On Tuesday, December 13th, the Congressional Progressive Caucus unveiled the RESTORE the American Dream for the 99% Act. The bill, if passed, would create more than 5 million jobs and save more than $2 trillion. This is a comprehensive plan to put America back to work by reversing the failed policies of the past, which the “Super Committee” could not achieve.
Comprehensive and meaningful systemic risk reform must undo many of the ill-advised deregulatory measuresof the past 20 years, including the four key changes wrought by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.
Young adults have an enormous stake in the financial regulatory reform debate. They have paid a high price for a banking crisis caused by lax regulation, and their economic futures will depend on rebuilding strong public structures for financial regulation going forward. This briefing paper addresses some of the key reforms and the impact of both the banking crisis and unregulated lending practices on young Americans' financial futures.
Public financing of elections, as a state and local democracy reform, can help enhance the political voice and power of working-class people and people of color. It is an effective antidote to the outsized influence corporations and major donors currently have on both politics and policy.
The extent of the money in politics problem, how we got here (from a legal perspective), and what we can do to create a democracy in which the strength of a citizen’s voice does not depend on the size of her wallet.
In 2012, just 61 large donors to Super PACs giving an average of $4.7 million each matched the $285.2 million in grassroots contributions from more than 1,425,500 small donors to the major party presidential candidates.
Outside spending organizations reported $1.11 billion in spending to the FEC through the final reporting deadline in the 2012 cycle. That’s already a 200% increase over total 2008 outside spending.
This memo outlines how the Justices lined up on the issues in Randall v. Sorrell, provides some analysis of the opinions, and touches on the implications for future reform efforts.
Our data sets were provided and cleaned by Public Campaign. For the purposes of this report, Public Campaign used federal campaign contribution data made public by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and then refined and augmented by the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP).
Social Security remains our nation’s key source of retirement income for most Americans. The program’s overall health is sound and with relatively modest tweaks to the program’s financing, we can strengthen the system for generations to come.
A Vermont Partnership Bank will generate new revenue for Vermont, save local governments money, and make our small businesses, farms and consumers less vulnerable to cutbacks in lending in our state.
Dēmos has measured the comparative effectiveness of five leading fiscal proposals. We evaluate the plans in eight categories: jobs and public investment; health care affordability; Social Security income; education; defense policy; fair and adequate revenues; and long-term debt reduction.