

In fact, all public broadcasting put together under the umbrella of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), only accounts for $420 million from the federal government.

So Romney wants to wipe out this funding, which amounts to $4.2 billion over ten years if the funding stays consistent. But his corporate tax plan — which involves a huge tax giveaway to Big Business — would blow a $1 trillion hole in the federal budget over the next ten years.

That means that Romney’s corporate tax cuts cost 238 times more than all public broadcasting funding combined.

Maybe the satire is onto something. It’s possible Romney doesn’t actually like Big Bird very much, or at least 238 times less than he likes ExxonMobil, Wal-Mart, and other corporations he’d be rewarding with his tax plan.

Join the fight to save Big Bird. Click here.

One of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee-endorsed candidates for Congress, Annie Kuster in New Hampshire, just got attacked in full-page ads by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles of the Simpson-Bowles Commission — which famously proposed gutting Social Security and the social safety net.

In their attack on Kuster, Bowles and Simpson praised her Tea Party opponent, Congressman Charlie Bass, for supporting their plan to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits. Their attack ad is appearing in three local newspapers: the Concord Monitor, New Hampshire Union Leader, and the Nashua Telegraph.

Instead of backing down, Kuster is doubling down on her promise to protect Social Security and Medicare from cuts in a new TV ad.

Click here to watch it and chip in $3 to help it run in New Hampshire.

Annie has been endorsed by local and national progressive groups, and her bold statement today shows why:

“During his nearly 20 years in Washington, Congressman Bass has repeatedly voted to cut and undermine Medicare — including his votes for both the Simpson-Bowles and Ryan budget plans. There’s a right way and wrong way to reduce the deficit. Let me be clear: I will never cut Social Security and Medicare benefits. My Tea Party opponent will.”

This Simpson-Bowles attack on Kuster is part of a wider national campaign. The two have formed an organization called the “Campaign To Fix The Debt” that has a mysterious $25 million war chest to promote its plan to shred Social Security and lower corporate taxes.

They want to use this money to buy public opinion — the vast majority of Americans oppose cuts to Medicare and Social Security — and to push Congress to support the Bowles-Simpson plan that it already defeated in a 382-38 …

Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN)

Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) is looking to move from the halls of Congress to his state’s Governor’s mansion. He is campaigning heavily on the theme of “family,” and says he is promoting heterosexual marriage in order to fight child poverty.

But when time came to actually give families a leg up by making sure that hard work is rewarded for good pay, Pence stood on the side of Big Business instead. Here’s a clip from a floor debate in 2007 where the congressman argued (unsuccessfully) against raising the minimum wage to $7.25. He called the increase “excessive” and warned that it would be “irresponsible” for employers to be required to pay their workers that much. Watch it:

All of the credible studies of increases in the minimum change over time have found that they do not result in job losses, and there indeed was not some massive wave of job losses resulting from Congress increasing the minimum wage in 2007 (it slowly phased in through 2009).

Indiana’s voters should keep all of this in mind when they vote this November.

Wayne Powell

On Monday, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) debated with his Democratic opponent, veteran Wayne Powell.Ai??At one point, Cantor tried to turn the tables on Powell by snidely referring to public financing of campaigns as a “government welfare program for politicians”:

CANTOR: You say on your website that if you are elected that on your first day in Congress you will introduce legislation to make campaigns publicly funded. So your first act in Congress would be to increase the deficit and take money from other important programs or to raise taxes to pay for political campaigns. Don’t we have more pressing issues than to create a government welfare program for politicians?

But Powell deftly parried Cantor’s jab by pointing out that the Majority Leader gets the vast majority of his campaign funding from powerful corporations:

POWELL: That’s a great question. [laughter from audience.] Well actually I don’t think that public financing of campaigns is a great idea, but let me tell you something, based on the corporate welfare that you’re receiving in order to run your campaigns, it’s gotta be better than that. At least it comes from the people, and not from the corporations! [applause] You’re either number 1, 2, or 3 in receiving the most money from the pharmaceutical industry, the investment industry, the real estate industry, I mean thank God for the first amendment, thank God for the disclosure that we have. It is almost obscene, the millions of dollars that you’ve earned. Does anyone in this room think these corporations give Mr. Cantor a million dollars or more just because he’s a nice guy? […] They do that because they want him to vote the way they want him to vote. […] You’ve got a person …