Action: toward sane budgeting and tax policy.

Don't believe the hype that "extremists" want to take the federal budgeting process hostage -- the entire Establishment wants to take the federal budgeting process hostage, so they can keep our economy stagnant and keep redistributing your income upward to their corporate paymasters, and teabaggers in Congress are merely their Useful Idiots. So must-pass appropriations legislation contains "riders" defunding net neutrality, rolling back financial service reforms, gutting clean air and water laws, and swamping campaigns with even more money. Naturally, the American people don't want more corporate control of the internet, more bankster casino tricks, more disgusting campaign ads, or dirtier air and water, but we must make ourselves heard. Both the National Priorities Project and People for the American Way help you email your Congressfolk to reject "poison pills" such as these in the budget. But follow up by calling your Congressfolk, using the links in the upper left-hand corner of this page, so we can tie up their phone lines and make them know our will. Then, perhaps, we can consign their nefarious arguments to the dustbin of history where they belong.

Naturally, Congress is also trying to extend corporate welfare giveaways in the tax code, while wringing their hands over extending actual tax relief to actual working families in the form of improvements to the Earned Income Tax Credit (or EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (or CTC). A lot of corporate welfare handouts -- like the "active financing exception," which allows corporations to defer payment on taxes they claim was "earned" "overseas" -- expire annually, and usually only get renewed when our government has to fund itself. Why is that? Because any Congressfolk who tried to enact any of these things at any other time would instantly become a pariah. Meanwhile, they pretend the EITC and the CTC don't stimulate the economy, when both of these tax relief programs put money right back into the pockets of people who'll actually spend it and thus, you know, stimulate the economy. Both Americans for Financial Reform and the Coalition on Human Needs help you tell your Congressfolk to get their tax-cutting priorities in order -- which means prioritizing working families over CEOs and actual people over corporations.