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.
Congress Reconvenes, Tax Cut Fight Renews
McClatchy lays out post-election congressional session agenda: "Most major Bush-era tax cuts expire at the end of the year, and a congressional debate is expected to begin later this month. Indications are that lawmakers could accept a temporary extension, probably for two years, but the issue of whether to include the wealthiest Americans in that extension will be a touchy issue ... Current spending authority ends Dec. 3, and unless Congress acts, non-essential government functions could shut down ... More contentious could be the bid to continue certain unemployment benefits that expire on Nov. 30 ..."
TAKE ACTION: Campaign for America's Future & CREDO partner in Bush tax cut petition: "There is very little that so clearly demonstrates the callous venality of some members of Congress than the simultaneous demand to give Paris Hilton a tax cut while pushing benefit cuts to Social Security. Tell Congress: Don't extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy."
Dem senators float tax cut compromises. NYT: "Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York proposed limiting an extension of the Bush tax cuts to incomes below $1 million instead of $250,000. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia would keep the lower income cutoff and use roughly $65 billion, the amount that would be saved by not extending the rates for higher income for two years, to cut taxes further for small businesses."
Baseline Scenario's James Kwak makes the case against a Bush tax cut compromise: "...Is it better to extend the tax cuts for everyone or for no one? The answer is to extend them for no one. The Bush tax cuts have always overwhelmingly benefited the rich ... They were bad policy then and they are bad policy today ... It is true that tax increases would have a modest first-order negative impact on economic growth. But that impact will be small (per dollar of net fiscal impact) for exactly the same reasons that tax cuts are a poor stimulus ... Letting the tax cuts expire will eliminate $3.7 trillion from the projected national debt with one stroke. Why does this help the middle class? Because Social Security and Medicare are currently under assault."
W. Post's E.J. Dionne urges White House to hold the line on the Bush tax cuts: "Imagine a Congress that their party still controls passing an extension of the Bush tax cuts for millionaires but leaving the unemployed in the cold. If this happens, laugh out loud the next time a Democrat claims to be on the side of working people."
Is Dick Armey the Tea Party power behind the new throne? NYT: "... Mr. Armey has been operating like something of a shadow majority leader — eight years after he left Congress ... After election day, Mr. Armey sent a memo to every Republican in Congress, outlining a strategy for repealing the health care legislation, and guidelines for legislation Republicans could offer in its place. He weighed in on leadership elections. He has even rehired his policy adviser from his Congressional days to help shape a legislative agenda."
Some talk of filibuster reform in new Senate, but no firm decisions. W. Post: "Reid told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow in late October that he would seek changes to the filibuster rule, but Durbin said in an interview last week: 'We have not decided what to do ... what will our Republican colleagues join us in doing?' The GOP response has been cool, but not uniformly so. Sen.-elect Dan Coats of Indiana .. told Fox News on Nov. 6 that the filibuster 'is a barrier.'"
Jobless Ignored As Deficit Hysterics Command Spotlight
Robert Kuttner rips Simpson-Bowles, and NYT's David Leonhardt, for ignoring job creation while pushing deficit reduction: " ... the recommendations of the two co-chairs of the fiscal commission would make the prolonged stagnation worse, by commencing belt-tightening less than a year from now ... when most economic forecasts say unemployment will still be around ten percent ... Sunday's Times compounded the sin, in front page piece of the News in Review section by economics writer David Leonhardt, inviting the reader to fix the deficit projected in the year 2030! ... Instead of that exercise, how about one where readers explore choices on how to get a recovery going. How to resolve the foreclosure mess? What kind of social investment to put into 21st century infrastructure?"
NYT's Peter Orszag tells progressives they should like the Simpson-Bowles Social Security cuts: "Although the plan leans too much on future benefit reductions and not enough on revenue increases, it still offers a good starting point for reform ... A reasonable objective would be a 50-50 balance between changes in benefits and changes in revenues. But the way to bring reform into better proportion is to adjust the components of this proposal, not to fundamentally remodel it."
Reuters' Felix Salmon expresses some support for the Simpson-Bowles repeal of the mortgage interest tax deduction: "I’d love to see some numbers on just what proportion of the middle class takes advantage of this deduction. And why it makes sense that $131 billion should be directed to that particular subset of the middle class, rather than to everybody on a similar income."
Economist View's Mark Thoma criticizes Simpson-Bowles for rejecting a financial transaction tax: "It would raise substantial revenue and has desirable properties in terms of cooling speculative money flows. I guess the problem is that the tax falls largely on the wrong people -- those who can afford to pay it."
Oklahoma's right-wing Senators on opposite sides of earmark debate. Politico: "The clash between the two outspoken senators highlights the different generations from which they hail: Inhofe, an old-school legislator who sees earmarking as a prerogative of Congress, and the younger Coburn, who views earmarks as a symbol of what’s wrong with Washington ... The battle over banning earmarks comes to a head Tuesday afternoon when the Senate Republican Conference votes on whether GOP senators should give up funding their parochial projects for two years."
Matt Yglesias says no one should be surprised by liberal opposition to Simpson-Bowles:: "...what are liberals supposed to think? It’s a proposal hashed out between a conservative Republican and a moderate Democrat. So of course liberals don’t like it. Imagine the conservative reaction to a deficit proposal written by Lincoln Chaffee and Russ Feingold."
Spoiling For A Health Care Fight
"Republicans are spoiling for a healthcare fight" reports LAT: "GOP leaders have indicated they intend to do more when they control the flow of legislation in the House next year, with likely votes to defund the law and excise controversial parts such as cuts in Medicare spending and a new mandate requiring Americans to get health insurance."
Texas health experts appalled at conservative plan to quit Medicaid. Fort Worth Star-Telegram: "[Many] fear that opting out of Medicaid could reduce healthcare access just as the growing population demands the opposite. Moreover, experts worry that shutting the door on billions of federal dollars could hurt the economy and force already hard-pressed local governments to shoulder more of the load in providing indigent healthcare."
Breakfast Sides
Small businesses may be picking up job pace. Bloomberg: "The Russell 2000 Index, which tracks the small-cap segment of U.S. equity markets, has risen 19.5 percent since August 31 ... Small-business sentiment also is healing, according to the optimism index of the National Federation of Independent Business ... One source of relief for small companies is the thaw in lending ... Fed officials have held more than 40 meetings this year to try to reverse the drop in credit ..."
Republicans try to derail Obama nominee to the Fed on geographical technicality. Bloomberg: "Nobel laureate Peter Diamond ... whose nomination will come before the Senate Banking Committee tomorrow for a second time [is] at risk of being tripped up by a provision that no two board members may be from the same Federal Reserve district ... The White House says Diamond, who was born in New York and lives in Massachusetts, is from the Fed’s Chicago region because the Boston district is taken by another governor ... Diamond has taught and lectured at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois ... U.S. presidents have stretched [the] provision in various ways to get their candidates onto the Fed board, and senators have acquiesced."
Conservative NJ Gov. Chris Christie bypassing legislature to privatize environmental agency and more. Stateline: "Without fanfare, the DEP issued a request for proposals (RFP) from contractors to take over parts of the state’s land-use permitting process. Critics say the DEP appeared ready to let a private sector company decide when developers can build near wetlands or other lands protected by state law ... Christie’s task force has put 40 programs up for consideration, and Democratic lawmakers have been surprised to learn that the executive branch can privatize many of them without legislative approval."
Robert Reich argues both China and U.S. failed to make the G-20 summit a success: "China and the U.S. are the only big players in the currency game. And with neither of them stepping up to bat, the game is in dangerous territory ... In the U.S., more and more income is concentrating at the top, thereby reducing the relative purchasing power of the vast American middle class. That means more pressure on exports to fill the gap. In China, more and more income is going to the productive sector of its huge economy rather than to Chinese consumers, thereby reducing the relative purchasing power of the Chinese relative to what the nation is producing. That means more pressure on exports to fill the gap."
