Each morning, Bill Scher and Terrance Heath serve up what progressives need to affect change on the kitchen-table issues families face: jobs, health care, green energy, financial reform, affordable education and retirement security.
Presidential Address Follows Two-Day Gulf Coast Visit
President Obama returns to Gulf Coast today for two-day tour, followed by national prime-time TV address tomorrow, reports McClatchy.
Climate Progress' Joe Romm hopeful national address will spark climate legislation: " Obama will apparently be giving his long-awaited prime time BP disaster and energy policy speech on Tuesday — and it could well be make or break for both his presidency and the efforts to address global warming this decade."
Sen. Jeff Merkley today unveils bill to reduce oil consumption. Grist's David Roberts argues it could salvage any "energy-only" bill: "There is ... virtually no significant political force pushing to include a carbon cap ... if Reid reverts to an energy-only bill as expected, where is he going to get his energy ideas? ... Right now there are two main contenders: the bill passed through Bingaman's Energy Committee, last year, ACELA, and Lugar's new bill ... neither bill would yield any more renewable energy than business as usual ... What's needed right now are strong progressive energy proposals. If Reid's going to do energy, he might as well do it right."
Several other senators cooking up energy ideas. The Hill: "...Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) is readying legislation on renewable electricity and biofuels ... Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) is pushing a plan backed by several environmental groups that would levy new fees on offshore oil-and-gas leases to fund alternative energy programs ... Perhaps the biggest question is how the emerging focus on oil will affect the battle that Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) are waging to keep climate change provisions in the mix."
Vulnerable GOP senators that voted to stop regulation of greenhouse gases hit with attack ads from Americans United For Change. The Hill: "AUFC will send $118,000 to run an ad against Grassley in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids, and $234,000 to run an ad against Burr in Raleigh and Charlotte. Those spots will run June 15-21. The group also already spent $53,000 to run its ad against Brown, an ad which aired during last night's NBA finals game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics."
Scott Brown voted to block the EPA from regulating carbon because, according to him, it's "a non-governmental agency": reports Climate Progress.
Obama will demand BP create a liability account for Gulf disaster-related claims. HuffPost:: "Hoping to make progress on the issue of retroactive liability for the oil spill, The White House is set to demand that executives at BP set up an account from which they will pay out claims to those affected by the spill. A White House official emails the following information about the process..."
Push for independent claims fund as Gulf Coast victims still wait on BP. LAT: "The 42,000 claims filed with the oil company so far go well beyond the shrimpers, oystermen and seafood processers who have been the spill's most visible victims. Hotels, restaurants, machine shops, bars and tour companies all became collateral damage when the Gulf of Mexico, one of the nation's most important fisheries and tourist destinations, became an industrial cleanup site. The people whose lives depend on those businesses complain about ignored claims, unanswered phone calls and lost paperwork. One man said his BP claims adjuster didn't even know where Grand Isle, La., was."
House Minority Leader John Boehner is now in favor of lifting the liability cap on BP, right after he redefines it. Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "When Boehner seemed to indicate this week that he preferred to see American taxpayers bear some of the financial brunt of the oil spill disaster, the Ohio Republican quickly backpedaled and said "not a dime" of public funds should have to pay for the response. Dems had a simple reply: if Boehner means that, he'll have to reverse course and endorse the Democratic plan to lift the liability cap. Today on ABC's 'This Week,' Boehner did just that. ...Now, Boehner might try to weasel out of this — maybe he defines 'lift' differently than the rest of us — but this seemed pretty categorical."
Robert Reich explains why the U.S. can't get BP to do what's necessary: "The Administration has not used legal authority to order BP to do a thing, because it hasn't asserted any legal authority. Meanwhile, the White House backed off its suggestion earlier in the week that it could stop BP from paying a giant dividend to its shareholders. That suggestion had caused BP shares to plummet and pressure to build on Britain's new Prime Minister David Cameron. 12 percent of dividends paid to pensioners in the UK come from BP. Cameron and Obama had a friendly chat Saturday, assuring one another BP is important to both countries. You see where all this is heading."
Another spill, days after Utah's governor called for more domestic oil production. Climate Progress:: "Yesterday, Chevron discovered a leaking pipeline that was spewing 50 gallons of crude oil per minute into Red Butte Creek in Salt Lake City. By the time crews capped the leak, more than 21,000 gallons - between 400-500 barrels - of oil had spilled out, 'coating geese and ducks' and closing the city's largest park."
Push For Fiscal Aid To States Bumps Against War Spending
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer suggests president's call for $50B in state and local aid could be re-allocated from the stimulus. CNN: "David Axelrod, Obama's senior adviser, said Sunday that Obama's letter was intended to 'underscore the urgency' of continuing to support economic recovery ... [GOP Rep. Mike] Pence responded that Obama and the Democrats were further expanding a national debt that doubled under President George W. Bush ... 'We need to expend additional dollars to make sure that we don't have significant layoffs in the next few months, which will again depress the economy,' Hoyer said, suggesting the money could come from the $800 billion economic stimulus bill of 2009."
Politico speculates WH push for state aid result of pushback from House Dems on funding wars with deficit spending: "Now that the war bill has moved to the House, Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey (D-Wis.) is threatening to go back into last year’s Recovery Act and cut from White House priorities to pay for the teachers. The Wisconsin Democrat appears to have the tacit support of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and their combined force may explain the sudden Saturday night letter."
Several GOP governors break with congressional Republicans over need for state aid. The Hill: "A total of 16 GOP governors plus [newly independent FL Gov. Charlie] Crist joined Democratic governors in sending another letter in February to congressional leaders urging passage of the [Medicaid funding] extension in February. Schwarzenegger has gone further in pressing for more stimulus, recently backing a push by Democrats for $23 billion in fiscal aid to help states stave off teacher layoffs."
There's legislation in Congress that could create 185,000 green jobs this year. AFL-CIO Blog's Mike Hall: "You can help put building and construction trades workers back on the job by contacting your senators and representatives and urging them to support Building Star-H.R. 5476 and S. 3079. The legislation would provide building owners rebates and low-cost financing options for energy-efficient renovations in existing buildings. ...If acted on quickly, the bill could create as many as 185,000 jobs this year in construction, manufacturing and support jobs."
U-Mass Amherst economics professor Nancy Folbre suggests middle-class jobs are faring worst due to automation and outsourcing, in NYT's Economix blog: "The fact that middle-wage jobs, rather than low-wage jobs, are declining suggests it is not the overall level of skill but the specific type of skill that matters. In fact, skill itself may be less important than other characteristics of a task, such as how easily it can be automated or outsourced ... Economists at the Bureau of Labor Statistics have developed an index of occupational susceptibility to offshoring. Almost every computer and mathematical science occupation is high on the list."
New study finds decrease in GDP fuels support for right-wing parties. Economix's Michael Powell: "... a new study by two European economists, Markus Brückner and Hans Peter Grüner, who analyzed the link between slow growth and rising support for European parties right and left. Their conclusion is straightforward: For every percentage-point decline in G.D.P. growth over the course of a half-year, support for right-wing and nationalist parties grew ... As the leftist economist Doug Henwood recently noted in his blog: 'Many radicals have fantasized that a serious recession — or depression — would lead to mass radicalization, as scales simultaneously fell from millions of pairs of eyes and the imperative of transcending capitalism became self-evidently obvious. I’ve long thought that was nonsense, and now there’s empirical support for my position.'"
Case For Austerity Debunked and Debunked Again
The American Prospect's Robert Kuttner warns if the White Hosue embraces fiscal austerity conservatism, it will fuel Tea Party conservatism: "... the White House wants its fiscal commission to embrace something close to the Peterson formula of caps on social insurance coupled with a domestic spending freeze, a value-added tax, and mandatory deeper cuts if Congress doesn't meet targets. Not only is this perverse economics; it is a political gift to Republicans. They can be expected to warn that the White House has a secret plan to cut your Social Security and raise consumption taxes on the middle class ... The Peterson brand of orthodoxy will short -- circuit a progressive moment both by choking off the funding we need for broad-based prosperity and by delivering Congress to the far right."
Paul Krugman definitively debunks the economic case for austerity: "...the US Treasury can currently issue long-term inflation-protected securities at an interest rate of 1.75%. So the long-term cost of servicing an extra trillion dollars of borrowing is $17.5 billion, or around 0.13 percent of GDP. And bear in mind that additional stimulus would lead to at least a somewhat stronger economy, and hence higher revenues ... the demand for immediate austerity is based on the assertion that markets will demand such austerity in the future, even though they shouldn’t, and show no sign of making any such demand now; and that if markets do lose faith in us, self-flagellation would restore that faith, even though that hasn’t actually worked anywhere else."
Markets responding positively to federal government borrowing. Bloomberg: "The market’s advocates of fiscal discipline are being placated as Bernanke keeps benchmark interest rates at a record low, allowing them to profit from the gap between short- and long-term yields with inflation at a four-decade low ... 'The U.S. is the sovereign debt of choice right now,' said John Spinello, chief technical strategist in New York at Jefferies Group Inc...."
Digby defines deficit reduction as "the right kind of welfare for the right kind of people": "'Deficit reduction' doesn't mean deficit reduction. It means welfare state reduction, period. Military spending is sacred — like the right to pack heat in church and gas guzzling. It is non-negotiable. (The irony, of course, is that the Military Industrial Complex is basically workfare for white guys — it holds up a huge part of our economy and makes a lot of people very wealthy, all on the taxpayer's dime. It would be immoral to take that away from suffering ex-Generals and engineers who can't make anything that doesn't blow up.) These people don't care about debt, they care that the peasants have become uppity and unvirtuous and it's time to put them back in their places — desperate and willing to do anything to avoid losing whatever meager assets they have. You know, the natural order of things."
Conservatives States Not Banking On Winning Health Care Lawsuit
Conservative states filing health care reform lawsuits don't appear confident of winning. Stateline: "...every state that’s actively challenging the law is at the same time taking steps to implement ... While some people see these steps as acknowledging the lawsuits’ slim chances of success, others simply see them as a smart backup plan..."
WH sets rules on existing employer health care plans. NYT: "The rules limit the changes that employers can make if they want to be exempt from certain provisions of the health care law ... plans can lose the exemption if they make significant changes in deductibles, co-payments or benefits."
Time's Kate Pickert see the health care fight impacting the November elections: "Obama pollster Joel Benenson said in a recent memo that he believes there's a new opening for Democratic candidates to highlight the benefits of health reform ... [Yet v]ulnerable pro-reform House Democrats have to walk a fine line this fall ... The three television ads highlighted on [Rep. Earl] Pomeroy's website don't mention health care at all, but instead attempt to distance the candidate from Washington politics ... [Whereas Rep. Betsy Markey] sent out a press release announcing the $250 Medicare rebate checks, for instance, and has benefited from television ads paid for by unions and the Democratic National Committee."
Breakfast Sides
Time Mark Halperin reports the White House relationship with Corporate America is fraying: "The financial regulation bill is viewed as a typically ignorant Washington overreach. The ongoing efforts to deal with the BP spill are seen as proof that Obama is an incompetent manager and serial scapegoater of large corporate interests. And the attempt to use the Gulf crisis to revive the stalled effort to get Congress to pass major energy legislation appears to many business types as a backdoor gambit to raise taxes ... Some senior Obama officials, particularly those who are veterans of the Clinton Administration, would like to find ways to produce détente with business leaders ... But others ... believe business is reacting the way it is because the President is changing the balance of power from the Bush years ... Where Obama's head and heart lies on these issues is, as usual, less clear..."
