July, 28 2022, 12:29pm EDT
Main Street Alliance Responds to the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022
WASHINGTON
On the news that Leader Schumer and Senator Manchin announced a breakthrough in their negotiations on the Reconciliation bill, Main Street Alliance/Main Street Action Executive Director Chanda Causer had this to say:
"The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 addresses some key concerns Main Street business owners face today, but it does not go far enough. Holding corporations accountable for their fair share of taxes, while investing in cost-savings on health care for small businesses is exactly the kind of progress small businesses need to survive. However, small businesses need public investment in care infrastructure to recover from the pandemic's economic toll and contend with surging costs. Without this investment, many people - especially Black and Latina women, who are most severely impacted by child care shortages and often do not have paid leave - cannot start, grow, or work for small businesses.
"While this deal is an achievement that includes some of the commitments President Joe Biden made when he took office, much work still needs to be done. Main Street Alliance is developing small business leaders in local communities across the country to speak up for the issues that matter to their communities and our economy. We are not willing to bargain away our priorities. We saw what happened when there was no safety net for families during the pandemic: massive corporations were able to rake in record profits while most of us struggled to survive. We can't allow this to happen again."
The Main Street Alliance (MSA) is a national network of small business coalitions working to build a new voice for small businesses on important public policy issues. Main Street Alliance members are working throughout the country to build policies that work for business owners, their employees, and the communities they serve.
LATEST NEWS
Biden Administration Takes 'Morally Bankrupt' Climate Position at ICJ
"This opposition to strong international law on climate justice categorically undermines the Biden administration's climate legacy," said Ashfaq Khalfan of Oxfam America.
Dec 05, 2024
The Biden administration faced backlash from scientists, advocacy groups, and vulnerable Pacific islands on Wednesday for arguing before the United Nations' highest court that the Paris agreement is sufficient and countries should not face additional legal obligations to fight the climate emergency.
The U.S. position, outlined at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) by State Department legal adviser Margaret Taylor, was deemed "morally bankrupt" by Oxfam America, which
decried the administration's insistence that "countries do not have clear legal obligations to reduce carbon pollution, especially as it prepares to turn over the executive office to a proven climate denier like President-elect [Donald] Trump."
"This opposition to strong international law on climate justice categorically undermines the Biden administration's climate legacy," Ashfaq Khalfan, Oxfam America's climate justice director, said Wednesday. "The U.S. has today denied any firm obligation to reduce carbon pollution to safer levels, phase out fossil fuel production, or provide funding to lower-income countries to help with renewable energy and protection from climate harms. Governments have failed to do what is necessary to protect humanity from the climate crisis, and it is essential that the ICJ holds them to account by pushing them towards concrete action to ensure climate justice."
Taylor argued during her presentation in The Hague on Wednesday that "the U.N. climate change regime, with the Paris agreement at its core, is the only international legal regime specifically designed by states to address climate change" and that "cooperative efforts through that regime provide the best hope for protecting the climate system for the benefit of present and future generations."
While technically a legally binding international treaty, the Paris accord has failed to arrest the rise of planet-warming carbon emissions, which have surged to an all-time high this year. The agreement—from which the U.S. is expected to withdraw for a second time under Trump—has no enforcement mechanism, and its language leaves ample room for countries to continue burning fossil fuels at levels that scientists say are incompatible with a livable future.
"The U.S. is content with its business-as-usual approach and has taken every possible measure to shirk its historical responsibility, disregard human rights, and reject climate justice."
Delta Merner, lead scientist for the Science Hub for Climate Litigation at the Union of Concerned Scientists, criticized the U.S.—the largest historical polluter—for resisting "calls for climate accountability" at Wednesday's ICJ hearing.
"Instead of taking responsibility for its contributions to the climate crisis, the United States used its 30-minute slot to downplay the role of the courts for global climate action, emphasize nonbinding national commitments under the Paris agreement, and reject the notion of historical responsibility," said Merner. "By framing climate change as a collective action challenge without clear legal obligations for individual states, the United States dismissed the potential for redress or binding accountability measures that advance justice for climate-vulnerable nations."
"In the face of stonewalling from major polluters, we applaud the leadership of Vanuatu and others for advancing this process," Merner added. "These proceedings must continue to center the voices of frontline communities."
The Pacific island of Vanuatu first launched the push for an ICJ advisory opinion on climate in 2021. Less than two years later, the U.N. General Assembly approved a resolution calling on the ICJ to issue an opinion on countries' legal obligations regarding the global fight against climate change.
Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu's special envoy for climate change and environment,
criticized the U.S. presentation at Wednesday's landmark hearing and said treaties such as the Paris agreement can't be "a veil for inaction or a substitute for legal accountability."
"These nations—some of the world's largest greenhouse gas emitters—have pointed to existing treaties and commitments that have regrettably failed to motivate substantial reductions in emissions," said Regenvanu. "There needs to be an accounting for the failure to curb emissions and the climate change impacts and human rights violations that failure has generated."
Vishal Prasad, director of Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change, expressed outrage at what he described as "a disheartening attempt by the U.S. to evade its responsibilities as one of the world's largest polluters."
"The U.S. is content with its business-as-usual approach and has taken every possible measure to shirk its historical responsibility, disregard human rights, and reject climate justice," Prasad added.
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'This Is Genocide,' Amnesty International Says of Israel's Death Machine in Gaza
"Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community," said Agnès Callamard, the group's secretary-general. "It must stop now."
Dec 05, 2024
The leading human rights group Amnesty International said late Wednesday what United Nations experts, national leaders, and historians have been arguing for months: that Israel's massive assault on Gaza amounts to the crime of genocide against the Palestinian population.
Amnesty, which had sharply criticized Israel's U.S.-backed war but until Thursday stopped short of labeling it genocide, details its findings and conclusion in a sprawling new report titled "You Feel Like You Are Subhuman": Israel's Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza.
The 296-page document features interviews with survivors and witnesses of Israel's large-scale campaign of bombing, displacement, arbitrary detention, and destruction of Gaza's agricultural land and civilian infrastructure, interviews supplemented by an analysis of satellite imagery, video footage, and other visual evidence.
Israeli authorities, the group said, did not respond substantively with any of its inquiries between October 2023—when the assault on Gaza began in the wake of the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel—and October 2024. The report does, however, include quotes from Israeli officials and soldiers, including one who declared that "there is no innocence in Gaza."
"Through its research findings and legal analysis," the report states, "Amnesty International has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel committed, during the nine-month period under review, prohibited acts under Articles II (a), (b), and (c) of the Genocide Convention, namely killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part."
Amnesty said it also "found sufficient basis to conclude that these acts were committed with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, as such, who form a substantial part of the Palestinian population."
Agnès Callamard, Amnesty's secretary-general, said in a statement that her organization's report "demonstrates that Israel has carried out acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza."
"Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them," said Callamard. "Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now."
Amnesty published its findings more than a year into an Israeli assault that has killed more than 44,500 people in Gaza, displaced almost all of the enclave's population, and left many at dire risk of starvation and disease. Nearly 70% of the deaths verified by the U.N. have been women and children.
"Governments must stop pretending they are powerless to end this genocide, which was enabled by decades of impunity for Israel's violations of international law."
The human rights group's report comes less than a month after a special U.N. committee said that the Israeli military's actions in the Gaza Strip—including the obstruction of humanitarian aid and targeted attacks on civilians—bear "the characteristics of genocide."
Amnesty echoes that assessment, pointing to Israel's mass destruction of cultural and religious sites in Gaza, detention and torture, use of dehumanizing language against Palestinians, and—in the case of many soldiers—the open celebration of Palestinian suffering.
"Amnesty International considers that the pattern of conduct which characterized Israel's military operations, coupled with the statements of Israeli officials and soldiers made in a context of apartheid, an unlawful blockade, and an unlawful military occupation, provide sufficient evidence of Israel's intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza, as such," the report states.
Callamard called on nations continuing to provide military support for Israel's assault, including the United States, to cease arms transfers immediately, as they are "violating their obligation to prevent genocide and are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide."
"The international community's seismic, shameful failure for over a year to press Israel to end its atrocities in Gaza, by first delaying calls for a cease-fire and then continuing arms transfers, is and will remain a stain on our collective conscience," said Agnès Callamard.
"Governments must stop pretending they are powerless to end this genocide, which was enabled by decades of impunity for Israel's violations of international law," she added. "States need to move beyond mere expressions of regret or dismay and take strong and sustained international action, however uncomfortable a finding of genocide may be for some of Israel's allies."
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'What a Racket': CBO Finds Extending Trump Tax Cuts Would Shrink US Economy
"The looting has begun," said one Democrat. "Far from unleashing record-breaking growth, the next Trump tax scam will make hardworking families worse off, shrink our economy, and blow a $4.6 trillion hole in the deficit."
Dec 05, 2024
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected Wednesday that extending provisions of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law that are set to expire at the end of next year would shrink the U.S. economy over the long run, a finding that came as Republicans planned to move ahead with another round of regressive tax cuts within the first 100 days of the new Congress.
In its new analysis, the CBO found that allowing provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act to expire as scheduled in 2025 would have a positive long-term effect on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth compared to permanently extending the provisions.
"Expiration increases the long-term growth of potential GDP by about 6 basis points," the CBO said.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said in response to the CBO's findings that "the looting has begun."
"Far from unleashing record-breaking growth, the next Trump tax scam will make hardworking families worse off, shrink our economy, and blow a $4.6 trillion hole in the deficit," said Whitehouse. "What a racket, to push for trillions in tax cuts so billionaires keep paying lower rates than nurses and plumbers, and then cite deficit concerns to rob families needing things like home heating or childcare."
"Looting the treasury for megadonors is a rotten trick," the senator added, "and no amount of budgetary smoke and mirrors will hide it."
The CBO report was published as congressional Republicans continued to map out their legislative agenda before taking control of both chambers in January. The Associated Pressreported earlier this week that "in preparation for Trump's return, Republicans in Congress have been meeting privately for months and with the president-elect to go over proposals to extend and enhance those tax breaks, some of which would otherwise expire in 2025."
"It's always been about further enriching political and economic elites even at the cost of our economic future."
During the 2024 campaign, Trump pledged to sustain individual tax breaks enacted by the 2017 law—which disproportionately benefited the rich—and further reduce the statutory tax rate for U.S. corporations.
"The last time Republicans spent this much money for no apparent gain was the war in Iraq," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said Wednesday. "Trump's political donors want a return on their investment, and Republicans are going to give it to them, even at the cost of shrinking our economy and destroying jobs."
To offset the massive projected cost of extending the 2017 law and enacting new corporate tax cuts, Republicans are planning to pursue deep cuts to Medicaid, federal nutrition assistance, and other programs that help low-income Americans meet basic needs.
"President-elect Trump campaigned as a champion of the working class but his first act will be tanking the economy and throwing workers under the bus to line the pockets of his wealthy friends," said Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative. "The Trump tax scam is back for its second act, and Americans should brace for impact."
David Kass, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, called the latest CBO analysis of the Republican Party's tax policies "even more damning than previous iterations."
"Using the country's credit card to give away trillions of dollars to the wealthiest Americans and big corporations would be disastrous for our economy and the average American," Kass said Wednesday. "The Trump Tax Scam bill has never been about economic growth or improving the lives of working and middle-class Americans. It's always been about further enriching political and economic elites even at the cost of our economic future."
"Moving forward," Kass added, "the incoming administration and congressional Republicans must answer why they plan to make hardworking Americans worse off, shrink our economy, and increase the deficit by $4.6 trillion."
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