Awhile ago http://rebuildthedream.com/ started up with a live streamed kick-off rally led by Van Jones. You might remember him as the White House's former green jobs adviser before getting run out on a rail. They had people submit ideas for policy changes on their site, house meetings were held around the country discussing the ideas, and those meetings shared with each other their results

The result is this manifesto thing

http://contract.rebuildthedream.com/

If you click on the drop downs you can make comments and discuss the finer points about them.

When I went to lunch it was just under 10,000 signitures. When I came back another 1000 had been added. I refreshed it 5 minutes later and another 2000 appeared. Just now it's added around 4000 in 5 minutes.

The site is run by MoveOn.org but they have a sizable coalition thing going on. If you scroll downwards you can see if any groups you like are participating.

Personally I'd like to remain optimistic that this is the beginning of real "Change" (remember that word?) but I'm skeptical of this movement's ability to do anything other than preach to the choir. I'd like your opinions on the contract and the ability of the movement itself to get things done. And by "get things done" I mean get what's in that contract into legislation that can pass.

One problem with everything they have there. Funding. I find those ideals to be wonderful, but as much as we'd like it to, minor tax reforms will not pay for the spending laid out there. While I hate the Tea Party and much of what it stands for, they're at least trying to put the horrible budget imbalance into the spotlight. That manifesto there hardly even glances sidelong at budget issues. Money has to come from somewhere.

Am I missing something critical?

Giving everyone public health insurance would actually save hundreds of billions per year, so that can probably cover some of the other ones. As for everything else, well, I remember the government put out this little minigame thing a couple of years ago where you could implement dozens of various policy proposals and see their effects on the budget.

One thing that always stood out is that if you put in every single liberal wet-dream proposal all at once, you can get something like 80% of it paid for just by revoking the Bush tax cuts. Minor tax reform can have a huge effect in government income.

Yeah but I remember the deficits in those mini-games being unusually low, like in 2015 the budget shortfall is determined to be around 450 billion while it's currently 1.5 trillion, it assumes a recovery that just hasn't been happening.

But as for funding, yeah real health care reform would save around hundreds of billions (around 500 billion-1 trillion the deficit would be reduced by). If you stop the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, you could eliminate another 200 billion, ending the Bush tax cuts should be around 300-400 billion if you completely eliminate them or 200 billion if you just eliminate the ones on the top 1% along with bringing the estate and capital gains tax to Clinton levels. Along with the eliminating the War on Drugs, Farm subsidies, and a few other programs. So there are revenue sources

Now as for paying for some of the other stuff, I'd argue they pay for themselves in the long run. Like one program I'd love to see is a program where the Federal Government would offer to install and maintain free solar roofing in any business building or individual home that want it. In exchange, people would pay 90% of the local market for each joule of energy provided by the solar panels until the panels are paid off. It'd take around 20 years for the program to pay for itself but it'd still be awesome, it'd provide jobs, lower oil usage and lower families energy spending thus creating more disposable income (or make it easier to tax)

Same with a public transit system. A public transit system in the long run pays for itself, and saves the economy and the Government hundreds of billions a year, that extra money could go back into other sectors of the economy or be taxed. The problem with these ideas is that Congress only looks at budgets in ten years terms, and most progressive programs start paying out in the second 10 years in a 20 year space, so we need to start looking at budgets more long term.