The Washington Post has the story Elizabeth Warren: It’s time to work on America’s agenda.

But the lobbyists’ agenda is not America’s agenda. Americans are deeply suspicious of trade deals negotiated in secret, with chief executives invited into the room while the workers whose jobs are on the line are locked outside. They have been burned enough times on tax deals that carefully protect the tender fannies of billionaires and big oil and other big political donors, while working families just get hammered. They are appalled by Wall Street banks that got taxpayer bailouts and now whine that the laws are too tough, even as they rake in billions in profits. If cutting deals means helping big corporations, Wall Street banks and the already-powerful, that isn’t a victory for the American people — it’s just another round of the same old rigged game.

Thanks for Ready For Warren for posting this on their Facebook page. They chose to emphasize a different excerpt from what I chose.

Chris Van Hollen, with his puny shift of $1.2 trillion over ten years from the ultra wealthy to the middle-class (and not so much to the poor), is not the big thinker that this newspaper says he is. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are the big thinkers. And Bernie Sanders is even ahead of Elizabeth Warren in the thought size department. Did you see who he appointed as Chief Economist for the Minority on the Senate Budget Committee? Her name is Stephanie Kelton, and she is a big thinker. Having the smarts to appoint her as chief economist shows what a big thinker Bernie Sanders is. Appointing her also shows how courageous he is.

See my previous post Democrats, in a stark shift in messaging, to make big tax-break pitch for middle class to understand why I compare her to Chris Van Hollen.

The Washington Post has the story Democrats, in a stark shift in messaging, to make big tax-break pitch for middle class.

The centerpiece of the proposal, set to be unveiled Monday by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), is a “paycheck bonus credit” that would shave $2,000 a year off the tax bills of couples earning less than $200,000. Other provisions would nearly triple the tax credit for child care and reward people who save at least $500 a year.

The windfall — about $1.2 trillion over a decade — would come directly from the pockets of Wall Street “high rollers” through a new fee on financial transactions, and from the top 1 percent of earners, who would lose billions of dollars in lucrative tax breaks.
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All told, the package is about a third of the size of tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush. It would transfer about 0.6 percent of national income, or gross domestic product, from millionaires and Wall Street traders to about 150 million American workers, with the paycheck bonus alone reaching at least 100 million workers.

I wonder if The Washington Post called it a windfall when President George W. Bush had tax cuts three times larger enacted during his administration.

If you read the story, it says that this proposal is an attempt to go beyond playing around the edges of extending the benefits of a “booming” economy to the middle-class and the poor.  To me, this plan is certainly headed more to the crux of the problem, but it is still playing around the edges. $1.2 trillion over a decade is maybe 10 times too small.  Where is the massive investment in infrastructure, education, research, and fair trade that should amount to $1 trillion in a lot less than ten years?

Though the article may think that:

Enter Van Hollen, 56, the senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee and a former chairman of the party’s campaign arm for House races. Close to Pelosi and the White House, he has emerged as one of the party’s big thinkers on economic policy and political strategy.

I’d call him a medium thinker, or at least not extra small.

To avoid increasing federal budget deficits, Van Hollen proposes

You see, right there, he is repeating the Republican lie.  Bernie Sander’s has chosen a Chief Economist for the Minority on the Senate Budget Committee. Stephanie Kelton will try to educate the politicians about how counter-productive it is to  talk about avoiding increasing federal budget deficits in the current circumstances.  Did you see the emphasis, IN THE CURRENT CIRCUMSTANCES?

IN THE CURRENT CIRCUMSTANCES

Let me repeat that,

It is easy to know what special current circumstances are. The inflation rate is well below the target 2% a year, and it is approaching negative territory. See the previous post Replacing the Budget Constraint with an Inflation Constraint.