Poverty Rate Refuses To Budge
Poverty rate stuck at 15%, finds Census. Time: "The poverty rate and the number of people living in poverty haven’t budged since 2011 despite the slowly improving economy ... Before the last recession began in 2007, the rate was 2.5 points lower and has been hovering around 15% since 2010 ... Some groups, however, have seen a turn for the worse in recent years. For the elderly, the number of people in poverty increased to 3.9 million in 2012, up from 3.6 million in 2011. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that without Social Security benefits, an additional 15.3 million people over 65 would have been living in poverty in 2012."
Yet conservatives persist in attacking safety net. The Nation's Zoe Carpenter: "The numbers come as House Republicans move to kick as many as 4 million Americans off food stamps by cutting $40 billion from the program. In their budget proposals, conservatives are also proposing to maintain the deep sequestration reductions that have cut tens of thousands of young children out of Head Start, as well as childcare assistance, Meals On Wheels for seniors, unemployment benefits, and housing assistance."
But percentage of uninsured drops. NYT: "For the second year in a row, the proportion of Americans without health insurance declined in 2012, even though real household income and the poverty rate were not significantly different from their 2011 levels ... much of the increase in coverage last year was attributable to government programs ... One of the most popular provisions of the 2010 health care law allows young adults to stay on their parents’ insurance policies until age 26. That provision appears to be having its intended effect."
New Labor Dept. rule gives 2M home health care workers wage boost. NYT: "Under the new rule, home care aides, unlike baby sitters, would be covered under the Fair Labor Standards Act, the nation’s main wage and hour law ... Industry experts say most of these workers are already paid at least the minimum wage, but many do not receive a time-and-a-half overtime premium when they work more than 40 hours a week. About 20 states exclude home care workers from their wage and hour laws."
GOP Prepares To Go All In On Shutdown
AP reports House GOP will attach ObamaCare repeal to government funding bill: "...House GOP leaders appear likely to give tea party lawmakers a chance to use a routine temporary government funding bill to try to muscle the Democratic-controlled Senate into derailing President Barack Obama's health care law ... It's a reversal from an earlier strategy, rejected last week by angry conservatives, that would have sent the measure to the Senate as two bills ... and more easily avert a government shutdown ..."
"House GOP doubles down on bad hand" concludes Politico: "If rank-and-file House Republicans think their leaders will hold strong against Obama’s refusal to negotiate on the debt ceiling, they very well could take that to mean Boehner, Cantor and McCarthy will resist lifting the cap until Obama is at his desk in the Oval Office, ready to sign the bill to delay Obamacare. Most people in D.C. think that moment is unlikely to occur."
President seeks to rally business community in budget fight. NYT: "President Obama will try to raise the pressure on Republicans in Congress on Wednesday by telling a national business group that threats of a fiscal default by his political adversaries risk throwing the United States economy back into crisis ... a group of conservative Tea Party Republicans want to go further by explicitly refusing to raise the debt ceiling without repealing the health care law. Aides said that in his remarks to the business group, Mr. Obama would make it clear that he has no intention of negotiating over the debt limit."
Defense Dept audit finds sequester harming Navy security. Politico: "...the Navy’s cost-cutting measures have already exposed its outposts to new security risks — including 52 convicted felons who have secured routine unauthorized installation access ... by landing as the Washington area reels from its deadliest day since Sept. 11, 2001, and also girds for the next round of fiscal fighting, [the report] paints a real-world reminder of how repeated budget cuts can expose lax security on military bases, not to mention tainted meat and unsafe air travel."
"White House budget office urges agencies to prepare for possible shutdown" reports Reuters.
Fed Meets Today
Fed to announce today whether or not it will begin to withdraw monetary stimulus. Time: "Bernanke will make his tapering decision based on his view on whether the U.S. economy and labor market are strong enough to withstand the winding down of QE. But the big question facing policymakers, bankers, corporate executives and investors around the world is: Can the global economy withstand it? That is far from clear. The recovery is still fragile, with the IMF forecasting global GDP to expand an uninspiring 3.1% this year. Even high-powered emerging economies like China and India are enduring slowdowns of a severity not witnessed in many years. Fed tapering may be inevitable, but the world may not be ready."
Liberals pulling Dems away from Wall Street, observes W. Post's Harold Meyerson: "In the past 10 days, a diverse group of Democratic senators scuttled Larry Summers’s candidacy for Federal Reserve chair and New York Democrats voted for the mayoral candidate whose campaign was an attack on Michael Bloomberg’s care and feeding of the super-rich at the expense of the rest of the city. Former commerce secretary (and JP Morgan Chase executive) William Daley’s surprise withdrawal from the Illinois Democratic gubernatorial primary is one more indication of Wall Street’s diminished sway. Democrats have reached a watershed..."
