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Each morning, Bill Scher and Terrance Heath serve up what progressives need to affect change on the kitchen-table issues families face: jobs, health care, green energy, financial reform, affordable education and retirement security.

Weak Roll-Out For GOP "Pledge To America"

McClatchy concludes "Pledge" will have no impact: "...unlikely to reshape this fall's congressional elections — or refurbish the nation's economy ... doesn't have much to say about some of the day's most pressing issues."

"What its new campaign blueprint shows is that if it takes control of the House, it will become 'the party of stop,'" concludes W. Post's Dan Balz.

W. Post edit board knocks "Pledge" for failing to detail spending cuts: "...it shirks the politically sensitive task of explaining where the savings would come from ... Minority Leader John Boehner crowed that the rollback would save $100 billion in the first year alone. Yes, but from where? Anyone can make that promise; tell us which NASA programs you will end, which national parks you will close ... if this is the Republican case for taking control, the national debt can rest easy."

NYT's Paul Krugman notes it's a pledge to make the deficit bigger: "The document repeatedly condemns federal debt — 16 times, by my count. But the main substantive policy proposal is to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, which independent estimates say would add about $3.7 trillion to the debt over the next decade — about $700 billion more than the Obama administration’s tax proposals."

OurFuture.org's Richard Eskow deem proposal "'Pledge' To Rob The Middle Class: No Jobs, No Health Care, No Security": "Off the top, their plan is a trillion-dollar giveaway to the rich - at everybody else's expense."

TNR's Jonathan Cohn says the "Pledge" fails to honestly face up to policy trade-offs: "If Republicans were serious about reducing deficits, they’d call for significantly reducing entitlement and defense spending, since that’s where the money is. Or, if they simply wanted to cut taxes without reducing the size of government, they’d quit promising to balance the budget. Either strategy would be honest and, intellectually speaking, defensible. But either would also require confronting the trade-offs in public policy and figuring out how to deal with them politically. That's what the Democrats did when they crafted health care reform. Apparently the Republicans aren't ready for that sort of thing yet."

W. Post's Eugene Robinson faults the "Pledge" on math: "... the numbers don't remotely add up. The document is such a jumble of contradictions that it's hard to imagine how it could possibly pass muster with anyone who survived eighth-grade arithmetic..."

Joseph Paduda, at Managed Health Matters, asks where the deficit hawks were when President Bush created the Medicare Part D prescription drug program: "The latest Medicare Actuary report indicates the GOP-passed Part D program has contributed $9.4 trillion to the $38 trillion Federal healthcare deficit. (page 126) The Bush-era GOP makes President Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and the rest of those spendthrift Dems look like a bunch of cheapskates; even a GOP analysis finds 'the new reform law will raise the deficit by more than $500 billion during the first ten years and by nearly $1.5 trillion in the following decade.'"

Conservatives Struggle To Defend Health Care Repeal

Time's Kate Pickert notes the "Pledge" to repeal health care reform also would increase the deficit: "They want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but how will they pay for it? The Congressional Budget Office says the law will reduce the federal deficit by about $140 billion over ten years, so repealing the law will add to the deficit. Medical malpractice reform isn't necessarily a bad idea, but it would reduce overall health care spending by about 1%. Not exactly a silver bullet."

House GOPer has difficulty explaining how repealing health care repeals popular provisions. Wonk Room's Igor Volsky: "[Rep. Mac] Thornberry initially refused to say if he supported prohibiting insurers from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions and charging co-pays for certain preventive services, but awkwardly explained that Republicans would repeal all of them and then restore some of them."

TPMCafe's Peter Dreier finds the more people know about the health reform law, the more they support it: "According to an Associated Press survey, 'more than half of Americans mistakenly believe the overhaul will raise taxes for most people this year.' ... A whopping 81% of respondents mistakenly believe that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that the legislation would increase the government's debt, when it actually found that it would reduce the federal deficit ... Among Democrats and independents, the more accurate their knowledge of the bill, the more they liked it ... there's still time for [President Obama] to go out into swing states and Congressional districts and put a human face on this breakthrough legislation."

Obama Presses China Before House Currency Vote

At UN, President Obama prods China on currency. NYT: " President Obama increased pressure on China to immediately revalue its currency on Thursday, devoting most of a two-hour meeting with China’s prime minister to the issue and sending the message, according to one of his top aides, that if 'the Chinese don’t take actions, we have other means of protecting U.S. interests.'
Related But Prime Minister Wen Jiabao barely budged beyond his familiar talking points about gradual 'reform' of China’s currency policy, leaving it unclear whether Mr. Obama’s message would change Beijing’s economic or political calculus."

House prepares to vote on China currency crackdown. Finance Markets: "The House Ways and Means Committee is today expected to vote on a bill that would allow the Commerce Department to impose tariffs on China by considering the undervalued yuan a barrier to trade. A vote in the House of Representatives could take place as early as next week."

No Tax Vote Before Election

Senate Dems decide to wait until after election to vote on Bush tax cuts. NYT: "Democrats said they would still fight to end the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans when they return for a lame-duck session. But the delay increases the likelihood of a compromise with Republicans who have insisted that the lower rates continue for everyone..."

WH puts blame on Senate GOP, will continue push to let tax cuts expire for multimillionaires after election. TPMDC quotes Axelrod: "Our goal is to get these tax cuts passed. If we can't get it done before the election we're going to insist on it after ... The Republican Party is holding hostage tax cuts for the middle class."

Senate Maj. Whip Dick Durbin addresses arguments that the tax cut fight should be had on the Senate floor. W. Post quotes: "The reality is we are not going to pass what needs to be passed to change this either in the Senate or in the House before the election ... if you bring it up and don't pass it, does that [politically] help you or hurt you? If you don't bring it up, does that help you or hurt you? You can argue it round, you can argue it square. But the reality is nothing's going to happen before the election."

Paul Krugman argues Dems are missing a political opportunity: "...given a chance to really put the GOP on the spot — the chance to force a vote on extending only the middle-class tax cuts, forcing Republicans to vote no in order to save their beloved tax cuts for the rich — Democrats will … punt. I guess the Blue Dogs really want to be in the minority."

TNR's Jonathan Chait calls it "poltiical suicide": "Moderate Democrats worry that passing a tax cut for income under $250,000 would be portrayed as a tax hike, because it allows rates to rise on income over $250,000. As I've noted several times, that could be solved by holding a separate vote. But the moderate Democrats' solution is not to hold a vote on any tax cuts."

Inching Support For Renewable Energy Bill

GOP Sen. Sam Brownback says more Republicans may back higher renewable energy production requirements. The Hill: "Amid word Thursday that Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) became the fourth Republican cosponsor of the RES bill, Brownback is optimistic he can get more backing from his party ..."

Still more GOPers will be needed to compensate for Dem defections. TNR's Brad Plumer: "For one, a bunch of Senate Democrats flatly oppose an RES, including Evan Bayh, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln. Second, if this bill doesn't come up until the lame duck session after the midterms, there's going to be enormous pressure on Republicans from the Senate leadership not to cooperate on anything."

Signs of climate change are all around, yet fail to change political dynamic in Washington. W. Post: "Despite the political impasse in Washington, several recent readings suggest that climate change is accelerating. Combined ocean and land temperature readings for the first eight months of 2010 make it likely that this year will tie 1998 as the hottest year on record. For only the second time in history, a worldwide bleaching event has devastated coral reefs from the Maldives to the Caribbean. Arctic summer sea ice volume has steadily declined since the late 1980s, and the minimum extent it reached this month ranks as the third-lowest since satellite record-keeping began in 1979."

Oil-state Dem Sen. Mary Landrieu blocking budget director nomination until drilling moratorium lifted, reports NYT.

Whacking Wall Street Works

AP concluded Sen. Patty Murray's re-election campaign markedly improved after she tied her opponent to Wall Street: " She has gone from essentially being tied with challenger Dino Rossi to leading in the latest round of polls, proving that the 2010 Democratic campaign theme of linking the GOP to Wall Street greed can resonate with voters."

Congress approves law repealing SEC secrecy provision. WSJ: "A White House spokeswoman declined to say whether the president would sign the bill ... SEC officials said the provision merely codified existing practice and ensured proprietary data companies gave the agency during examinations wouldn't necessarily be available to competitors ... Critics said the exemption was too broad. The language was 'a recipe for more coverups at the agency that failed to catch Bernie Madoff,' said Angela Canterbury, director of public policy at the Project on Government Oversight."

Filibuster Blocks Campaign Finance Transparency

Senate GOP filibusters campaign finance transparency bill again. W. Post: "The outcome represents a major victory for Republicans and major business groups, which lobbied hard against a proposal that they said was an attempt by Democrats to silence GOP-leaning business groups ... Proponents argued that voters deserve to know the identities of donors bankrolling outside advertising that has played an increasingly pivotal role in U.S. elections."

NYT investigates front group funneling anonymous money into conservative political campaigns: "An examination of Americans for Job Security ... provides a rare look inside the opaque world of these ascendant advocacy organizations. Its deep ties to a Republican consulting operation raise questions about whether, under cover of its tax-exempt mission 'to promote a strong, job-creating economy,' the group is largely a funnel for anonymous donations. 'A lot of nonprofits game the system, but A.J.S. is unusual in that they so blatantly try to influence elections and evade disclosure,' said Taylor Lincoln, a research director at the watchdog group Public Citizen..."

Is The Base Disgruntled, Or Just Sleepy?

The Nation's Christopher Hayes challenges the media narrative of "liberal overreach": "What's insidious about this narrative is that it takes a small, ideological subcomponent of the electorate and projects its views onto the electorate as a whole. It also ignores the young, the low-income and the black voters who gave Obama his margin of victory. We've all spent so much time dwelling on the slights and accusations of the Fox News crowd, there's been shockingly little attention paid to the views, frustrations and convictions of what we might call the forgotten electorate, otherwise known as Obama's base."

TNR's Ed Kilgore argues it is less about enthusiasm than the inconsistent voting patterns of younger voters: "Keep in mind that part of this has little to do with feelings about Obama, but instead reflects a completely normal gap in midterm turnout patterns, particularly in terms of voter age. In other words, Dems are paying a price for the heavy dependence on younger voters in 2008 which is so promising in the long run."

Breakfast Sides

Stimulus program directly subsidizing private-sector job creation may expire this month. Time: "Barring a Senate vote to extend funding for another year, programs will expire across the country on Sept. 30, leaving tens of thousands out of work once more ... In May, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Emergency Contingency Fund ... was the first to be singled out for elimination by voters on House minority whip Eric Cantor's YouCut website ... [San Francisco Mayor Gavin] Newsom has tried to dispel the suspicions shrouding stimulus-subsidized programs like Jobs Now by noting that participants earn roughly the same salary they would collect in unemployment benefits and accumulate valuable experience."

Small biz lending bill clears House, heads to President's desk. AP: "The $40 billion-plus bill is the last vestige of the heralded jobs agenda that Obama and Democrats promoted early this year. They ended up delivering only a fraction of what they promised after Senate Republicans blocked most of the agenda ... Community bankers enthusiastically support the bill, but it has only tepid support from GOP-leaning small-business groups more focused on expiring tax cuts."

Joshua Holland, at AlterNet writes that Social Security's opponents are lying about it's strongest arm: "...consider that the trust fund, created by a bipartisan act of good governance that’s almost inconceivable today, is doing exactly what it was designed to do, and more so. It is nonetheless cited by 'entitlement' fearmongers as evidence that the program is unsustainable ... In 1983 ... Democrats and Republicans got together to address a very modest shortfall in funding for the Social Security system. But they went a step further ... raised payroll taxes and in doing so created the Social Security Trust Fund, a surplus that could be drawn down as the baby-boomers reached retirement age. Today, with $2.5 trillion worth of assets, the fund is so fat it’s projected to continue growing on just its own interest decades into the future."

Student John Connelly writes of being a victim of conservative NJ Gov. Chris Christie's budget cuts, in The Nation: "Yesterday, I was informed that my academic funding has been cut, and it is now uncertain whether I will still be able to attend Rutgers University in the autumn. The regrettable thing is that my own academic uncertainty has become the norm in the Garden State, as a newly elected Republican governor goes about undoing decades worth of educational growth, possibly dooming an entire generation of bright, hardworking New Jersey students in the process."

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