MORNING MESSAGE: SOTU Must Tackle Trade
OurFuture.org's Robert Borosage: "The U.S. trade deficits are back up – over $1 billion a day. For all the talk about insourcing, companies have used the recession to continue to ship good jobs abroad. China and its Asian trading partners make up over 80 percent of the non-oil manufacturing trade deficit ... The reason is clear. China and other nations have a national economic strategy and a national manufacturing strategy ... Our companies are competing with countries. Not surprisingly, while multinational companies may find a way to profit, our country is not represented in that equation ... This should be a centerpiece of the president’s State of the Union address, calling on the country to move from its increasingly self-destructive focus on austerity towards building a new foundation for growth."
Obstacles Remain For Immigration Reform
Pathway to citizenship still major flashpoint. W. Post: "...although Republican leaders are newly interested in a compromise on immigration, many in the party say that allowing undocumented immigrants to live here legally is enough and that a push for citizenship would face fierce, and possibly insurmountable, opposition from conservatives ... Some advocates remain wary that the president and Democratic lawmakers might be tempted to bargain away their best hope for a clear citizenship path in their quest for a bipartisan deal. The Senate group stoked that wariness with one of the provisions in its citizenship plan: the creation of a special commission, made up of border-state governors and other local officials, to help determine whether the border is secure and, therefore, whether immigrants can gain the right to pursue citizenship. Such a consensus would be difficult, if not impossible, immigrant advocates argue."
Insistence on paying "back taxes" also creates snag. Politico: "...it’s an idea that helps soften the politically charged perception of immigration reform to skeptics ... [But] it could deter illegal residents from coming out of the shadows ... immigration policy experts on both sides of political spectrum say this is easier said than done — and maybe even not worth the hassle for the tiny pool of cash it would bring to the Treasury."
Business and labor working to reach immigration compromise. NYT: "...business and labor interests — who historically come down on opposite sides of how to handle the future flow of legal immigrants — are currently working among themselves and with the Senate in an attempt to reach a compromise ... 'They are making really good progress, much better than in 2009,' [said Sen. Chuck Schumer.]"
Austerity Fails Worldwide
There are no austerity success stories. NYT's Paul Krugman: "...every uptick in the Irish economy has been hailed as proof that the nation is recovering — but as of last month the unemployment rate was 14.6 percent, only slightly down from the peak it reached early last year ... Before the turn to austerity, Britain was recovering more or less in tandem with the United States. Since then, the U.S. economy has continued to grow, although more slowly than we’d like — but Britain’s economy has been dead in the water ... They went looking for new heroes and found them in the small Baltic nations, Latvia in particular, a nation that looms amazingly large in the austerian imagination ... [But] the unemployment rate is still 14 percent. If this is the austerians’ idea of an economic miracle, they truly are the children of a lesser god."
Republicans refuse to name spending cuts, stick to gimmicks. W. Post's Jonathan Bernstein: "[Sen. Rob] Portman’s Gimmick No. 1, which we’ve seen before from Republicans, was a requirement that spending be cut exactly the same amount that the debt limit goes up (How? Nothing from the senator from Ohio). Portman’s Gimmick No. 2 was a new proposal that in the event of a failure to pass appropriations bills, the government would run indefinitely on autopilot, but with automatic spending cuts kicking in over time ... My favorite part of all this was that Portman told National Review’s Robert Costa that his model for these amendments was the Reagan-era Gramm-Rudman-Hollings process, a budget gimmick which, that’s right, utterly failed to do anything about the deficit.
Again: nothing at all about which specific spending cuts Republicans think are needed."
GOP split on pursuing tax reform. Politico: "...virtually everyone who has encountered him describes [Rep. Dave] Camp as passionately focused on pushing tax reform across the finish line ... multiple observers privately say they don’t expect House GOP leadership to give Camp a long leash ... There’s concern that if the House passes a tax reform measure, Senate Democrats would load it up with provisions that would soak the rich for more revenue. That would return Republicans to the same politically untenable position that they were in for much of last year: opposing tax hikes on the wealthy."
OUR Walmart unionization campaign forced to back off. NYT: "The nation’s largest union of retail and grocery workers has formally pledged not to try to unionize Walmart workers, even though it helped coordinate picketing, protests and scattered strikes about wages and working conditions at the retailer last fall ... Wal-Mart Stores had asked the labor board to determine if the union and OUR Walmart had violated a provision of federal law that prohibits worker groups from engaging in more than 30 days of picketing that is aimed at gaining union recognition ... Notwithstanding their promise not to seek to unionize Walmart workers and not to picket stores for at least 60 days, the union and OUR Walmart claimed victory. The groups said they would still be able to picket after 60 days elapsed to call for improved wages and benefits."
