WH Signals Support For Warren?
Is the White House ready to back Warren? The Hill: "The White House on Monday gave the strongest signal yet that it may pick Elizabeth Warren ... White House press secretary Robert Gibbs on Monday said Warren is 'very confirmable' ..."
TNR's Noam Scheiber Warren will likely attract some GOP votes, amidst banker acquiescence: "There are four realistic places to find the additional [GOP] votes: Republicans Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, and Chuck Grassley of Iowa ... Brown and Collins are playing their cards close ... Grassley has been supportive of Warren when she’s appeared before the Senate Finance Committee ... Snowe, who also sits on the Senate Finance Committee, has been similarly supportive ... what’s interesting is the banks’ silence. Three industry officials I spoke with took care to assure me that their organizations aren’t actively opposing Warren."
OurFuture.org's Richard Eskow rips specious claims against Warren: "There have been at least two empty and ineffective lines of attack against Elizabeth Warren: The first is that she's opposed to 'financial innovation,' and the second is that she lacks the necessary "managerial experience." [The Atlantic's Megan] McArdle attempts to open a third: That Prof. Warren is a bad scholar. McArdle fails miserably, misquoting or misunderstanding other academic papers and Warren's own work while failing some basic analytical challenges..."
International bank regulators strike preliminary compromise on capital requirements. NYT: "... banks would have to hold higher capital reserves and more cash on their balance sheets to cushion against unexpected shocks [but the] standards agreed to Monday are less onerous than earlier proposals and give banks more leeway to define what counts as high-quality, or Tier 1, capital."
Final deal not yet reached. W. Post: "The panel has not reached agreement on some of the most important and sensitive issues -- notably how much capital banks are going to be asked to hold and the degree to which they will be required to hold it in the form of common equity, considered the best buffer against a downturn. Those issues remain under discussion amid both protest from the banking industry that strict new standards will crimp economic growth and division between the United States and Europe over how tough new capital standards should be."
Latest Jobs Fail: Infrastructure Bank Dead
House-Senate disagreement prevents inclusion of job-creating infrastructure bank in appropriations bill. CQ: "The report accompanying the Senate appropriators’ bill (S 3644) states that lawmakers have “serious concerns” with the program, including the amount of discretion that the fund would have to green-light specific projects, which the report suggests could open the program to abuse. The report also suggests that Senate appropriators are concerned that the fund could be expanded to include things outside the purview of the Transportation Department. This seems to be exactly what House appropriators want ... [Gov. Ed] Rendell, during his speech, said that such a bank must do more than just fund transportation; he mentioned water, wastewater and energy projects..."
VP Biden highlights how stimulus is improving our national parks. AP: "He said some $750 million in stimulus money has gone to about 800 national park projects, which have created jobs in tough times. But, he added, the projects would have been necessary even if the economy was good to protect the parks and reduce man's footprint there ... He is to speak from the Grand Canyon's South Rim [today]."
NYT's Bob Herbert on new Rockefeller Foundation study chronicling deep economic insecurity:"...the research team projects, conservatively, that more than 20 percent of Americans experienced a 25 percent or greater loss of household income (without a financial cushion) over the prior year — the highest in at least a quarter of a century."
Paul Krugman sounds the alarm on long-term unemployment: "[Larry] Ball provides compelling evidence that weak policy responses to high unemployment tend to raise the level of structural unemployment, so that inflation tends to rise at much higher unemployment rates than before. And the kind of unemployment we’re experiencing now, with many workers jobless for very long periods, is precisely the kind of unemployment likely to leave workers permanently unemployable."
Carbon Emissions May Be Cut Without Climate Bill
Rust Belt House Dems unhappy with Senate's failing to take up their climate bill. W. Post: "Nowhere does the issue cut as sharply as along the I-70 corridor, the nearly 800-mile stretch from Pittsburgh to Kansas City that throughout the 20th century served as the nation's economic engine. The coal-fired smokestacks and steel mills that once symbolized an honest day's work throughout the region find themselves under assault as emitters of environmental poison, creating a difficult political dance for the region's lawmakers ... Of the 15 House Democrats in this corridor who are in contested races, 10 voted for the climate legislation..."
Other legally required EPA pollution efforts will put squeeze on coal. TNR's Brad Plumer: "The U.S. District Court, for instance, has ordered the EPA to set new mercury standards by the end of next year ... None of these regulations have anything to do with climate change per se. But according to industry analysts, many coal plants will have to shut down as a result ... If 20 percent of U.S. coal generation gets retired in the next five years, that would lead to a roughly 7 percent decrease in the country's overall carbon emissions ... most of these coming pollution restrictions easily pass cost-benefit analyses."
Should enviros wait 'til next year for climate bill? ClimateWire: "...said David Bookbinder, who served as Sierra Club's chief climate counsel until his resignation in May. 'They couldn't get a climate bill through the Senate with 59 Democratic votes ... What are they going to do when they have 53 or 54?' ... But Paul Bledsoe, a strategist at the bipartisan National Commission on Energy Policy ... said. 'Sometimes, when the party balance is closer, it actually becomes easier to put together bipartisan coalitions because you've got to get some things done.' ... Meanwhile, some advocates are still hoping that last-minute negotiations can push some type of climate bill through the Senate this fall, before the shift in political fortunes."
Arizona, California, Nevada, and Texas top list of states at risk of drought due to climate crisis. Grist's Todd Woody: "As global warming accelerates, the world will become not only hotter, flatter, and more crowded but also thirsty, according to a new study that finds 70 percent of counties in the United States may face climate change-related risks to their water supplies by 2050."
Will anti-immigration activists embrace capping carbon? LAT: "...scientists are predicting another consequence of climate change: mass migration to the United States. Between 1.4 million and 6.7 million Mexicans could migrate to the U.S. by 2080 as climate change reduces crop yields and agricultural production in Mexico..."
Reid energy bill expected today, reports WSJ.
27 Senators push Reid to include a stronger renewable electricity standard in energy bill. The Hill: "'A strong RES will give certainty to clean energy companies that are looking to invest billions of dollars in the U.S. to manufacture wind turbines, solar panels and other renewable energy components,' argues the letter spearheaded by Sens. Byron Dorgan (N.D.), Mark Udall (Colo.) and Tom Udall (N.M.). The other signatures come from a mix of liberal and centrist renewable energy backers ... But Reid said Saturday that he doesn’t see a filibuster-proof vote for an RES..."
Wind power industry insists there are 60 votes for RES, but a milder version than envrios want. THe Hill: "But [American Wind Energy Association CEO Denise ] Bode said they have done a whip count, which [former Sen. Tom] Daschle said was based off support for an RES that was included in a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee bill that passed with bipartisan support last year. That mandate would require electric utilities to produce 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources like wind, solar and geothermal by 2021. A quarter of that mandate could be met through energy efficiency measures."
GOP Sen. Sam Brownback supports the mild RES. Washington Independent: "He is calling for that same RES to be incorporated in Reid’s bill, echoing the arguments of renewable energy advocates, who scaled back their ambitions to pass a more stringent RES [yesterday] morning."
Is Reid running scared? Mother Jones' Kate Sheppard reports: "A Senate Democratic aide told me that leadership is concerned about including the RES now that the other climate provisions have been axed, because the RES 'would replace the cap in terms of scare tactics from the right.'"
House Dems prepare oil spill bill, reports The Hill: "[It] would shore up offshore rig safety standards and block BP from obtaining new offshore drilling leases. The bill, slated for debate Friday, also increases oil companies’ liability for damages from offshore spills."
Outgoing BP CEO should not get severance until Gulf gusher victims are paid, says Rep. Ed Markey. The Hill quotes: "At a time when BP should be devoting every possible resource to ending the spill, cleaning up the Gulf and fully compensating the residents who have had their livelihoods impacted, I find it extremely troubling that BP’s board would consider providing such a large severance package to Mr. Hayward."
Energy Dept. blogger Andy Oare touts success of weatherization initiative: "[We've] achieved a rate of 25,000 homes weatherized a month ... we’re going to weatherize 82,000 homes this summer versus 3,000 last summer [putting] nearly 17,000 people to work in just the second quarter of the year."
Plans for largest US wind farm on track after $1.2B in financing, reports Inhabitat: "The [Kern County, CA] farm should be completed and ready for juicing the grid with renewable energy by the first and second quarters of 2011 ...we’ve got the Lake Erie fresh water wind farm and a final “yes” on the Cape Cod wind farm. The addition to the Alta Wind Energy Center in California is a nice topper to this recent list of wins."
Green Energy Reporter partially credits the stimulus for attracting the financing: "For permanent financing Terra-Gen entered into a leaseback agreement ... Until last year, renewable energy developers could not lease their projects because they had to own and operate a wind farm to get any of its tax benefits. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act lifted those restrictions."
Deficit Hysteria Fails To Boost Social Security Benefit Cuts
Dean Baker slams Pete Peterson's America Speaks for distorting results from its deficit reduction forums: "When America Speaks reported its results to the public and President Obama’s deficit commission, it noted that one cut to Social Security, raising the retirement age, got majority support from participants. However, it turns out that this result was based on a software error. When the error was corrected, support fell to 39 percent. Remarkably, America Speaks did not have the integrity to publicly acknowledge and correct this mistake. It just quietly changed the number on its website."
House backing military pork, over Pentagon's wishes. NYT: "Lawmakers say they expect the House defense appropriations subcommittee to add $485 million to keep the [F-35] engine alive, setting up a showdown with the Senate over a project the White House has described as veto bait ... After finally persuading Congress last year to cancel the F-22 fighter jet and other weapons systems, lawmakers say, [Defense Sec.] Gates has practically made it a personal crusade to scratch the extra engine and the cargo planes off the Pentagon’s project list ... Some — led by lawmakers from Ohio, Indiana, Massachusetts and Virginia — are seeking to preserve jobs. Others say that Mr. Gates simply picked the wrong program..."
F-35 maker GE jousts with WH. W. Post: "GE -- whose financing arm received billions of dollars in federal bailout funds -- has launched a furious lobbying and media effort in recent months aimed at securing funding for the engine..."
TNR's Jonathan Chait argues GOP can either accept the end of Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, or force the end of the Bush tax cuts for everybody: "They can pass an extension of the middle-class Bush tax cuts through the House. If Republicans let the bill pass, then they've lost their leverage to extend the unpopular Bush upper-income tax cuts. If they filibuster it, then Democrats can blame them for raising taxes on middle-class Americans. It would let Democrats out of their pledge. (Hey, they tried to keep the middle-class tax cuts.) Then nothing would pass, and we'd instantly revert to Clinton-era rates across the board."
