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

MORNING MESSAGE: The Real Incumbent In Tonight's Debate Is The Plutocracy

OurFuture.org's Richard Eskow: "In a way, Romney's background and wealth have put him in the incumbent's seat with the President. His way of life is taking a lot of the blame for our struggling economy - and that takes a lot of heat off Obama. Romney's plutocratic aura has been a lucky break for the President. But luck can change. The President has to play the part of a challenger in tonight's debate - and he has to mean it - or any victory may be short-lived."

The First Debate. 9 PM ET

First presidential debate tonight. NYT: "There will be no rigid time limits, buzzers or cheering that often threatened to turn the Republican primary debates into a recurring political game show. The debate will be divided into six segments of 15 minutes, with ample opportunity for robust exchanges and a level of specificity…"

W. Post's Harold Meyerson offers "35 questions from the 99 percent": "The hot topic here in the Beltway is Simpson-Bowles, which is shorthand for 'how much pain are you willing to inflict on the American people to get to a balanced budget?' … Does government spending on the military that takes place within the United States stimulate the economy? Does government spending on non-military projects within the United States stimulate the economy? If the answer to the second question differs from the answer to the first, explain."

Romney offers one way he would raise taxes on the middle class. TPM: "'As an option you could say everybody’s going to get up to a $17,000 deduction; and you could use your charitable deduction, your home mortgage deduction, or others — your healthcare deduction. And you can fill that bucket, if you will, that $17,000 bucket that way,' Romney told a Fox affiliate in Denver. 'And higher income people might have a lower number.' … But while some tax policy experts like the idea in principle it suffers from at least one big political problem: though it would hit high net-worth people hardest, it would still require raising taxes on some middle class Americans to cover the cost of his proposal to cut everyone’s tax rates by 20 percent."

Romney's new immigration position doesn't make any sense, finds NYT's Lawrence Downes: "To the things we already knew or suspected about Mitt Romney and his views on immigration – that he is a hard-liner prone to pandering, a bearer of platitudes, seemingly allergic to clarity or specifics – we now must add a disturbing new possibility: that he has no idea what he is talking about … This was Mr. Romney’s answer [to the Denver Post]: 'The people who have received the special visa that the president has put in place, which is a two-year visa, should expect that the visa would continue to be valid,' …Sounds like great news! But what visa is he talking about? The policy does not involve visas."

Rove's Super PAC ads attacking the stimulus actually show that it worked. Time's Michael Grunwald: "Check out the blue line, the Romer-Bernstein forecast for unemployment in the Obama era. And then check out the orange line, the actual trend of unemployment in the Obama era. The pleasant-looking narrator correctly points out that the blue line is a lot lower than the orange line. But they both slope downwards! Karl Rove is pouring $11 million into graphic evidence that the stimulus worked."

PA voter ID law shelved until after election, latest in a string of victories. NYT: "A Pennsylvania judge on Tuesday blocked the key component of a highly contested state law requiring strict photographic identification to vote in next month’s election, saying the authorities had not done enough to ensure that voters had access to the new documents … Voter ID laws have been taken off the table in Texas and Wisconsin. The Justice Department has blocked such a law in South Carolina, which has appealed in federal court. In Florida and Ohio, early voting and voter-registration drives have been largely restored. New Hampshire is going ahead with its law, but voters who do not have the required document will be permitted to vote and have a month to verify their identity."

Dem focus on Medicare paying off. The Hill: "The Democrats' shifting strategy to make Medicare a central focus of the 2012 campaign appears to be paying dividends, as polls show voters — particularly in key swing states — are wary of Republican plans for the popular seniors' healthcare program …"

Parties Still Far Apart On "Grand Bargain"

Senate leaders "distance" themselves from bipartisan deficit talks. The Hill: "…leadership is not endorsing any ideas being floated by members of the Senate’s Gang of Eight, a group searching for the elusive grand deficit bargain … The gang is contemplating a three-part plan … favored strongly by retiring Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), but the structure of it has not been agreed to by the Gang’s Republicans … the two parties continued to have stark divides on both the tax side — including over whether to retain all or just some of the Bush-era tax rates — and entitlement spending."

The most influential billionaire in politics is austerity advocate Pete Peterson. LAT's Michael Hiltzik: "…Peterson's influence in national politics stems largely from his ability to make his interests appear eclectic and nonpartisan … The foundation's roster of grant recipients has been similarly eclectic: the right-wing Heritage Foundation and the liberal Brookings Institution. The progressive Center for American Progress, the free-market American Enterprise Institute and the pro-union Economic Policy Institute … sowing largesse so widely may help ensure that any criticism of Peterson's activities remains respectful and judicious … But the hallmark of Peterson's worldview is to view social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare strictly as fiscal expense items, ignoring their roots as moral commitments to American citizens that cross generations and unite economic classes."

Economy Better, Or Worse, Than You Think

Income inequality not as bad if you count government spending on health care. NYT: "The [Congressional Budget Office] reclassification of health benefits added $4,600 a year to households in the bottom fifth of income. It shrank the nation’s yawning income gap and muted the increase of inequality over the last three decades … the government spends almost $8,000 on the average Medicaid beneficiary and more than $12,000 for each person on Medicare … But not everyone thinks health care is worth that much. In particular, the Census Bureau does not include health care and other noncash benefits when computing the official poverty rate."

But the jobs were are creating are not good jobs. Jeff Madrick: "The reason that the economic recovery is coinciding with middle class decline is increasingly clear. America is creating jobs, but they are bad jobs: retailing, food preparation, and table waiting … Annette Bernhardt of the National Employment Law Project did the hard empirical work recently and found that most of the job losses from 2008 to early 2010 were in the middle-income category, jobs that pay from roughly $14 to $21 an hour. What is disturbing is that in the job turnaround since then, only one in five such jobs came back. Instead, very low-end jobs, paying $7.70 to $13.80 an hour, accounted for most new employment.

Sen. Merkley's foreclosure relief plan gets support from Treasury. Politico: "Treasury has authorized states to use unspent funds from the 2008 bank bailout law for pilot programs based on a broader housing plan, being pushed by the Oregon Democrat, which would reduce loan balances for borrowers who are current on their payments but live in homes that are worth less than what is owed on the mortgage … For the pilot programs to move forward, an aide for Merkley said, all that is left is for Treasury to approve refinancing the loans through a Federal Housing Administration program that allows the government to insure new loans after the taxpayer-funded principal write-down."

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