American Forum Op-Ed

By Ann Manning

The current GOP leadership and their colleagues in the Minnesota House and Senate are the unfortunate victims of the Taxpayer’s League and Governor Tim Pawlenty’s foolish “no new taxes, ever” pledge. I suspect many Republican legislators know that the best thing for Minnesota right now is to ask everyone to pay their fair share -- and that means a small tax increase for the top 2 percent of Minnesota’s high-income households.

When I hear the conservative mantra that we are unfairly “taking from the rich,” I want to remind them that in any legitimate democracy we all benefit from and “take” from each other and the rich do take from the middle class and the poor. The amazing public systems in this country -- physical infrastructure, patents and trademark protection, public schools, libraries, and hospitals -- are something we built together, as citizens. The wealthy have not only benefitted enormously from these investments we all helped build, but over the past 30 years, they have further used their wealth to enact tax policy to benefit themselves disproportionately to the rest of the citizens.

Corporations, who are also doing enormously well, have slowly but steadily eroded the power of workers and shifted a disproportionate share of the enormous economic growth in this country to the top. Wages and household income for the middle class and the poor are either flat or down over the past 30 years. We all know what’s happened at the top --astronomical increases in income and wealth. This is not the “invisible hand” of the market. This is cronyism in the boardrooms of America and the power of money to write the rules.

The economy is a measure of how well we are doing. It exists to serve “we the people,” and to sustain a vibrant, living planet. We somehow have turned it all backwards and now worship and worry about the economy. “Oh, no, we can’t raise taxes -- it will hurt the economy!” As a brilliant communications strategist, Anat Shenker-Osorio notes: It’s not the economy that hurts, it’s we the people!

The economy is the metaphor we use to describe how we are all doing on the journey through life. Right now it’s real people that are hurting because those we have entrusted to drive the bus, to run the economy, are either driving drunk or taking us on a wild ride that is not going to end well.

When people like Sens. Kahn and Hann say that it’s “unfair” to take money from those who have “earned it,” they are ignoring the overwhelming evidence of the past 30 years. The wealthy have unfairly rigged the system through wage suppression, tax cuts or tax subsidies, and have literally taken the wages from the bottom 90 percent and lined their own pockets. I am not suggesting we shouldn’t have some differences in economic outcomes -- we want people to succeed and do well. But the current system is rigged and we need to come to grips with that so “we the people” can get back to living our lives and not worrying every night if we can pay the bills tomorrow.

Around the country, over 150 patriotic millionaires have come together to tell Congress to raise their taxes. Many wealthy business people in this state are well aware of the inequities in the system and are speaking out about their willingness to be taxed fairly. There are many good and thoughtful people running our companies. All of us though, to some degree, have become blinded by this “myth of the economy” and the power of the “free market.”

Our economy exists to serve us. Good business and economic policy will allow it to work for all of us again. It’s time we heard these voices even more clearly and push the legislature to act on their wisdom now. It’s real people who will get hurt if we shut down Minnesota on July 1.
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Manning, outreach director for Wealth for the Common Good. She is also a former CPA with Coopers & Lybrand and was director of corporate planning for Medtronic.
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Copyright © 2011 by the Minnesota Editorial Forum. 6/11

By Scott Klinger and Holly Sklar

Some of our nation’s biggest corporations are planning a tax holiday and they want you to pick up the tab.

Actually, you already pay for their routine tax avoidance through the use of tax havens in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and elsewhere. These accounting acrobatics cost the U.S. Treasury $100 billion a year. Now they want Congress to pass a special tax holiday for money they “repatriate” back to the United States.

There’s nothing patriotic about this repatriation being pushed by Google, Cisco, Pfizer and other companies in the Win America campaign. To sell the tax holiday, they claim it will produce a burst of jobs and investment. In fact, Congress passed a “one-time-only” tax holiday in 2004 with similar promises. Instead, it produced a burst of shareholder dividends and stock buybacks, which goosed the pay of CEOs.

Corporations laid off workers and shifted even more income and investment to offshore tax havens in the wake of the 2004 tax holiday.

“Why should we reward firms for successfully gaming the tax system when we in turn are called on to make up the missing tax revenues?” Edward Kleinbard, former chief of staff of Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, told Bloomberg. “Much of these earnings overseas are reaped from an enormous shell game: Firms move their taxable income from the U.S. and other major economies – where their customers and key employees are in reality located – to tax havens.”

A favorite accounting trick is transferring a patent from the U.S. parent company to a subsidiary – often a shell company – in a tax haven. Profits from the patent go largely untaxed offshore while the costs of development, marketing and management remain in the U.S. where they are taken as tax deductions.

Pfizer was the largest beneficiary of the last tax holiday, bringing $37 billion back to the United States and paying just $1.7 billion in federal corporate income taxes. It laid off 10,000 American workers in the following months. The U.S. is the world’s most profitable drug market and yet over the last three years, Pfizer – maker of Lipitor, Viagra and much more – has reported $7.9 billion in U.S. losses while claiming $37.8 billion in profits in the rest of the world. Pfizer, like the rest of Big Pharma, is heavily subsidized by taxpayer-funded research at the National Institutes of Health and elsewhere. It should not be rewarded with another tax holiday.

Bloomberg reported that Win America member “Google reduced its income taxes by $3.1 billion over three years by shifting income to Ireland, then the Netherlands, and ultimately to Bermuda.” What a corporate ingrate. Google would not exist without the Internet, and the Internet grew out of U.S. government research beginning in the 1960s. In the 1990s, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the Digital Library Initiative research at Stanford University that Larry Page and Sergey Brin, now billionaires, developed into Google. Brin was also supported by an NSF Graduate Student Fellowship.
Increasingly, U.S. multinational corporations want to benefit from government spending on education, infrastructure, research, health care and so on without paying for it. Today, large corporations pay, on average, 18 percent of their profits in federal income taxes and as a group contribute just 9 percent toward federal government bills – down from 32 percent in 1952. The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation says a new tax holiday would cost $79 billion.

A dozen national and state business organizations led by Business for Shared Prosperity recently wrote members of Congress urging them to oppose the tax holiday. The letter said, “When powerful large U.S. corporations avoid their fair share of taxes, they undermine U.S. competitiveness, contribute to the national debt and shift more of the tax burden to domestic businesses, especially small businesses that create most of the new jobs.”

There is no excuse for repeating a policy that’s a proven failure. It would be even worse this time around, as corporations would redouble their efforts to shift profits overseas in anticipation of the next tax holiday. Congress should close the tax loopholes that reward companies for transferring U.S. profits, jobs and investment abroad – not encourage them.

Real patriots pay their fair share of taxes. They don’t run out on the bill.
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Scott Klinger is Director of Tax Policy and Holly Sklar is Executive Director of Business for Shared Prosperity. Mr. Klinger is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) charterholder. Readers can write to them at info [at] businessforsharedprosperity dot org.
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© Copyright American Forum. 6/11

Riane Eisler

Kim Otis

By Riane Eisler and Kimberly Otis

What do women really want from our President? This is a question President Obama should be asking if he wants to keep his job for another term -- which hinges on the women’s vote. The recent posting of his accomplishments mentions several positive appointments: two women to the Supreme Court, Elizabeth Warren to launch the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; and other outstanding women to top Cabinet posts; such as Secretaries Hillary Clinton, Janet Napolitano, Kathleen Sebelius, and Hilda Solis.

But such accomplishments do not begin to go far enough. For one thing, by authorizing major cuts to traditionally women’s jobs in education, health care, and family planning, the President allowed an assault on women’s economic status and health-care access. Moreover, he allowed opponents to divert the conversation about economic recovery from the millions of unemployed and the massive increase in Americans in poverty to an obsessive focus on reducing the deficit through government program cuts. And because women comprise the vast majority of public-sector teachers, nurses, social workers, caregivers, and others being laid off, women are now bearing the brunt of job losses.

These shortsighted and cruel cuts are not only harming millions of people and their families; they will soon harm us all. With health, education, and poverty alleviation programs being scrapped, our nation is undermining the most important asset for our economic future: the “high-quality human capital” economists tell us is essential for success in our post-industrial knowledge/service economy. Yet instead of educating the public about this, the Administration has itself started to talk about job creation exclusively in the private sector – with no mention of the havoc being created by gutting employment in the public sector, or of its dire future consequences.

Instead, the Administration joined “the sky is falling” talk about the deficit, failing to point out that our federal debt (roughly equal to our annual GDP or about $14 trillion, a ratio of 1-to-1 according to the most alarmist calculations) is actually far lower than our debt to GDP ratio during World War II. It is also far lower than that of many other countries. Japan had a 2.25-to-1 debt to GDP even before the massive earthquake and tsunami disaster. Certainly we have to watch our national debt, especially because so much of it is owed to foreign nations. But it must not be used as the rationale for cutting essential services or for a wholesale firing of public employees, much less as an excuse for demonizing unions, without which we would not have had a middle class.

As television and radio host Larry King stated recently, “The average guy isn’t sitting today in a diner going ‘Oh, the deficit.’” Instead we’re supposed to genuflect to the “wisdom” of the old boys clubs on Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce about the importance of addressing the deficit through spending cuts alone to jobs which provide needed human capital. Continued focus on cutting teachers, health care workers, and other traditionally female jobs will not address the stalling of the economy, but instead will mean a lot more pain and no gains for a lot more people both in the short and long term.

We’ve got to also debunk clichés about a typical American family sitting around the dinner table being better at understanding how to balance a budget than officials in Washington. In reality, most Americans’ mortgages average about $172,000 – more than four times the $40,000 average annual salary. College students also amass heavy debts with student loans, but few would encourage young people to forgo the enormous future value of a higher education. Moreover, businesses routinely take on substantial debt in order to invest in future research and development that produces a high return.

As Sally Kohn reported in her USA Today op-ed, “IBM borrows twice as much money as it earns annually. Boeing borrows four times more than it earns. JP Morgan Chase… borrows 50 times more than it earns … If the U.S. were borrowing anywhere near as much as Chase bank, we'd have legitimate reason to worry. But in general, borrowing money is necessary to invest in the future — whether the future of a business or the future of a nation.”

With the recent announcement of an opening for a new Chair of the President’s Council on Economic Advisors, there is an opportunity for the Administration to re-direct the conversation to what has been ignored at our peril: the urgent need for investing in our nation’s human infrastructure. And choosing a woman who understands these vital matters could go a long way to applying the fundamentals of economics in a more balanced way. We need the voices of women to talk about what really counts: increasing the real wealth of our nation by investing in its human beings.
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Riane Eisler is best-selling author of The Chalice and the Blade and most recently of The Real Wealth of Nations and founder of the Center for Partnership Studies. Kimberly Otis is a women’s rights advocate and Director of the Center’s Caring Economics Campaign.
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Copyright (C) 2011 by the American Forum. 6/11

By Karen Jacob

I've lived in the heartland for more than two decades. And I can tell you that there’s nothing like a sultry July night at the local ballpark, rooting for the home team, eating hot dogs and quaffing beer, watching fireworks viewed from damp, warm infield grass.

This time of year, the Midwest is awash in flags and bumper stickers boasting one’s support for the troops and the good ol’ red, white and blue. But, lately we have seen more and more “Come home!” messages, and headlines such as, “Locals hope for an end to the war.” Unemployment, which struck the heartland harder than most places, still affects many who are at the end of their unemployment checks or are underemployed. War costs in Afghanistan, nearing $2 billion a week, particularly stick in the craw of these suffering Americans.

My son will be a sophomore majoring in music education at Butler University this fall (You know, that small Midwest college with the basketball team that went to the Final Four -- two years in a row), will graduate not knowing whether there will be music and band programs in public schools where he can work. Juxtapose that against the two decades of his life filled with costly wars. The first Iraq war started in 1991, when he was not yet born. That war, followed by bombing in the Balkans and elsewhere -- Afghanistan, Iraq again, and now Libya, with the hint of more to come … means that my son and his generation have grown up in continuous war. They know nothing else.

My son's generation thinks gas prices are about war. He knows this father was drafted during the Vietnam War, and that he escaped that fate. He has older friends who returned from recent wars as lesser human beings.

His generation has grown up in a time of plenty, and also a time of economic insecurity. As someone who has worked for peace all her life, I love the Fourth of July. I honor freedom, justice and all that it envelops. Yet, I worry about the constant drain on our American collective dream of freedom, justice and economic security.

This Fourth will be observed with millions of Americans out of work, many whose homes have been foreclosed. State legislatures are cutting social services, and in Indiana, public education is being drained by a voucher system to private schools. We have returning soldiers with injuries so deep that they and their families will never recover. Our federal coffers so sapped by war spending that we may not have the money to pay for our endless war wounds. In fact, we plan for this Fourth knowing that our nation is deeply in debt. Climbing out of this hole will require deep cuts that will hurt.

Still, I am hopeful. I can’t go to a picnic with deviled eggs and apple pie, ready for the barbecue, without optimism. America is the richest country in the history of the world.

But, surprise! We often spend our federal tax dollars foolishly. The recent focus on the debt and deficit, the president’s commission on tax reform, and the congressional impasse on how to solve the problem places a magnifying glass to the federal budget.

Another surprise: Our investments in job training, education and health care – the things that make us secure and cause us to work for our collective futures – are on the chopping block. Medicare and Social Security, two of the government’s most successful programs for keeping people out of poverty, also are on the chopping block. Yet, be cautious, my friends -- some excessive spending is wrapped in a patriotic flag.

Keep your ears open for anyone who says we have to “finish the job” in Afghanistan. What job? Osama bin Laden is gone. The $2 billion a week we spend on this war could go a long way toward job training to put America back to work, for example.

Enjoy this Fourth of July. We are free, and that is no small thing, as spreading revolutions in the Mideast attest. However, freedom cannot exist without justice. We will celebrate, and we will work until our mutual critical needs are met.
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Jacob serves as president of WAND of Northern Indiana and is the national WAND board chair. WAND is a national activist organization working to redirect excessive military spending to unmet human and environmental needs.
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Copyright (C) 2011 by the American Forum. 6/11

AMERICAN FORUM
By Matthew Hoh

As he was announcing his second increase in troops for Afghanistan in December 2009, President Obama promised that by July 2011 those troops would begin coming home. As relayed by Bob Woodward’s book, Obama’s Wars, we know the president was skeptical about the United States’ war effort in Afghanistan. In spite of that skepticism, the president's new plan for the war extends the longest war in American history for the foreseeable future.

President Obama announced his first surge of 20,000 troops in spring 2009. Pushing American forces well above the 50,000 mark and reinforcing a counterinsurgency strategy, he escalated a war in a country entering its fourth decade of continuous conflict.

Thousands of Marines and soldiers were rushed in, with the announcement that they were there to ensure free and fair Afghan elections. That summer, these troops found an insurgency fueled by resentment of their presence. Either because of hostility to foreign occupation or because our troops simply sided with someone else’s rival, akin to supporting just one side in a Hatfield-McCoy feud, 2009 became the deadliest year of the war, doubling the amount of American dead in 2008.

Meanwhile, the fire hydrant-like stream of dollars, being pumped into the second most corrupt nation in the world , seemed to purchase only further grievances among the population against a government radiantly kleptocratic. When President Hamid Karzai blatantly stole the elections in August, American officials were forced to abandon any narrative of Americans fighting and dying for democracy in Afghanistan. Then, in October, National Security Advisor Jim Jones announced that al-Qaeda had fewer than 100 members in Afghanistan.

However, given little political cover from the left, feeling little political pressure from the right and receiving nothing but a choice of small, medium or large escalation of the war by the Pentagon, President Obama in December 2009 ordered 30,000 more troops and billions of dollars into what soon would become America’s longest war.

Predictably, by doubling down on a policy that had proved counterproductive, we betrayed our national values and failed to inflict damage on al-Qaeda. We also went from being waist-deep to chest-deep in quicksand.

This past year surpassed 2009 as the deadliest year of the conflict, killing 57 percent more American service members.

Tragically, but unsurprisingly, 2011 has been even more deadly. Insurgent attacks from January to March increased nearly 50 percent from the same period in 2010, while American deaths from March to May of this year increased 41 percent from last spring’s totals.

Nationwide, a U.S.-led campaign of night raids on homes has terrorized families, while a massive nation-building program funded by U.S. taxpayers has enriched a corrupt few and disenfranchised a poor majority. Again, betraying our own values, we looked the other way when elections were stolen for the second time in as many years. The number of civilian deaths are on pace to surpass the totals from 2010, the deadliest year of the war for civilians since 2001. The result: Eight in ten Afghan men now say the U.S. presence is bad for Afghanistan.

By the administration's own account, al-Qaeda has not existed in any meaningful capacity in Afghanistan since we successfully scattered them in 2001. Over the last decade, they have evolved into an increasingly flat or networked organization(s) of individuals and small cells around the globe that is most successfully attacked through good intelligence, international law-enforcement cooperation and surgical-strikes, such as the raid against Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan. Our Afghan war policy does not affect al-Qaeda.

American troops killed or maimed in Afghanistan and others who have returned home with physical and mental injuries, increasing numbers of whom are taking their own lives, cannot be said to have made a worthy sacrifice. We must acknowledge to families that their losses did not prevent another Sept. 11.

Moreover, our policies have destabilized the region, most notably in Pakistan, a nuclear nation with 170 million people.

Indeed, President Obama was right to be skeptical.

However, despite growing bipartisan support for an accelerated drawdown, on Wednesday President Obama announced the withdrawal of 30,000 troops through next year. Such a withdrawal, particularly without a change in strategy will only bring us back to where we were in December 2009. With only modest cuts in troop levels and no real changes in our strategy, we will continue to be stuck in Afghan quicksand for years to come.

The president should go further -- removing the most recent 30,000 surge troops by the end of 2011 and reducing to a total of fewer than 30,000 troops by the end of 2012. Combined with sincere political efforts in Afghanistan and the broader region, and by maintaining a focus on al-Qaeda, the United States can move Afghanistan and the region toward stability, while freeing itself from its quicksand.
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Hoh is a a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy and the Director of the Afghanistan Study Group. He served with the Marine Corps in Iraq and with State Department teams in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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Copyright (C) 2010 by the American Forum. 6/11

AMERICAN FORUM
By Yifat Susskind

Hurricane season begins this month, and in Haiti’s displacement camps, people have begun to look fearfully toward the skies. For solutions, they must look to Haitian women.

More than a year after the earthquake, each day continues to bring life-threatening challenges to the hundreds of thousands of Haitians living in tent cities. Families that lost everything to the earthquake now struggle to feed themselves, to find clean water or to stay healthy in the face of dangerous illnesses like cholera.

Now, on top of all of this, the hurricanes are returning.

In 2008, Haiti was slammed by four hurricanes in but a few weeks in August and September. Hundreds of people were killed and thousands of homes destroyed by winds, flooding and mudslides. Today, as Haitian communities continue to reel from the earthquake, another hurricane would add to the misery.

Through decades of experience responding to disasters, women’s groups worldwide have learned indispensable lessons. We know that in the aftermath of disaster, women and girls confront particular challenges. They face increased risk of rape and violence. They lose access to reproductive health services. What’s more, aid distribution targeting male heads-of-household often leaves women out.

These threats are anything but natural. Instead, they fall along social fault lines that unload the worst burdens on the most vulnerable -- especially poor women.

But there is more to this story. Survival of families and communities depends upon women standing on the front lines of a disaster. As pillars of their communities, women know how best to rebuild. These are the women who know which family has a new baby or which grandmother has been ill.

When floods in Pakistan displaced millions of people last year, women set up clinics in remote areas and made sure that aid reached the most vulnerable populations.

When Hurricane Mitch leveled Nicaragua in 1998, women directed crucial supplies like food, clothing and medicine to families most in need.

And in the year and a half since the Haiti earthquake, women there have worked tirelessly to rebuild communities and deliver life-saving aid long after the global spotlight moved elsewhere. When the next hurricane hits, no one will be better prepared to spring into action.

We can make this hurricane season different. We can’t stop the hurricane once it begins its swift path across the ocean, but we can protect communities in its wake. The best way to do this is by working with women.

Women in a hurricane’s path are demanding they not be forgotten. They are demanding a voice in disaster-response policies, so that they can help aid get to the most vulnerable. They are demanding the opportunity to use their expertise to rebuild stronger communities.

If we support relief efforts that include women and listen to these demands, we can save lives.
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Susskind is Executive Director of MADRE: Rights, Resources and Results for Women Worldwide.
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Copyright © 2011 by the American Forum. 6/11

By Brian Setzler

The coalition calls itself WIN America, but the numbers involved in the corporate tax holiday mean a real loss for America. The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation has calculated this tax windfall would cost $80 billion, money that would be made up with higher taxes on small business people like me, or through reduced government services and infrastructure upon which all businesses, communities and families depend.

Tax amnesty programs are nothing new. The IRS has a couple of times allowed individual taxpayers to declare hidden offshore assets and pay both the full tax due and penalties in exchange for avoiding prosecution and possible jail time. While much corporate tax-dodging through the use of tax havens is neither hidden, nor illegal under current law favoring U.S. multinationals, it wholly stems from corporations who engage in these transactions for the principle purpose of shifting profits between countries in order to avoid taxes. Creating an incentive for such anti-social behavior through preferential tax rates will only serve to accelerate the offshoring of U.S. profits through fictional transactions.

Indeed, this is exactly what happened in 2004, when Congress enacted the American Jobs Creation Act, a bill which promised that a 5.25% tax rate would bring home billions of dollars that supporters claimed would be reinvested to create American jobs. The promise never materialized; most of the funds went instead to boost shareholder dividends and stock buybacks. Many of the biggest beneficiaries of the tax break, including Pfizer, Honeywell, and Hewlett Packard, laid off thousands of workers just months after receiving their tax windfall. That tax holiday, and the promise of another, has dramatically accelerated the amount of U.S. profits shifted offshore.

All of my education took place in the United States, as do all of my client meetings. The vast majority of Americans find it right and logical that I have a duty to pay taxes in the U.S. It is time that the same logic applies to multinational corporations, and that we stop accepting fairy tales about patents and trademarks held in some far-away bank vault.
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Setzler is President and founder of TriLibrium, a public accounting and business advisory firm located in Portland, OR.
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Copyright (C) 2011 by American Forum. 6/11

By Ellen Bravo and Dan Mulhern

After being inundated with news reports of male public figures behaving badly, Father’s Day gives us a much-needed opportunity to turn attention to the many fathers and husbands who work tirelessly to support their families -- – and to call on elected officials to move policies that allow all men to be good fathers, sons and husbands without being punished for it at work.

First, we saw Mark Kelly take time off from his space training to be at the bedside of his wife, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, as she recovered from the traumatic shooting.

Then, in a more celebratory moment, Colby Lewis and Ian Desmond told the baseball league and fans that while they loved the game, the birth of a child warranted missing one or two.

Happily but not surprisingly, the Texas Rangers are still in first place, and the Endeavor shuttle launch was a success.

The iconic photos of Mark Kelly camped out at Gabrielle Giffords’ bedside and holding her hand offer poignant evidence that men, as well as women, respond to a loved one’s crisis by wanting to be right by that person’s side.

Scientific evidence demonstrates that the presence of these men is not just sentimental or symbolic. Babies whose fathers have been more actively involved with their care score higher on a key infant development test and are more socially responsive. A year later, these babies show more resilience when faced with stressful situations.

Similarly, the involvement of loved ones is critical to the recovery of brain trauma patients. According to Dr. Stephan Mayer, director of the Neurological Intensive Care Unit at Columbia University Medical Center, “the common denominator is a present, loving and supportive family. I can’t say how important it is to have your loved ones around you helping you battle through.”

It’s awesome that these men were able to take time off to support their wives and welcome their babies into this world, and they could do it all without worrying about their job. But the policies that allowed these high-profile and high-powered fathers and husbands to be with their families at critical junctures are sorely lacking for most the dads who are working hard to support their families.

Consider this: the law allowing men to take family leave covers only half the country’s workers. Of those who have it, many cannot afford to take it because the time is unpaid.

Two in five private sector workers have no paid sick days, and the vast majority of workers who do are not allowed to use the time to care for a sick family member.

Without paid sick days or paid family leave, which are policies in nearly every other country around the world, too many of our dads miss the births of their children and are unable to stay home to care for their kids when they’re sick because of the fear of losing their job, or being unable to miss a day’s wages.

In this season of commemorating fathers and mothers, leaders across the country have a chance to give families a really meaningful gift: support for policies that allow men to be caregivers as well as breadwinners.

Just this week, Governor Dan Malloy will signed the country’s first statewide law letting workers earn paid sick days that they can use for their own illness or that of a family member. City Council members in Philadelphia are expected to pass a similar bill, and may be joined this year by decision-makers in Seattle and New York and voters in Denver.

In other states and cities across the country, leaders are realizing that paid sick days is a policy that’s good for the public health, good for working families and good for the economy. And Members of Congress can sign on to the Healthy Families Act, a national paid sick days bill re-introduced by Senator Tom Harkin and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro.

Congress can also support the President’s inclusion of $23 million in the federal budget for grants to states to help establish family leave insurance funds that will ensure men and women are able to afford to take care of themselves and their families after the birth of a child or during longer term illnesses. This policy is also gaining traction: California and New Jersey have established programs, Washington has passed one; several others are exploring paid family leave insurance.

Few men can throw a ball 90 miles an hour or hurtle into space at 17,500 miles an hour. But all our dads are working hard, and they deserve time to be loving family members.

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Ellen Bravo is Executive Director of Family Values @ Work Consortium, a network of 15 state coalitions working for policies like paid sick days and paid family leave. Dan Mulhern teaches at Cal Berkeley and works with the Families and Work Institute (he’s married to former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm).
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Copyright (C) 2011 by the American Forum. 6/11

AMERICAN FORUM
By Dr. William Barclay

This month marks the tenth anniversary of the first of the two tax cuts sought by the President George Bush. The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act was enacted in 2001 to be followed, in 2003, by the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act. Ten years later, it is time we assess the actual results of these tax cuts, looking at economic performance rather than political promises. The results have been a disaster for the US economy and for almost all of the American people. We have experienced very slow income and employment growth for the vast majority of families, an extremely unequal distribution of the direct financial benefits from these measures, and, very slow growth in the economy as a whole.

As someone who has personally received these tax cuts during the past 10 years, I feel it is my responsibility to speak out.

Supporters of tax cuts for high income households, such as House majority leader John Boehner, argue that wealthy people are the “job creators” and that tax cuts will encourage them to create jobs and that these new jobs will, in turn, increase employment opportunities and improve the wages of the remainder of the population. Did any of these benefits occur after the Bush tax cuts? The quick and accurate answer is, no, they did not. Adjusted for inflation, the median weekly earnings of working Americans actually fell by 2.3 percent from the end of the 2000 – 01 recession to the onset of the Great Recession. This is unique in the post WWII period. Further, the recovery from the 2000 – 01 recession was the slowest of any post WWII recession to date, requiring 39 months before the number of employed Americans reached the pre-recession level. Where is even a scintilla of evidence that tax cuts such as those passed in 2001 and 2003 generate income and employment growth for the vast majority of the population?

A significant part of the failure of the Bush tax cuts to generate jobs and income growth flows from the top-heavy distribution of the benefits conveyed by these measures. The vast bulk of the reduced taxes were reaped by a very small number of families. In 2011, the average tax reduction to families receiving an income of $1 million or more (about 321,000 families) will be $139,199. For this less than 0.5 percent of all families this is a reduction in taxes of $860 million/week.

Compare these tax benefits to the yearly savings proposed by cutting the WIC program: $833 million. An obvious question is, why can’t this very small group of extremely high income families give up just one week of their tax cut to provide nutrition for the tens of thousands of women and children that benefit from the WIC program? More significantly, in light of the deficit hysteria gripping Washington D.C., the combined impact of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts has been the addition of more than $2.6 trillion to the federal debt. This included more than $400 billion in interest payments on the debt necessary to pay for the cuts.

Of course, one might forgive these policy failures if the promise of economic growth had been fulfilled. On this measure, however, the record is even worse. The 2000 – 01 recession ended in the fourth quarter of 2001, just in time for the first Bush tax cut to take effect. From the end of the recession until the onset of the Great Recession, the economy grew at a slower rate than in any other post recession period since WWII. Thus, despite promises from the advocates of the tax cuts, the reality was slower growth rather than faster growth. The additional tax cut in 2003 did nothing to increase the pace of economic growth.

In sum, the Bush tax cuts were a bad idea at the time and are an even worse idea today. Ending these cuts for incomes over $250,000 would generate over $100 billion/year in additional revenue. If we also created additional tax rates for very high-income families (e.g. at $500,000, $1,000,000, $5,000,000 and $10,000,000) we could increase federal revenue by more than double that amount and put us on the road to reducing deficits and debts.
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Barclay worked for 22 years in financial service before retiring in 2004. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the Liautaud Graduate School of Business and is a member of Wealth for the Common Good.
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Copyright (C) 2011 by the American Forum. 6/11

AMERICAN FORUM

By Patricia West

As a Pennsylvania social worker specializing in family dynamics, I’ve spent most of my 40 year career analyzing and trying out various ways to keep women healthy and safe. This month [June 7] we celebrate the anniversary of a breakthrough in that process: the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut Supreme Court decision that legalized contraceptive use for married couples—and more importantly, recognized an individual’s right to privacy in family planning matters.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently recognized family planning as one of the ten great public health advances of the 20th century. At clinics and centers that provide family planning, the complications of pregnancy that are a woman’s most common source of ill health can be prevented or treated. And our national family planning program – Title X of the Public Health Service Act of 1970 – made family planning available to low-income people as well as the rich. As a result, some 98 percent of us have used birth control at some point in our lives, and we mostly take it for granted.

We shouldn’t. The House voted recently to defund Title X completely for fiscal 2011. The Senate saved the program, but another attempt to kill it is certain this year. The attackers are using innuendo and misinformation to entangle family planning in their anti-abortion war, claiming to cut spending but ignoring the truth: Title X, the only dedicated source of federal funding for family planning services, saves the government some $3.4 billion every year by preventing unintended pregnancies, nearly half of which would likely end in abortion.

In Pennsylvania, for example, the state’s 234 Title X centers served 287,200 clients in 2008, providing not just contraceptives but also essential preventive care: pelvic exams and Pap tests; pregnancy testing; screening for high blood pressure, anemia, diabetes and cervical and breast cancer, and for sexually transmitted infections including HIV; basic infertility services; health education; and referrals for other health and social services. This care helped
Pennsylvania women avoid 59,700 unintended pregnancies, which likely would have resulted in 26,500 births and 24.900 abortions. That saved the state $183.5 million in Medicaid spending, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

At the moment, unintended pregnancy costs U.S. taxpayers about $11 billion a year, according to new Guttmacher research. Without publicly funded family planning services, these costs would be 60 percent higher. Nationwide, Title X funds 89 nonprofit grantees who operate more than 4,500 sites. Most are county and local health departments; the rest are hospitals, family planning councils and other private nonprofit agencies.

Seventeen million people need some assistance to get the kind of care these centers provide, but today Title X is funded to cover just over five million of those in need. Some 70 percent of them have incomes at or below the federal poverty level of $10,830 per year. They live paycheck to paycheck, and the Pennsylvania women I have worked with know what that is like. Six in ten women who get care from Title X
consider it their usual source of health care, and for many it is their only source.

Every dollar invested in publicly funded family planning averts nearly $4 in Medicaid costs. It only makes sense that the Obama administration should include contraceptives in the women’s health preventive services benefits under the Affordable Care Act.

Title X, in short, is essential to preventing unintended pregnancies and improving public health while saving taxpayers billions of dollars every year. Family planning gives a woman options for her life beyond childbearing. If she wants two children – as most American women do – she will be able to pick the five years she will be pregnant and bearing her children, confident that contraceptives are available to her for the 30 years she will spend avoiding pregnancy.

This is a life-changing freedom. In the coming Pennsylvania and national spending battles, Title X must be recognized for what it has always been: a fundamental part of American life that can and must be preserved.
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West lives in Philadelphia and is a member of the Women Donors Network. She is a public health social worker and user of “the pill” from 1959 through 1970.
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Copyright (C) 2011 by American Forum. 6/11

AMERICAN FORUM

By Clare Coleman

If you’re an average woman, you want two children, according to various surveys. That means you’ll spend about five years of your life trying to become pregnant, being pregnant or recovering from pregnancy, and 30 years trying to avoid it.

You can do that thanks to the June 1965 landmark Supreme Court decision Griswold v. Connecticut, which affirmed the right of married couples to use contraceptives -- and more importantly, recognized an individual's right to privacy in family planning matters. Universal usage and acceptance of contraceptives followed, transforming the lives of millions of Americans.

The Griswold case was a catalyst for our national family planning program -- Title X of the Public Health Service Act -- the only dedicated source of federal funding for family planning services. Created in 1970, Title X provides access to family planning for all, without regard to economic circumstances.

Today, contraceptives are an important part of family life in America -- so much so that 98 percent of us have used birth control at some point in our lives, and we mostly take it for granted.

We shouldn’t. During the recent battle in Congress over funding the government, the House of Representatives voted to eliminate Title X. Opponents of family planning used a mixture of misinformation and innuendo to entangle family planning in their anti-abortion war, ignoring the fact that Title X saves the government some $3.4 billion every year by preventing unintended pregnancies, nearly half of which would likely have ended in abortion. The Senate saved the program, but another attempt to kill Title X is certain this year. When it comes, Americans must recognize that access to basic primary and preventive care is being threatened.

Title X funds 4,500 nonprofit- and government-run sites nationwide: most are county and local health departments. The rest are hospitals, family planning councils and other private nonprofit agencies. These agencies are required to provide preventive and primary health care services including pelvic exams and Pap tests; pregnancy testing; screening for high blood pressure, anemia, diabetes and cervical and breast cancer, and for sexually transmitted infections including HIV; basic infertility services; health education; and referrals for other health and social services -- as well as contraceptives and counseling about them.

These are the facts of life: According to new Guttmacher Institute research, unintended pregnancy costs U.S. taxpayers approximately $11 billion a year. Without publicly funded family planning services, these costs would be 60 percent higher. In 2008, services at Title X centers helped prevent 973,000 unintended pregnancies that would likely have resulted in 432,600 births and 406,200 abortions. The centers also performed 2.2 million Pap tests, 5.9 million STI tests and a million confidential HIV tests in 2009 alone.

Seventeen million people need some assistance in order to get this important care, but today, Title X is funded to cover just over five million of those in need. There are always more patients than subsidies. Seventy percent of the individuals seen at Title X-funded health centers have incomes at or below the federal poverty level -- meaning they earn less than $10,830 per year. Many of them are working young adults, living paycheck to paycheck. They count down the days until they get paid and are just one unexpected problem from disaster -- if the car engine light comes on; the childcare center raises its fees; or their hours are cut.

Six in ten women who get care from Title X consider it their usual source of health care, and for many it is their only source. Patients under the federal poverty level receive services at no cost to them; those who make over $10,830 a year are provided services on a sliding fee scale according to income.

Although no patient is turned away because of an inability to pay, Title X actually saves money for the government. Every dollar invested in publicly funded family planning averts nearly $4 in Medicaid costs. Given its proven effectiveness, it only makes sense that the Obama administration should include contraceptives in the women’s health preventive services benefit under the Affordable Care Act.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has cited family planning as one of the 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century, and Title X funding is essential to our effort to prevent unintended pregnancies and improve public health while saving taxpayers billions of dollars a year.

As the states struggle with growing budget shortfalls, continued funding for Title X should be recognized for what it is: an essential part of America’s health care system.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Coleman is president and CEO of the National Family Planning & Reproductive Health
Association.
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Copyright (C) 2011 by the American Forum. 5/11

AMERICAN FORUM

By Clare Coleman

If you’re an average woman, you want two children, according to various surveys. That
means you’ll spend about five years of your life trying to become pregnant, being pregnant or
recovering from pregnancy, and 30 years trying to avoid it.

You can do that thanks to the June 1965 landmark Supreme Court decision Griswold v.
Connecticut, which affirmed the right of married couples to use contraceptives -- and more
importantly, recognized an individual's right to privacy in family planning matters. Universal
usage and acceptance of contraceptives followed, transforming the lives of millions of
Americans.

The Griswold case was a catalyst for our national family planning program -- Title X of the Public
Health Service Act -- the only dedicated source of federal funding for family planning services.
Created in 1970, Title X provides access to family planning for all, without regard to economic
circumstances.

Today, contraceptives are an important part of family life in America -- so much so that 98
percent of us have used birth control at some point in our lives, and we mostly take it for
granted.

We shouldn’t. During the recent battle in Congress over funding the government, the House
of Representatives voted to eliminate Title X. Opponents of family planning used a mixture
of misinformation and innuendo to entangle family planning in their anti-abortion war,
ignoring the fact that Title X saves the government some $3.4 billion every year by preventing
unintended pregnancies, nearly half of which would likely have ended in abortion. The Senate
saved the program, but another attempt to kill Title X is certain this year. When it comes,
Americans must recognize that access to basic primary and preventive care is being threatened.

Title X funds 4,500 nonprofit- and government-run sites nationwide: most are county and local
health departments. The rest are hospitals, family planning councils and other private nonprofit
agencies. These agencies are required to provide preventive and primary health care services
including pelvic exams and Pap tests; pregnancy testing; screening for high blood pressure,
anemia, diabetes and cervical and breast cancer, and for sexually transmitted infections
including HIV; basic infertility services; health education; and referrals for other health and
social services -- as well as contraceptives and counseling about them.

These are the facts of life: According to new Guttmacher Institute research, unintended
pregnancy costs U.S. taxpayers approximately $11 billion a year. Without publicly funded family
planning services, these costs would be 60 percent higher. In 2008, services at Title X centers
helped prevent 973,000 unintended pregnancies that would likely have resulted in 432,600
births and 406,200 abortions. The centers also performed 2.2 million Pap tests, 5.9 million STI
tests and a million confidential HIV tests in 2009 alone.

Seventeen million people need some assistance in order to get this important care, but today,
Title X is funded to cover just over five million of those in need. There are always more patients
than subsidies. Seventy percent of the individuals seen at Title X-funded health centers have
incomes at or below the federal poverty level -- meaning they earn less than $10,830 per year.
Many of them are working young adults, living paycheck to paycheck. They count down the
days until they get paid and are just one unexpected problem from disaster -- if the car engine
light comes on; the childcare center raises its fees; or their hours are cut.

Six in ten women who get care from Title X consider it their usual source of health care, and
for many it is their only source. Patients under the federal poverty level receive services at no
cost to them; those who make over $10,830 a year are provided services on a sliding fee scale
according to income.

Although no patient is turned away because of an inability to pay, Title X actually saves money
for the government. Every dollar invested in publicly funded family planning averts nearly
$4 in Medicaid costs. Given its proven effectiveness, it only makes sense that the Obama
administration should include contraceptives in the women’s health preventive services benefit
under the Affordable Care Act.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has cited family planning as one of the 10 great
public health achievements of the 20th century, and Title X funding is essential to our effort to
prevent unintended pregnancies and improve public health while saving taxpayers billions of
dollars a year.

As the states struggle with growing budget shortfalls, continued funding for Title X should be
recognized for what it is: an essential part of America’s health care system.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Coleman is president and CEO of the National Family Planning & Reproductive Health
Association.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright (C) 2011 by the American Forum. 5/11