Senate Clears State Aid Jobs Bill, As Weak Jobs Data Continues
BREAKING: Weak jobs numbers this AM from Labor Dept. "Total nonfarm payroll employment declined by 131,000 in July, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 9.5 percent ... Federal government employment fell, as 143,000 temporary workers hired for the decennial census completed their work. Private-sector payroll employment edged up by 71,000."
"Stiglitz Says U.S. Faces ‘Anemic Recovery,’ Needs More Stimulus." Bloomberg quotes: "It’s absolutely clear that you need a second round of stimulus. It needs to be better designed. It needs to be focused more on returns on investment, education, infrastructure, technology. And if you do those kinds of high- powered investments, the long-term national debt will be actually lower and the growth in the future will be higher.”
Senate formally passed state aid to save and create jobs. NYT: "The bill does not add to the deficit since the money is generated by closing a business tax loophole and making spending cuts."
But will House Dems accept the hard compromises? LAT: "...liberal House Democrats may have to swallow hard before accepting some of the offsetting cuts in social programs dear to their hearts. And some more-conservative Democrats are expressing concern about such federal spending, even though the bill is fully paid for with offsets ... One main offset approved by the Senate to avoid adding to the deficit is an earlier-than-expected phaseout of an enhanced food stamp program ... [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi had her own concerns about the Senate decision to cut $1.5 billion in renewable energy loan funds ... But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Thursday that the Energy Department would be able to find money for the program elsewhere in its budget."
Sen. Reid will try again to break filibuster of small biz lending bill. The Hill: "Just before adjourning at 10:02 p.m., Reid filed a series of cloture motions to set up votes on the small business bill on Tuesday, Sept. 14. Reid withdrew all pending amendments, reoffered a substitute and moved to block any further amendments."
Sen. Reid offering changes to small biz tax compliance requirements in hopes to attracting GOP support: "The deal turns on the promise that Republicans will be assured of votes on addressing a top concern for the small business lobby: new 1099 information reporting requirements intended to improve tax compliance but which companies say will result in a paperwork nightmare ... In tandem with Reid, [Sen. Max] Baucus released details Thursday night of changes he would make to relax the reporting requirements and exempt businesses with fewer than 25 employees at any time during the tax year."
Consortium News' Stephen Crockett says the GOP plan to sabotage the Obama administration's economic agenda is close to succeeding: "It seems like the Republicans in Congress have decided that sabotaging economic recovery and employment growth is their best tactic for electoral gains in the November elections.Indications of this plan have been around since the Democratic victories in 2008. It seems that all doubt about facilitating the economic downturn as a path to political power for Republicans have been removed by recent legislative votes."
HUD steers more money towards reducing foreclosures. W. Post: "Marcia J. Griffin, president of HomeFree-USA, said that her group sees 1,000 people a month in its Hyattsville office and that the new funding will go a long way to address a situation that does not seem to be going away."
WH econ aide Christina Romer steps down. LAT: "[Christina] Romer had clashed with Obama's top economic advisor, Lawrence Summers, over her access to the president, though administration officials said she was not leaving because of any personality conflict or policy differences."
Social Security Sound. Medicare Strengthened. Don't Tell Anyone
After new Social Security trustee report, media play up short-term Social Security trust fund squeeze. LAT: "This year, for the first time since 1983, Social Security is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes."
But ignore projection for long-term soundness. OurFuture.org's Dave Johnson: "The summary of the report says, 'The financial outlook for Social Security is little changed from last year. The short term outlook is worsened by a deeper recession than was projected last year, but the overall 75-year outlook is nevertheless somewhat improved...' and is otherwise fine until at least 2037 with no changes. It is just fine forever, in fact, if we do something simple like raise the 'cap' on earnings that are taxed to pay for the program."
Social Security commissioner tells reporters not to get deficit hysterical. HuffPost's Dan Froomkin: "Social Security Commissioner Michael J. Astrue ... begged reporters not to scare the public by exaggerating the significance of trust fund exhaustion [in 2037.] 'That does not mean that there will be no money left,' Astrue said ... Inaccurate reporting on the topic tends to 'make young people despair about Social Security,' he said."
Broad Strengthen Social Security coalition makes case to WH. NYT: "Many advocates on the left seized on the updates to argue that no changes were needed, especially for Social Security, while some on the right said the report showed a need for cutbacks in future benefit promises or even for privatization ... Dozens of liberal organizations, including the A.F.L.-C.I.O., the N.A.A.C.P. and MoveOn.org, formed the Strengthen Social Security coalition last week. On Tuesday, representatives of those groups and others, including AARP, met with two administration officials and 'gave them an earful,' in the words of one participant.
Same report finds Medicare trust fund strengthened by health care reform law. W. Post: "...the new report says Medicare's hospital trust fund will be able to pay all its bills until 2029, compared with last year's forecast of 2017. And the trustees say that the fund's shortfall over the next 75 years -- a time frame they are required by law to consider -- has decreased substantially. The coverage of hospital services is the only part of Medicare paid through a trust fund and thus can run short of money."
Checking Conservative Arithmetic On Tax Cuts
GOP Sen. Voinovich breaks with party, calls for Bush tax cuts to expire. The Hill: "While GOP leaders want the deficit reductions that Voinovich has called for, the Ohio senator and other deficit hawks are also open to raising new revenues through tax increases."
NYT's Paul Krugman shreds top GOP budgeteer Rep. Paul Ryan: "...as long as someone on the right claims to have bold new proposals, he’s hailed as an innovative thinker. And nobody checks his arithmetic ... even if you believe that his proposed spending cuts are feasible — which you shouldn’t — [his] Roadmap wouldn’t reduce the deficit. All it would do is cut benefits for the middle class while slashing taxes on the rich."
Wall St. Reform Kicks In
Wall Street reform law hits Goldman. NYT: "...Goldman is now considering a step that once would have been unthinkable: disbanding the corps of market wizards at the heart of its lucrative trading operation. Under the new Dodd-Frank financial regulations, Goldman must break up its principal strategies group, the wildly successful trading unit that has helped power the bank’s profits. Goldman is considering several options, including moving the traders to another division or shutting the unit altogether ... The loss of the division would be a big change for Goldman. The group has long been one of the most sought-after places to work at Goldman, and one of the most highly compensated."
Fiscally distressed cities try to get out from under bad, overly complex Wall St. deals. NYT: "Since [Denver] struck the deal, the school system has paid $115 million in interest and other fees, at least $25 million more than it originally anticipated. To avoid mounting expenses, the Denver schools are looking to renegotiate the deal. But to unwind it all, the schools would have to pay the banks $81 million in termination fees, or about 19 percent of its $420 million payroll ... the Los Angeles City Council told its treasurer and city administrative officer to renegotiate interest-rate deals the city had used to try to lower its debt payments with the banks that sold them ... Pennsylvania, some school districts have unwound interest-rate deals, and the state’s auditor general, Jack Wagner, has urged other issuers to follow suit."
SEC debates executive pay clawbacks. Bloomberg: " The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is divided over when to seize pay from executives who unwittingly benefit from accounting fraud ... The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 gave the SEC power to seize payouts to chief executive officers and chief financial officers at companies that restate earnings 'as a result of misconduct.'"
"A Banker Can't Get Arrested In This Town" says OurFuture.org's Richard Eskow: "... a review of 49 charges brought this year by the SEC shows that the majority of their targets were 'ABB' - "anybody but bankers" - and that only eight charges were directly related to the fraud that trashed the economy."
Senate Backs Increased Border Security
Senate passes additional funds for border security. AP: "[$600M] would be used for such purposes as adding 1,500 new enforcement agents and deploying unmanned aerial drones to improve border surveillance ... [The cost is offset by boosting] fees assessed on foreign-based personnel companies that take advantage of U.S. visa programs, such as the H-1B visa program for temporary skilled workers, to bring foreign workers, mainly from India, into the United States ... [The House] could take up the Senate bill when it interrupts its August recess next Tuesday for a one-day session to approve a Senate-passed jobs bill."
W. Post's Edward Schumacher-Matos counsels Dems to seize the immigration issue, not dance around it: "...you need to claim that you are moving on both enforcement and legalization as one."
GOP Rep. Steve King's compares Dems to "Pontius Pilate" for supporting immigration reform. ThinkProgress' Scott Keyes: "'In seeking to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants at a time when unemployment rates are already unacceptably high, can't the Democrats be said to be "washing their hands" of the negative consequences their economic policies have wrought?' King contended that if Democratic policies been enacted in ancient Egypt, they would have prevented the Israelites from escaping slavery under the Pharaoh and instead kept Moses and his people 'in Egypt in order to build Pharaoh's temples at below market wages.'"
Conservatives have selective use for the 14th Amendment, finds Laura Flanders: "The 14th amendment has done it again! No wonder right wing radicals want to repeal it. ...There’s just one problem. That pesky piece of legislation, the same part that protects minorities? It’s the same pesky statute that Conservatives love — when, as in Citizens United, it’s cited by Supremes on the right hand side of the court to apply to regulation-fighting corporations. It’s going to be hard to have your corporate cake and eat it too, dear friends."
Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon addresses the dehumanizing language and myths around immigration: "The usual anti-racist reaction to the term 'illegals' is to say, 'Actions are illegal, people aren’t.' Which is a sane, accurate response. But I have to admit, the term 'illegals' causes such a gut wrench in me that this response seems inadequate ... 'Illegal' is a term straight out dystopian sci-fi, which loves to create dehumanizing terms to show how much a certain class of people have been pushed out of society."
Possible Oil Spill Deal
Compromise may be reached on oil spill liability cap. The Hill: "[Sen. Mark] Begich said the plan would include a shared insurance pool among small and mid-sized companies to cover costs greater than $250 million and up to $5 billion, although big companies could 'opt in' to this pool as well ... the plan creates another $15 billion pool to cover potential spill costs among all companies. And for costs that exceed those levels, companies responsible for spills would be on the hook themselves by paying into an escrow account..."
Michigan oil spill looks similar to Gulf. W. Post: "A large company with safety violations. Regulators who didn't act fast enough. Claims centers. Containment boom. Broken equipment that everybody's waiting to examine. And now, questions about how much of the oil is gone and how much is just unaccounted for."
Sierra Club leaders call for scuttling tar sands pipeline after Michigan oil spill, in LAT oped: "The pipe that burst is part of one of the largest pipeline systems in the world. These are the pipes that bring tar-sands oil from Canada to refineries throughout the industrial cities of the Midwest ... Instead of allowing foreign oil companies to build more pipelines and operate more drilling rigs in the Midwest, the gulf and elsewhere, we should invest in clean, safe, American energy."
Bipartisan group of senators calls on EPA to weaken science-based smog rule. The Hill: "'We believe that changing the rules at this time will have a significant negative impact on our states’ workers and families and will compound the hardship that many are now facing in these difficult economic times,' according to the senators led by Sens. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and George Voinovich (R-Ohio). Others on the letter are Democratic Sens. Mary Landrieu (La.) and Claire McCaskill (Mo.), and Republican Sens. Richard Lugar (Ind.), Kit Bond (Mo.) and David Vitter (La.) ... Frank O’Donnell, president of the environmental group Clean Air Watch, said the letter does not point out that EPA decided to reconsider the Bush smog standard ... after a federal court ruled that the Bush administration’s separate fine-particle standard was 'arbitrary and capricious'..."
The Rich Can't Save Us
Major charitable announcement from nation's top billionaires not an excuse to slash government. W. Post's Steven Pearlstein: "Yes, philanthropy has been important, but so have unions, which ensured a fair distribution of corporate profits. So have antitrust laws that prevented successful companies from snuffing out entrepreneurial competition. So have norms of corporate behavior that made it socially unacceptable for top corporate executives to pay themselves 350 times what their workers made. And so have tax-supported schools, playgrounds and hospitals that were good enough to be used by rich and poor alike. All of these institutions accounted for the vibrancy of the American economy by ensuring that prosperity was widely shared. But with the erosion of those institutions, that is no longer the case."
While the richest people in the world are giving substantial chunks of their fortune to charity with one hand, Jonathan Tasini wonders what they're doing with the other one: "Take a moment to peruse the list of billionaires. ...What strikes me about the people on the list is that, with few, if any, exceptions, they are vehemently anti-union."
Breakfast Sides
Elena Kagan confirmed as Supreme Court Justice, but close vote raises prospects of tougher fights to come. Politico: "...if the Democrats lose seats in the midterm election, it could put even more pressure on senators to mount a no-holds-barred battle to keep any nominee from the opposing party off the court."
WH, McConnell disagree on reason for one-on-one presidential meeting. McClatchy: "Is President Barack Obama preparing for a new political balance in Washington if Democrats lose or significantly narrow their congressional majorities in November's elections and he'll need more Republicans to get anything done? Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., suggested that's the case ... "The president is a very smart guy, and he figures he'll be seeing a lot of me in the future," McConnell said ... [Said WH adviser David Axelrod,] 'No, that really wasn't it.' Obama's goal was simply to follow up on a recent bipartisan leaders' meeting, to urge that Republicans stop blocking appointments, especially judicial nominees, and to explore what other issues they could agree to bring votes on in the near term."
