April, 30 2024, 01:32pm EDT
White House NEPA Rule is an Important Step Toward a Just Clean Energy Future
Final rule will help accelerate clean energy deployment and protect vulnerable communities
Today, the Biden administration’s White House Council on Environmental Quality released a final rule guiding federal decision making under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
This rulemaking, which was initiated with Phase 1 in 2022, reverses Trump-era attacks on the bedrock environmental protection, as well as ensuring reviews fully and accurately consider the direct, indirect, and cumulative impacts of proposed projects and that affected communities are consulted as early as possible.
In response, Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous released the following statement:
“This rule is yet another reminder that we do not have to choose between environmental justice and meeting our energy needs. Through this commonsense reform, we can unlock the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act and bring abundant clean energy resources online without sacrificing communities or rubber-stamping more fossil fuels. We applaud the Biden administration for taking this important step toward ensuring certainty, efficiency, and transparency in the federal environmental review process.”
The Sierra Club is the most enduring and influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. We amplify the power of our 3.8 million members and supporters to defend everyone's right to a healthy world.
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Next Congress Must Overhaul Tax Code to Make Corporations Pay: Coalition
"Congress cannot simply tinker around the edges of our tax code in 2025—it must reject the failed approach of the Bush and Trump tax cuts and use this opportunity to produce a fairer tax code," said one advocate.
May 21, 2024
Highlighting the massive investments the federal government could make if legislators pass bold new tax reforms following next year's expiration of the Trump-era tax cuts, more than 100 public interest groups on Tuesday wrote to congressional leaders and urged them to correct the "large and costly mistake" that Republicans pushed through in 2017 over the objections of the public.
Nearly seven years after the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), said the coalition led by Groundwork Collaborative, the law has been proven to be "a failure on its own terms," with the average worker seeing none of the financial benefits promised by Republican Party and former President Donald Trump, who is running for the White House again.
"The Trump administration claimed that the TCJA's corporate tax cuts would lead to significantly higher wages for typical workers, but in reality, workers who earned less than $114,000—the overwhelming majority of Americans—did not experience any increase in earnings from the TCJA while the compensation of top corporate executives skyrocketed," wrote the groups, including Americans for Tax Fairness, Children's Defense Fund, and the National Domestic Workers Alliance.
The groups outlined three concrete goals that must be included in any tax reform considered by Congress in 2025:
- Make the tax code more fair by asking high-income households (those who take home more than $400,000), the extremely wealthy, large profitable corporations, and Wall Street to pay a greater share of their income in taxes than if each of the expiring TCJA provisions were simply allowed to expire, while also restoring essential supports for children and families with low or moderate income or wealth and families who've experienced discrimination;
- Raise more revenue than would be generated by letting all of the temporary TCJA provisions sunset, so that we can support much-needed investments in everyday Americans; make good on our commitments to our seniors, families, and historically underfunded communities; and reduce our fiscal risks; and
- Support greater and more inclusive economic growth by providing more financial security and opportunities for typical Americans, narrowing racial wealth gaps by boosting economic mobility, and disincentivizing economically harmful conduct by large corporations.
Before the passage of the TCJA, the letter reads, the tax code "did not generate enough revenue to support pro-growth investments and fiscal responsibility; it reinforced economic, gender, and racial disparities; and it asked too little of the very wealthy and large corporations."
The TCJA "made those problems worse," the letter continues, with "massive and permanent cuts to corporate taxes and temporary cuts to individual and estate taxes that have largely benefited the wealthy and eroded tax revenues even further."
The letter was sent two weeks after the Congressional Budget Office released an analysis showing that extending the individual and real estate tax cuts in the TCJA past their 2025 expiration date would add $4.6 trillion to the national deficit.
The cost of "true pro-growth tax reform that supports public investments," said former National Economic Council deputy director Bharat Ramamurti on a press call about the letter, pales in comparison to the price of continuing the Trump tax cuts.
"You look at some of the things that historically Congress has been considering—when it comes to housing affordability, that's a few hundred billion dollars. Childcare affordability, a few hundred billion dollars," said Ramamurti, who helped coordinate the letter. "It's a fraction of the cost... It just reinforces the enormous scale of these tax benefits that have gone primarily to very wealthy individuals and to corporations."
Citing an economic analysis by the Center for American Progress, the letter notes that without the tax cuts enacted by Trump and former President George W. Bush, "the national debt, as a percent of GDP [gross domestic product], would be on a permanent downward trajectory today."
"The pre-TCJA tax code was expected to generate roughly 18% of GDP, but even that level is ultimately below what is needed to ensure adequate investments in our children, reduce poverty, address racial and gender disparities, fulfill our commitments to America's seniors, veterans, and people with disabilities—and support our continued growth and prosperity as a country," wrote the groups. "That is why the 2025 tax reform must generate substantially more revenue than simply letting all of the temporary provisions in the TCJA expire."
Under the Biden administration, they noted, economic policies that civil society groups have strongly pushed for have demonstrated how "investments in everyday people are the real key to economic growth." The groups pointed to the child tax credit, which slashed childhood poverty nearly in half when it was in place in 2021, and to climate investments in the Inflation Reduction Act, which cut energy costs for families and strengthened supply chains.
"This broad coalition is making clear that Congress cannot simply tinker around the edges of our tax code in 2025—it must reject the failed approach of the Bush and Trump tax cuts and use this opportunity to produce a fairer tax code that supports necessary investments and fuels faster and more inclusive growth," said Ramamurti in a statement. "The Trump tax bill was a bad law and 2025 is Congress' chance to replace it with something a lot better."
The coalition said Congress should view the expiration of the 2017 tax cuts as an opportunity "to address long-standing problems with our tax code" and to answer the call of a majority of Americans who believe the wealthiest households and corporations should pay more in taxes to contribute to investments in sectors of the economy such as caregiving.
Amy Matsui, director of income security and senior counsel at the National Women's Law Center, said on the press call Tuesday that the group conducted a survey earlier this year on tax reform and investments in childcare, paid family medical leave, and aging and disability care.
"What we found is that there is extremely strong public support, across demographics, among caregivers, across political affiliations... for making the tax system fairer and using the revenues that are raised to invest in care," said Matsui. "And more specifically we found that over two-thirds of respondents supported allowing the 2017 tax cuts for the wealthiest to expire. So we think that this demonstrates that people understand very clearly that the way our tax system is structured directly affects the investments that we can make as a nation that are central to families' lives."
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'Grave Mistake': Yellen Under Fire for Opposing Global Billionaires Tax
"To reject the very idea of a global minimum tax on billionaires is to cede control of our economies and our democracies to oligarchs and plutocrats," warned one progressive critic over the U.S. Treasury Secretary's position.
May 21, 2024
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is being taken to task by progressive critics after coming out Monday in opposition to a proposed global tax on billionaires at an upcoming Group of 7 nations meeting where the measure is on the agenda.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Yellen told the newspaper that while the Biden administration broadly supports more progressive taxation, in which those at the top of the income and wealth scale pay higher rates, the U.S. will not back a plan—put forth by Brazil and backed other G20 leaders earlier this year—that would set a minimum international rate for the planet's ultra-wealthy.
In her remarks, Yellen said the "notion of some common global arrangement for taxing billionaires with proceeds redistributed in some way—we're not supportive of a process to try to achieve that. That's something we can't sign on to."
The proposed 2% global tax on the assets of the world's billionaires, backers of the idea argue, would be a way to curb the international race to the bottom on taxation by hampering the ability of those with vast fortunes to move their money from bank to bank and nation to nation as a way to avoid paying their fair share into public coffers.
The EU Tax Observatory, which helped formulate and backs the proposal, estimates that the 2% levy on the billionaires would raise $250 billion in annual revenues.
Given President Joe Biden and Yellen's support for a global minimum corporate tax and recent political messaging on the need to compel corporations and the wealthiest to pay higher taxes domestically, Morris Pearl, chair of the advocacy group Patriotic Millionaires, said opposition to a global billionaire tax was confounding.
"We are mystified by Secretary Yellen's comment suggesting she has rejected the G20 proposal for a global minimum tax on billionaires," Pearl said. "Her comment is starkly at odds with President Biden's stated goal of compelling billionaires to pay their fair share; it is at odds with the growing consensus on taxing the ultra-wealthy; and it is at odds with her own history of being a champion of international cooperation on tax matters."
Successful implementation of a billionaires tax, reports the WSJ, "would allow countries to raise more in tax revenue to finance other priorities and use the tax code to reduce income inequality, which has widened sharply in recent decades."
Floating the idea back in January, Brazil's Finance Minister Fernando Haddad said, "In a world where economic activities are increasingly transnational, we have to find new and creative ways to tax these activities [and] thus direct the revenues to common global endeavors such as ending hunger and poverty and fighting climate change."
According to Pearl:
Secretary Yellen's statement seems to stem from concerns that the revenue from such a tax would be"redistributed." However, the proposal would not institute a global tax that is then globally redistributed. The blueprint for this proposal is the OECD agreement for a global corporate minimum tax that she herself championed, which enables individual governments to determine how the taxes collected within their borders are spent.
If her concerns are simply about redistribution, she should clarify that ahead of her meetings later this week. But to reject the very idea of a global minimum tax on billionaires is to cede control of our economies and our democracies to oligarchs and plutocrats. In short, a wholesale surrender to the political influence of the ultra-rich would be a grave mistake.
Oxfam International calculated earlier this year that a 5% wealth tax targeting multimillionaires and billionaires in G20 countries could raise around $1.5 trillion a year in revenue globally. Such funds, the group said, would be "enough to end global hunger, help low- and middle-income countries adapt to climate change, and bring the world back on track to meeting the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)—and still leave more than $546 billion to invest in inequality-busting public services and climate action in G20 countries."
Over the weekend, economist Gabriel Zucman, one the key architects behind the billionaires tax proposal put forward by Brazil, said "the super-rich will fight" such measures "tooth and nail," but "yes—we will have, one day, a coordinated minimum max on the super-rich. And perhaps sooner than you think!"
If he's correct, it doesn't look like Secretary Yellen or President Biden have received the memo.
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Nevada Coalition Submits 200K+ Signatures for Abortion Rights Ballot Measure
"The number of signatures gathered in just over three months shows how deeply Nevadans believe in abortion rights," said one campaigner.
May 20, 2024
An amendment to enshrine abortion rights in Nevada's Constitution moved one step closer to appearing on this November's ballot Monday as reproductive rights defenders submitted nearly twice the number of required signatures to state election officials.
Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom, the coalition spearheading the ballot measure, said it submitted more than 200,000 signatures from every county in the state—where abortion is legal up to 24 weeks of pregnancy—supporting the Nevada Right to Reproductive Freedom Amendment. Proposed 2024 Nevada ballot questions need 102,362 verified signatures to qualify; campaigners generally aim to collect double the required number of signatures, as many are disqualified for various reasons.
"This is a true testament to the volunteers, supporters, and coalition partners who recognize the importance of codifying abortion rights into our state constitution," Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom said on social media. "We're officially one step closer."
"The number of signatures gathered in just over three months shows how deeply Nevadans believe in abortion rights and its importance to this moment in our nation's history."
Speaking to supporters outside the Clark County Courthouse in Las Vegas on Monday, Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom president Lindsey Harmon said that "the majority of Nevadans agree that the government should stay out of their personal and private decisions... about our bodies, our lives, and our futures."
"The number of signatures gathered in just over three months shows how deeply Nevadans believe in abortion rights and its importance to this moment in our nation's history," Harmon added.
Nevada constitutional amendments must be approved by voters twice. If the proposed abortion rights amendment qualifies for the ballot and is approved by voters this November, it will appear again on the 2026 statewide ballot.
Last November, Carson City District Court Judge James Russell sided with right-wing advocacy groups who argued that the proposed amendment violates Nevada law by covering more than one subject. After Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom subsequently narrowed the proposal's focus, Russell ruled the coalition could proceed with signature gathering. In April, the Nevada Supreme Court affirmed the proposed ballot measure's original language.
Four states—Florida, Kansas, Maryland, and New York—have abortion rights measures on November's ballot, while Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, and Nevada have proposed such initiatives.
Since the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court voided half a century of federal abortion rights nearly two years ago in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, seven states have let voters weigh in on the issue. People in all seven states—including conservative Kansas, Kentucky, and Montana—have voted to either protect and expand abortion rights or defeat measures seeking to restrict access to the procedure.
Meanwhile, 14 states have enacted total abortion bans, while 27 have legislated restrictions on the procedure based on duration of pregnancy,
according to the Guttmacher Institute.
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