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.
MORNING MESSAGE: How About A Summit With The Unemployed?
OurFuture.org's Dave Johnson: "President Obama is holding a 'summit' with 20 or so CEOs Wednesday, 'to ease strained relations with business.' ... The business news reports I've been reading don't reflect a 'strain' at all. A recent NY Times story: 'Corporate Profits Were the Highest on Record Last Quarter' ... how about holding a summit with the unemployed, and taking their suggestions? This might 'ease strained relations' between the unemployed and the country's leaders and their policies."
Key Senate Vote On Tax Cut Deal Today
Senate expected to advance tax cut deal in procedural vote today. W. Post: "...the latest tallies by party leaders suggest that the Obama-GOP package will clear the Senate with relative ease ..."
House may hold separate vote on estate tax provision before considering full tax cut compromise. USA Today: "Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., a member of the party's House leadership, said there may be an effort to rework that provision, possibly with a separate test vote on whether lawmakers want to extend estate tax relief to the wealthiest Americans. He added, however, that the provision isn't necessarily a deal killer. 'We're not going to hold this thing up at the end of the day,' Van Hollen said. As House Democrats sound more as if they believe the bill will pass, White House officials are increasingly optimistic."
Additional energy tax incentives not enough to persuade critical congresspeople. Time: "[Dem Rep. Peter Welch] believes adding 'Christmas-tree ornaments' to the package 'erodes support and feeds public cynicism.' ... Represetative Jay Inslee, a Washington State Democrat, said the new package was 'a pathetic attempt and in no way moves me any closer to supporting it.'"
NYT describes compromise as boon to "middle- and upper-middle-income Americans — precisely the demographic that felt neglected the last two years...": "The single most expensive component of the package — other than the continuation of all of the marginal rates — is a two-year adjustment of the alternative minimum tax ... Middle- and upper-middle-income Americans will also benefit most from the one-year payroll tax cut ... And other provisions that benefit the middle class have gotten virtually no attention, including a temporary repeal of a limit on itemized deductions and repeal of the phaseout for personal exemptions."
NYT's Paul Krugman argues the stimulus in the tax compromise is not enough: "The idea that the economic engine is going to catch ... any day now encourages policy makers to settle for sloppy, short-term measures when the economy really needs well-designed, sustained support ... government spending needs to be sustained: we’re not talking about a brief burst of aid ... The actual stimulus ... comes from the other measures, mainly unemployment benefits and the payroll tax break. And these measures (a) won’t make more than a modest dent in unemployment and (b) will fade out quickly, with the good stuff going away at the end of 2011."
Robert Kuttner worries tax cut deal will expedite a Social Security cave-in: "Because the Congressional Budget Office assumed that all the Bush tax cuts would expire on December 31, 2010, the tax-cut deal creates a new budgetary reality. Suddenly, the ten-year deficit will be almost $900 billion larger than projected. This, in turn, will give new ammunition to the deficit hawks. And here is where Obama has set up Social Security to take the hit, unless he drastically shifts ground ... Obama also signaled Democrats in Congress that he might well include Social Security cuts as part of a grand deficit-reduction deal. If that occurs, the civil war in the Democratic Party will only deepen."
Breakfast Sides
The DREAM is not dead, reports The Hill: "When House Democrats last week passed the DREAM Act before the Senate had staged its vote, the timing was no accident. Instead, the chronology was part of a carefully designed strategy ... to grant the proposal its greatest shot at success ... had the Senate voted first, the bill likely would have failed, and the House would have lost its appetite to stage a vote at all ..."
GOP blocks repeal of small biz tax compliance measure in health care law. Politico: "Democrats thought they saw a path forward with the tax-cut legislation: attach 1099 repeal to the larger, Republican-supported bill and settle the matter once and for all But Republicans ... nixed the idea. 'For all their talk about small businesses, it was stunning to see Republicans walk away from them when they had a chance to actually help,' a Democratic Congressional aide tells POLITICO ... both parties, and both chambers of Congress, have played politics with the repeal, offering amendments or bills paid for with provisions they knew the other party would never accept."
Corporation whine, and lobby, over next phase of health reform implementation: "...Borders is also figuring out how to respond to the difference between how the law defines full-time and how Borders does. Borders considers employees who work 32 hours per week full-time, but under the new federal health law, employees who work 30 or more hours would be considered full-time. Under that definition, Borders would have to cover more employees on its more expensive health-care plan ... Borders is a member of the National Retail Federation and other groups that lobby on the company's behalf, and hopes those efforts will yield some concessions..."
Time's Bryan Walsh offers five lessons from the just completed international climate summit: "Multilateralism Isn't Quite Dead Yet ... China Can Negotiate ... You Needed the Shock of Copenhagen to Get Compromise in Cancun ... Forests Will Be the Low-Hanging Fruit ... Don't Get Carried Away ..."
Dog bites man. Public hates Wall Street bonuses. Bloomberg: "More than 70 percent of Americans say big bonuses should be banned this year at Wall Street firms that took taxpayer bailouts..."
Build America Bonds going fast as deadline looms. Bloomberg: "Issuers from across the U.S. are moving up planned Build America Bond sales to this month, making the quarter the biggest yet for the program, which is set to expire Dec. 31 if Congress doesn’t extend it ... President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans left the program out of a tax deal they reached last week, hastening issuers to market."
W. Post's E.J. Dionne urges the President to offer a Reagan-style "morning in America" vision: "Obama sprinkles his rhetoric with talk about competing and winning in the 21st century, and he often suggests that China is taking initiatives (in energy, mass transit and education, for example) that we are not. What's lacking is a coherent call for reform and restoration that is unapologetically patriotic and challenging. He needs his own narrative about American exceptionalism. It would not pretend that the United States can occupy exactly the same position it enjoyed before China's rise. But his vision would insist that it is not our country's fate to be another of history's global powers that looked on helplessly as its influence and living standards declined."
