Arizona's Compassion-less Clueless Camera-Hoggin' Congressman Jeff Flake Blocks Economic Recovery - But Here's How to Fight This Entrenched Politician

How does a regular little guy fight entrenched power?

Arizona's Sixth Congressional District has a career politician Congressman, the fanatic Jeff Flake, who's standing in the way of full economic recovery and laughing in the faces of working people in the East Valley and all over America.

With his assaults on labor and working families, his outlandishly regressive tax policies and his slavish devotion to corporate power, this captive of K Street lobbyists Flake is blocking any attempts by the federal government to stop this onerous economic Great Recession.

In fact, he's happy about it. It's laissez-faire capitalism at its finest, says the foolish or fiendish Flake. Now his starve-the-beast philosophy of fiscal austerity and do-nothingism has spread, and we can't do any more stimulus or even help those who are under water, unemployed or struggling to pay bills like so many of us in the East Valley.

But here are three suggestions to go around our career-politician congressman:

First, Congress should grant workers a temporary holiday from the forced savings program known as Social Security.

To stimulate the economy now with no long-term increase in government debt, Congress should therefore temporarily exempt a portion of wages from the Social Security taxes imposed on workers; at the same time, those exempted wages would not be credited in computing that worker’s future retirement benefits.

For example, a 40-year-old earning $50,000 and paying annual Social Security taxes of about $3,000 could see those taxes cut to about $2,000. The added $1,000 in his paycheck, along with similar amounts for other workers, could be a huge stimulus to the economy.

In the future, of course, there would be a price to pay: the growth in that worker’s retirement benefits would be slightly reduced — much as if he had taken off four months without pay.

But the emphasis should be on “slightly.” Because benefits are typically paid over decades, the cost of a temporary $1,000 tax cut would be spread over many years; it could amount to a reduction in annual pension benefits of less than $100. The holiday could even be limited to workers under the age of 55, to allow plenty of time for them to salt away a few extra dollars for retirement once the economy improves.

Best of all, the costs and benefits would be matched to each worker. Those who get a pickup today would pay it back later on. This way, the Keynesians would get their stimulus, and the deficit hawks [like the predatory oddbird Jeff Flake] could sleep better at night.

Second, we need to block heartless, heedless, headless politicians like Jeff Flake from denying those who can't find jobs some relief.

Congress should restore the automatic triggers in unemployment compensation from the 1970s before nuts like Flake got in charge of the government (and they won't let go now, thirty years later!)

In 1970, Congress passed the Federal-State Unemployment Compensation Act, which established an automatic trigger: whenever unemployment increased to a certain point at a national or a state level, benefits were extended by 13 weeks.

The costs of these benefits were shared by the states, which paid them out of their regular unemployment insurance accounts, and the federal government, which increased taxes by about $8 per worker.

In the ’80s and ’90s, however, Congress diminished the effectiveness of the program by eliminating the national trigger, raising the state triggers and altering the trigger calculations in such a way that they hardly ever took effect

[Now], whenever a state’s total unemployment rate rises above 6.5 percent or jobless claims increase by more than 20 percent, benefits should be offered for an additional 20 or more weeks. This program should be fully financed by the federal government, thereby alleviating states’ burden during the recession.

An automatic trigger would provide a tailored response to those states with the worst labor markets and eliminate the need for Congress to revisit this issue every few months. Most important, we could reduce some of the uncertainty for the jobless.

Finally, Congress should allow small businesses to speed up the rate at which they can write off depreciating assets. Doing so would save employers money and spur entrepreneurial risk-taking, without increasing the national debt.

True, in the short term the government would lose tax revenue. But it is the same amount the government would lose by allowing the write-off anyway, just over a shorter period of time.

And there could be a fee for anyone using the accelerated schedule, equal to the interest the government would pay on the money it needed to borrow to cover its temporarily lost revenue.

Of course, Congress would want to make sure companies put their savings into new investments. To that end, it could devise a system for rewarding entrepreneurs based on the number of jobs per dollar depreciation created or the environmental worthiness of the project. And the accelerated write-off could be adjusted for specific assets across numerous industries, spurring development in areas where the public can most benefit, from new power plants to hospitals and nursing homes.

The tough part would be devising regulations and administering such a program. Politics is bound to intrude, though an independent review panel could help keep undue influence at bay.

Nevertheless, the reward for getting this policy right would be great — for government, investors, creditors and taxpayers — and it would encourage entrepreneurial enthusiasm throughout the economy.

With a little innovation and a lot of hard work (something our tropical-isle-vacationing congressman knows nothing about),

even before the voters boot out fishy fanatics like Jeff Flake, we can end this recession and put Arizona's working families in a better place.

Ayatollah of Austerity Jeff Flake Leads Coalition of the Cruel and the Clueless to Bring America Down

The ayatollahs of austerity, led by Arizona's fanatic laissez-faire congressman Jeff Flake, seem to be prevailing in their efforts to bring America's economy down even further. The prevailing "wisdom" is that of Herbert Hoover during the Great Depression: fight a severe economic downturn by imposing even more pain on American citizens. And keep those who are in pain worse off than they would otherwise be.

Jeff Flake has voted against extending unemployment benefits throughout his long tenure in Congress, during which the U.S. has lost nearly a million jobs. Like the radical Senate candidate in Nevada, Jeff Flake believes the jobless have no one but themselves to blame. He's against any unemployment benefits because he believes people collecting them are not desperate, just lazy.

Maybe it's easy to say when fat cats have bankrolled your entire career, throwing millions at you every quarter so you can avoid a serious campaign for re-election while you do their bidding and go against the ordinary people who you're supposed to represent.

Jeff Flake is more for Exxon Mobil than for Mesa, more for Goldman Sachs than for Gilbert, more for J.P. Morgan Chase than for Chandler, more for Qwest than for Queen Creek, more for AIG than for Apache Junction.

We're in a real danger of a double-dip recession, as last Friday's unemployment numbers show, and Jeff Flake neither wants to help those Americans who are under water or keep the rest of America from drowning in a second Great Depression. By saying no to all short-term stimulus, he makes the long-term debt and deficit worse and makes regular people's lives that much worse - just when states like Arizona are cutting their budgets, laying off police officers and teachers, and already causing a severe fiscal contraction.

But like the socialists and communists who denied economic reality in thrall to a theory, an intellectual fanatic like Jeff Flake doesn't give a shit about reality or real people.

Meanwhile, yesterday the economist Robert H. Frank proposed some innovative ways to promote economic recovery while bringing down the deficit. We highlight them (boldface ours) here:

There is no conflict — absolutely none — between our twin goals of putting the economy back on its feet and reducing long-term deficits. On the contrary, government could take many steps that would serve both goals simultaneously.

For example, it could create a program to restructure consumer debt. Although rates on 10-year Treasury bonds are only about 3 percent, many consumers still carry tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt at 20 percent or more. This burden has been a continuing drag on spending. The federal government could reduce it by borrowing at 3 percent and lending to consumers at 8 percent under a one-time debt-restructuring plan.

With their debt service payments cut by more than half, consumers could increase spending immediately. And the five-percentage-point spread on money lent under the program would help cover its administrative costs, and maybe even relieve short-run government budget pressure.

(Banks might complain, but because the money owed to them would be repaid in full, and because they insist that their high interest rates barely cover their costs, such complaints would ring hollow.)

Another useful measure would be a carbon tax — or its approximate equivalent, a cap-and-trade system — scheduled for a gradual phase-in after the economy has again reached full employment. This would stimulate an immediate, huge jump in private investment without the government having to spend a penny.

Why? Investment is currently depressed because companies can already produce much more than people want to buy. But once a carbon tax was announced, the design of nearly every existing machine or structure that uses or produces energy would be rendered suddenly obsolete. Motor vehicle engines, electric power plants, refrigerators, air-conditioners, furnaces — all would have to be redesigned for greater efficiency.

The resulting flood of research and investment would enhance our ability to cope with future energy shortages and would serve another crucial purpose. Taxing carbon could eliminate the catastrophic risk of vastly rising global temperatures by the end of this century; it would be a prudent act, quite apart from its utility as an economic stimulus.

The tax would generate no revenue until its phase-in, so it wouldn’t reduce the current deficit. But deficits are a long-run problem, and its enactment alone would increase creditors’ confidence that we are committed to solving it.

Another productive measure would be to increase public investment in infrastructure. When road repairs are deferred for just two to three years, total maintenance expenses can more than double — even if we ignore the cost of accidents and vehicle damage caused by potholes. Spending an extra dollar now to save two dollars three years from now is an investment with an annual rate of return of more than 18 percent.

Making that investment with money borrowed at 3 percent would not only put people to work immediately, but would also help balance government budgets. And after decades of infrastructure neglect, there are many other public investment opportunities that promise returns even higher than 18 percent.

Here’s a final example, which I’ve long advocated: The government could enact a progressive surtax on extremely high levels of consumption, with a phase-in beginning once the economy recovers. This would reduce long-run deficits while stimulating extra spending immediately. And, like the other examples, it would be a step worth taking even apart from those effects.

Because incomes of the wealthy have been growing sharply in recent decades, luxury consumption has also been rising rapidly. But beyond a certain point, additional consumption raises the bar that defines what counts as adequate, without any increase in objective measures of well-being. And because savings would be untouched by this surtax, it would help steer resources away from keep-up-with-the-Joneses spending races and into productive investment. That would increase productivity growth.

Under a consumption surtax, people would report their incomes and their annual savings to the I.R.S., as many now do for tax-exempt retirement accounts. A household’s annual consumption would be calculated as the difference between its income and savings. Congress might apply the surtax only to annual consumption beyond $500,000.

THE resulting revenue would reduce deficits after the phase-in. In the meantime, just the knowledge that the surtax was on the way would stimulate a temporary surge in consumption, as wealthy families rushed to build additions to their mansions and make other purchases before the tax took effect.

In short, the government could take many steps that immediately bolster spending and employment, while also addressing deficit worries. But that’s not where we appear to be headed, as big spending cuts are being proposed in the name of fiscal responsibility.

But as almost 10 percent of the labor force remains unemployed, such cuts would instead be the height of fiscal irresponsibility.

Don't let irresponsible fanatics like Jeff Flake get away with murdering American families' dreams.

Every effort to dig the nation out of the unemployment abyss "is being stymied by excuses about the deficit," said Richard L. Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO. "It is a national disgrace that members of Congress are heading home to celebrating our nation's birthday after having voted repeatedly not to create jobs or to extend unemployment aid."

You can either re-elect a fanatic career politician like Jeff Flake who will do nothing but sit on his gym-toned ass while American families' lives get worse or vote for a change.