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 Presser Caps Week Of Jobs Push
President holds morning press conference on the economy. AFP: "Obama scheduled the appearance at 11:00 am to press home the case on his recovery plans, but the event may be overtaken by the fast-moving controversy over a Florida pastor's on-hold threat to torch the Koran."
The Nation says that Obama's $50 billion infrastructure development plan is a good start, but that Obama must be bolder: "If the president wants to change the debate—and there's still time to do that—he must stop listening to infrastructure-phobic advisers like Larry Summers and start taking counsel from Laura Tyson, a member of his Economic Recovery Advisory Board who argues that $1 trillion in infrastructure investment is needed over the next five years."
TNR's Alexander Hart finds Obama's proposal for an infrastructure bank isn't getting enough attention: "...the bank would likely limit itself to making low-cost loans, rather than directly paying for new construction. State governments would still eventually have to come up with the money to pay for the projects ... But by making it cheaper to fund vital infrastructure projects, a bank would help get them built ... assuming the bank is truly independent and decisions are actually made by experts, it will lead to a projects being selected 'based on a cost-benefit analysis,' and their 'national and regional importance.' ... Remember the infamous 'bridge to nowhere' we almost funded ... They were a result of the appropriations process and pork-barrel politics run amok, not any kind of reasonable economic analysis ... Even Republicans can get behind that idea. Or so you would think."
Tariffs needed to close trade gap and boost economy, argues U.S. Business and Industry Council's Alan Tonelson and Kevin L. Kearns, in NYT oped: "...since February 2009, the government has injected $512 billion into the American economy, but during roughly the same period, the trade deficit leaked about $602 billion out of it ... Congress and the president should allow American victims of currency manipulation — primarily industrial companies whose prices are kept artificially high when trade partners keep their currencies under-valued — to obtain compensatory tariffs against currency-subsidized imports Second, 'Buy American' requirements for federal procurement should be expanded to cover all spending at every level of government. Also essential is a border tax to counter foreign export rebates ... and proactive tariffs on foreign goods and services that compete directly with existing and start-up domestic producers."
Nick Taylor urges President to back New Deal-style public works in LAT oped: "Of course, Obama faces challenges that his Depression-era predecessor didn't. Roosevelt had stronger majorities in Congress. He could propose bold programs that required spending without risking gridlock or defeat. Nor did he inherit a culture of institutionalized deficits that stretched back 30 years, deficits that his opponents didn't worry about when they wanted to fund wars and tax cuts but were quick to condemn when domestic spending was proposed. When Obama argues for a new round of stimulus, he'll be standing against a distracting background of red ink. Still, spending on jobs would be worth the cost."
Austan Goolsbee to head president's Council of Economic Advisers. NYT: "He has tense relations with Mr. Summers, however, after policy disputes in the early crisis-driven debates over the rescues of the financial industry and Chrysler, among other issues. Mr. Goolsbee, who has a free-market bent, opposed bailing out Chrysler. He did not prevail, but Mr. Obama personally sought his arguments ... he does espouse a free trade philosophy."
Moneywatch's John Keefe tries to get House Min. Leader to answer whether his across-the-board spending cuts would slash food stamps: " I called Rep. Boehner’s press people, and they switched me over to his staff. (They call him 'The Leader.') I left a message, and it’s been several hours but there has been no call back, and I don’t expect one. In my experience politicians don’t like to answer questions, they prefer to make statements..."
Paul Krugman debunks the myth of the wealthy public servant: "So, how much truth is there to the theory that massive pension liabilities and bloated benefits for public workers are increasing our financial woes? According to an analysis by John Schmitt at the Center of Economic and Policy Research, state and local employees are paid more, on average, than private-sector workers - about 13 percent more. But Mr. Schmitt's data also shows that this is actually a false comparison: state and local workers are somewhat older than private-sector workers, and they are actually much better educated (about 23.5 percent have advanced college degrees, as opposed to 8.9 percent in the private sector). About half of all state and local workers are teachers and academic administrators - which means that they're college-educated, at minimum."
Waiting For Warren
Baseline Scenario's Simon Johnson urges President to immediately appoint Elizabeth Warren, without Senate confirmation: "What could he possibly do that would grab people’s attention, mobilize his political base, and put his opponents on the defensive? There is an easy answer: Appoint Elizabeth Warren to start running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) immediately ... The Treasury Secretary is explicitly authorized by an Act of Congress to pick an interim head for the new agency – with a view to getting it up and running immediately ... Presumably the Senate (and the House) passed this specific measure expressly to expedite the CFPB’s work."
Politico wonders what is taking so long: "...there is a real fear that a Warren nomination could wind up dead on arrival if no Republican speaks favorably of her and if moderate Democrats distance themselves from her as well — potential developments that would be highly embarrassing for both the White House and Warren herself. So in the end, the current delay could simply be a matter of the administration counting votes and figuring out the political risks of sending the nomination to the Hill."
Naked Capitalism's Yves Smith hopeful that the SEC will prosecute Lehman: "One factor that would seem to improve the odds of success in pursuing former Lehman executives is they were directly involved in the preparation of the dubious financial statements, while at AIG, the dubious behavior occurred at the operational level, and accounting and management controls appear to have been weak (which serves to give corporate level executives plausible deniability). But you have a thicket of other problems. The biggest is if any of these cases were to go to trial, complex financial fraud cases are very hard to win ... defense attorneys can win simply by confusing the jury."
Steelworkers Charge China With Illegal Subsidies For Clean Energy
United Steelworkers allege illegal Chinese subsidies of clean-energy technology. WSJ: "The union's 5,800-page brief asks U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk to take action against China's efforts to build its green-technology manufacturing, from compact fluorescent light bulbs to wind turbines ... White House officials declined to comment on the petition..."
Sens. Sherrod Brown and Ron Wyden back steelworkers: "'If we are going to compete in the global clean-energy manufacturing industry, we need strong trade enforcement. Every day we delay enforcing trade rules, China spends $51 million a day to speed past us in the race to lead the world in clean-energy manufacturing, while elbowing competition out of the way through unfair subsidies and discriminatory tactics,' [Sen. Brown] said."
Treehugger's Brian Merchant calls on US to emulate China's aggressiveness on clean energy: "China's policies may indeed have some negative long term effects on the global clean energy marketplace -- if its subsidies prevent or discourage private international companies from investing in clean energy R&D or new manufacturing capacity, for example, we may have fewer good clean energy equipment options on the table if and when China's bubble bursts. On the other hand, China's involvement in the industry also shows how ample support from the state can yield major gains, quickly, in a nascent and extremely important renewable energy industry."
Coal ally Sen. Jay Rockefeller denounces climate change deniers. Wonk Room's Brad Johnson quotes: "People think they are protecting coal by pretending climate change doesn’t exist or that (by saying) carbon capture and storage is not needed. But burying one’s head in the sand is not a solution and can only backfire."
Enviro coalition pushes higher fuel-efficiency standards. The Hill: "Environmental and other groups are pressuring the Obama administration to ramp up fuel efficiency for cars and light trucks to at least 60 miles per gallon by 2025 ... 'There’s not a need for congressional action,' noted Luke Tonachel, a clean-vehicles expert at NRDC."
Bill McKibben urges White House to put Jimmy Carter's solar panels back on the roof, in W. Post oped: "When he dedicated the panels, President Jimmy Carter made a prophecy that, like many oracles, came true in unexpected fashion -- in fact, nothing better illustrates both why the world is heating and why the American economy is falling behind its competitors. 'In the year 2000 this solar water heater behind me will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy,' he said. 'A generation from now this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people.'" WH will meet with McKibben reports The Atlantic.
HHS Draws Line With Insurers On Rate Hikes
HHS warns health insurance lobby: jack up rates, lose business. Time's Kate Pickert: "Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said insurers that hike rates for consumer unjustifiably may be locked out from the state exchanges due to be set up by 2014 ... it means that HHS is tough - ready and willing to use all means necessary to stop insurers from padding profits and using the Affordable Care Act as an excuse ... [But] it's not clear to me that the federal government will have the authority to decide which insurers will be allowed into the exchanges, which will be run by states."
TPMDC's Brian Beutler reports conservative members of WH debt commission angling to hack Medicare: "...the ideological conservatism of the Republicans on the commission -- and, indeed, of the commission as a whole -- combined with Democratic fatigue over health care reform mean that the center of gravity of discussions is tilted to the right."
GOPer Admits Higher Taxes Are Needed, But On Whom?
GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch says "we may not be able to" reduce deficit without higher taxes, reports Wonk Room's Pat Garofalo: "But Hatch was quick to rule out two of the Obama administration’s proposals regarding where to responsibly raise taxes: allowing the Bush tax cuts for the richest two percent to expire on schedule (as Republicans designed them) and cutting taxpayer subsidies to oil and gas companies ... who is he willing to tax? The middle class?"
Letting Bush tax cuts expire for wealthiest means they can't another BMW convertible, reports Bloomberg: "A married New Yorker earning about $1 million in income, with an additional $50,000 in capital gains and $5,000 in dividends may pay about an extra $45,300 in federal income taxes, $2,500 in capital gains and $1,230 on dividends if Congress doesn’t extend the 2001 and 2003 tax reductions scheduled to end Dec. 31, says Alan Dlugash, a partner at Marks Paneth & Shron LLP, a New York-based accounting firm. That’s about a $50,000 hit, he said. 'These are very large tax increases,' said Dlugash, whose typical client has a net worth of $5 million to $10 million. His example assumes a taxpayer in the top bracket without deductions such as mortgage interest on a home or charitable donation ... A BMW Z4 Roadster convertible, for example, has a starting price of $46,000..."
Froma Harrop argues "The Rich Are Not Going to Give Us Jobs": "Companies don't create jobs because they have extra money jingling in their pockets. They take on new workers when they want to expand, and right now the demand's not there to warrant that growth ... An employment policy based on further enriching the richest Americans -- who may or may not spend their wealth on job-creating ventures -- is like trying to feed chickens in the barnyard by dropping feed from an airplane. It's far more logical to focus tax cuts on activities that are likely to expand American business."
Court Rules Localities Can't Trump Feds On Immigration
Federal court strikes down anti-immigrant ordinances in Pennsylvania city as unconstitutional. NYT: "Peter J. Spiro, a law professor at Temple University in Philadelphia, said: 'The court is saying that immigration is something the federal government has given careful consideration, and the result is a very intricate federal regime. The local measures interfered with that regime, and that’s not O.K.'"
US focusing on deporting only undocumented immigrants who have committed serious crimes. USA Today: "... an effort to unclog immigration courts and detention centers. A record backlog of deportation cases has forced immigrants to wait an average 459 days for their hearings ... The administration's new direction puts it at odds with those who believe the nation's immigration laws should be strictly enforced and that all illegal immigrants should be deported ... The changes have also drawn complaints from immigration advocates. They say deportations under Obama are at record highs and immigrants who remain behind are living in limbo, without work permits..."
W. Post's Edward Schumacher-Matos takes the long view in assessing the "cost" of immigration: "In 1909, at the height of the last great immigration wave, when immigrants reached a peak of almost 15 percent of the U.S. population, they made up about half of all public welfare recipients ... In the country's 30 largest cities, meanwhile, more than half of all public school students were the children of immigrants. They were three-fourths in New York ... The truth is that unauthorized immigrants are probably a net burden on taxpayers in the short term, but only if you consider education as a cost and not as an investment in the nation's future, as it was seen a century ago."
A Tea Party Congress?
Democrats raising specter of a "Tea Party Congress" reports The Hill: "'These are not your run-of-the-mill Republicans we’re talking about here,' said one Democratic organizer working in a state with a contested Senate race this fall. 'When you actually start telling voters what these candidates are about, it scares the hell out of them.' In the past several weeks, when Democratic activists cite the ramifications of a 'Tea Party Congress,' they say, more volunteers have signed up to knock on doors to preserve a Democratic-led House and Senate."
Time looks at the possible Tea Party uprising in the Delaware GOP primary: "This is of special concern to [Rep. Mike] Castle, the onetime prohibitive favorite for the Biden seat, who has spent his career as one of the last of a dwindling political breed: the moderate northeastern Republican. Now he is playing defense. "
NYT's Paul Krugman warns what Boehner's economic plans could do: "It’s hard to overstate how destructive the economic ideas offered earlier this week by John Boehner, the House minority leader, would be if put into practice. Basically, he proposes two things: large tax cuts for the wealthy that would increase the budget deficit while doing little to support the economy, and sharp spending cuts that would depress the economy while doing little to improve budget prospects."
In These Times' Hans Johnson warns of what might happen if Tea Partiers take over at the federal and state level: "Fluency in fringe ideology and appeals to intolerance now substitute for leadership among conservatives ... That means rehashed fights about posting of the Ten Commandments, citizenship and voting standards, enforcement of sodomy laws, access to contraception, and the legality of the clean-water and emissions standards, the minimum wage, and Social Security. It means a diminished state of our democracy and our standing in the world."
