A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies and Campaign for America's Future shows that the CEOs who run the 90 corporations in the '"Fix the Debt" coalition, which advocates for cuts to earned benefits like Social Security while reducing tax rates for, well, themselves, accept massive subsidies from the U.S. government. The amount they have taken in subsidies ranges from a possible low of $953 million to a possible high of $1.6 billion. The AFL-CIO's Executive PayWatch covers related issues.

Did you know that the CEOs of the Campaign to Fix the Debt, the corporate front group that wants to cut Social Security and Medicare and lower corporate taxes, have parked more than $418 billion of untaxed corporate profits overseas? Overall it is estimated that U.S. corporations have as much as $1.9 trillion sheltered overseas. That would make a nice down payment on fixing the debt.

You can read about "Fix the Debt" and more in the 2013 edition of the AFL-CIO’s Executive PayWatch launched today. PayWatch not only shines a light on Fix the Debt hypocrisy, but it also explores the huge wage gap between CEO pay and the average U.S. worker. PayWatch started in 1997. 

Visit www.paywatch.org.

The most striking feature of the U.S. economy over the last three decades has been the upward redistribution of income. The top 1.0 percent of households has managed to pocket the vast majority of gains over this period. That is a sharp contrast with the three decades immediately following World War II when the benefits of much more rapid growth were broadly shared.

Fix the Debt is the most hypocritical corporate PR campaign in decades, an ambitious attempt to convince the country that another cataclysmic economic crisis is around the corner and that urgent action is needed. Its strategy is pure Astroturf: assemble power players in business and government under an activist banner, then take the message outside the Beltway and give it the appearance of grassroots activism by manufacturing an emergency to infuse a sense of imminent crisis.

"Fix the Debt" portrays itself as a nonpartisan group designed to convince government to do something drastic about the national debt, which it says is a significant danger to the country. And despite widespread evidence from economists that their proposals would hurt the economy, Fix the Debt's members are pushing for a set of policies based on tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest Americans and benefit cuts to lifelines like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.

Seniors and veterans showed up at a "Fix the Debt" event in New Hampshire to tell Honeywell CEO David Cote that if he really wants to fix the debt, he should have Honeywell pay its fair share of taxes. Cote is one of a number of wealthy corporate leaders in the "Fix the Debt" coalition, which advocates for cuts to benefits like Social Security and Medicare and is pushing for lower corporate taxes. Advocates for working families and their allies point out that many of the "Fix the Debt" companies engage in loopholes to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

We've reported for several months now the "Fix the Debt" group is a Trojan horse. It cynically calls for cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits (in the name of "deficit reduction") while advocating for lower taxes for corporations and businesses that ship jobs overseas. 

More than 100,000 American consumers signed a petition asking Macy's Chief Executive Officer Terry Lundgren to drop out of the "Fix the Debt" Coalition. Fix the Debt portrays itself as dedicated to lowering the national debt, when the reality is that it is lobbying to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and give more tax breaks to the wealthiest 2%. The consumers are part of Progressive Congress, the nonprofit foundation of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, or CREDO, a progressive activist organization.

We have five weeks to tell Congress to let the Bush tax cuts for the richest 2% expire and reject any benefit cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Visit www.aflcio.org/ProtectOurFuture for all the information you need on the upcoming budget showdown. 

A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies shows that the CEOs who make up the "Fix the Debt" campaign sit on massive retirement funds of their own while calling for the retirement programs that working families rely on to be cut as part of a deficit-reduction package. Furthermore, those same CEOs have been shortchanging pension funds for working families at the corporations they run.

Fix the Debt, the unserious coalition of CEOs and corporations who are lobbying to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid while increasing tax breaks for their companies to send jobs overseas, have spent nearly $1 billion in lobbying and campaign contributions during the past four years, according to a new Public Campaign study.