Congressional Black Caucus Budget: A Compass for the Congress

The annual House of Representatives budget ceremony is over. But it was not exactly a routine exercise and some features merit further monitoring. Of great importance this year is the fact that the alternative budget offered by the Congressional Black Caucus cannot be patronizingly dismissed as the idealistic but unrealistic "conscience of the Congress." To the contrary, the statement of the CBC is a bold and practical one more in harmony with the current Democratic Party electorate than the stale Democratic Leadership Council language in the official Spratt budget which passed in the House. The CBC deserves a new role as the "compass for the Congress."

Kudos are first due to CBC President Carolyn Kilpatrick, budget coordinator Robert Scott, and the revenue adviser Charlie Rangel. For the last two decades the CBC has depended on Rangel to prepare the revenue section of its alternative budget. Despite his new position as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Rangel has continued this service in a presentation of tax changes that would generate the funds needed to pay for all of the CBC priorities. By way of the CBC budget, Rangel has provided some powerful common-sense information to the public while at the same time serving notice to his House colleagues that this is the advocacy they can expect from him. Any citizen that takes a look at this six point revenue-raising package can readily see that it imposes minimum pain while reaping large benefits.

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Because it lacks the guts to cut the extreme revenue giveaways of the Bush administration, the official Democratic budget is forced to fall back on the following old brand of Democratic Leadership Council fuzzy mindedness:

"The Bush tax cuts do not expire for four years. When they expire, Democrats will extend those that help middle-class families, as provided for in the budget resolution ....

"Getting the budget in balance - which the House budget does within five years - is the critical first step to clean up the fiscal mess the Republican-led Congress created over the last six years."

This could be the beginning of a major blunder since it delays adjusting extremely unjust tax policies while accelerating budget cuts which will hurt vital social and economic development programs.

"...House committees will also review government programs to make sure they are working and eliminate unnecessary and wasteful spending.

"Democrats have said consistently that to address entitlement reform everything should be on the table, and everyone should be at the table ....

"By 2012, domestic discretionary funding under the Democratic budget would fall to the lowest level, as a share of the economy, in at least a half century."

Misguided by the Democratic Leadership Council's lack of vision, it appears that the Democratic majority in the House is drifting into an obsession on budget balancing. This is the kind of stupidity that will shock their natural constituency into despair and apathy. Naïve cheerleaders applauded each day as the Clinton surplus grew larger. Not even a few billion of that mushrooming surplus were routed to job training or job creation or school modernization. As a result Democratic candidate Al Gore lost a presidential election that should never have been a close contest. The value of directing federal dollars to meet the needs of the people on the bottom is a lesson clearly taught by Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. It does good for the world and it wins elections.

It should be noted that even after refusing to delay funding for vital priorities in education, training, employment and social services, the CBC alternative budget still manages to create a surplus in FY12 of 141 billion dollars.

Rangel's use of the CBC Budget to highlight his personal tax agenda is a brilliant stroke which sends a powerful message that in the 110th Congress the CBC will yield its role as the "conscience" of the Congress and take a great leap forward to serve as the "compass" of the Congress.

These six solid revenue-raising proposals show that, while Rangel is being quoted extensively about his mandatory draft, the Congressman only sees this as a legislative hobby. Rangel's day job is tax policy and he is working with a clear-headed diligence. The fuzzy-minded language that appears in the official Democratic budget is a foreshadowing of trouble ahead for the primary concerns of Blacks and the poor. Now is the time for the Ways and Means Committee to come to the aid of the Democratic Party.