Reading the headlines, you may think Congress’s primary function is to incubate wrongheaded legislative ideas like Paul Ryan’s Medicare-killing budget proposal or plans to cut funding for everything from Planned Parenthood to Head Start education programs. But during any given Congressional term, literally thousands of proposals never make it past the committee stage of the legislative process—and some of those are downright progressive.
Here are five of the most promising efforts underway in our 112th Congress. Read Ryan Rafaty’s article, “The Five Smartest Congressional Bills You’ve Never Heard Of,” for more.
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The Fairness in Taxation Act would create additional tax brackets at the top of the income ladder, fairly taxing the richest Americans. Right now, the top 20 hedge fund managers with an average annual income of over $1 billion pay the same marginal tax rate as those who make 2,500 times less than they do.
If enacted, FTA would raise federal tax revenue by more than $78.9 billion in 2011 alone, according to Citizens for Tax Justice. That would more than cover the $61 billion dollars in GOP-proposed cuts to Pell grants, community health centers, high speed rail, Head Start, NIH funding, housing cuts and Title X family planning.
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Childcare costs have increased twice as fast as the median income of families with children in the past decade, and as much as half of the gap in achievement scores is attributable to cognitive and behavioral setbacks already evident by the age of five. To combat the root causes of the growing achievement gap, the Foundations for Success Act would establish a grant program to provide universal pre-Kindergarten childcare and early education to every child from 6 weeks of age.
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The Federal Reserve Transparency Act (FRTA) would lift restrictions placed on the Government Accountability Office and mandate an external audit of the Fed’s books by the end of 2012. America’s sustained high unemployment rate and the growing perception that the Fed is beholden to Wall Street makes an audit a popular idea: not only would it render the Fed’s internal procedures more visible to the public, it would hold the Fed’s policies accountable to the people it is supposed to be serving.
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Economists have convincingly argued that allowing employees to work fewer hours while still receiving the same salary could create millions of jobs and add billions of dollars to the GDP in the process. That’s why Michigan Congressman John Conyers is sponsoring the SHARE Act, a job-creation program that offers a tax credit of up to $3,000 to employers who shorten workers’ hours in the form of “paid sick days, paid family leave, shorter workweeks or longer vacations.”
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Sponsored by Ohio Representative Marcy Kaptur, the 21st Century Civilian Conservation Corps Act (CCCA) is a job creation program that re-establishes a Civilian Conservation Corp that puts to work unemployed and underemployed civilians to advance useful public works projects aimed at safeguarding natural resources and developing new transportation and infrastructure.
For more on these progressive bills, read Ryan Rafaty’s article on “The Five Smartest Congressional Bills You’ve Never Heard Of.”
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