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: Issa Goes Hollywood
OurFuture.org's Richard Eskow: "Nobody can investigate hundreds of topics meaningfully or effectively. But that's not the point. The goal of these investigations will be to help his party and serve his corporate cronies - and, of course, to get his name in the headlines. In fact, Darrell's already gone Hollywood. Videos on his website already have a Committee logo, as if he were a movie star and the mogul who runs the studio ... Issa's also turned the Committee's website into an advertisement for his own party, with a banner across that top that reads 'Committee on Oversight and Government Reform: Republicans' and a tab underneath it that reads 'GOP Watchdogs.' ... Issa's abuse of this site would be illegal if this were a mailing, rather than a website, since taxpayer-funding mailings 'may not be used to solicit votes or contributions (or) to send mail regarding political campaigns or political parties ...'"
Hypocrisy Marks Beginning Of GOP House Rule
W. Post's Dana Milbank details all the House GOP hypocrisies so far: "For two years, Cantor and his colleagues campaigned against high deficits. Now, in the new majority's first major act, they plan to vote to increase the deficit by $143 billion as part of a repeal of health-care reform. For two years, Cantor and his colleagues bemoaned the Democrats' abuse of House rules ... Republicans will employ the very same abuses as they attempt the repeal. For two years, the Republicans complained about unrelenting Democratic partisanship. Now they're planning no fewer than 10 investigations of the Obama administration ... For two years, the Republican minority vowed to return power to the people. Now the House Republican majority is asking lobbyists which regulations to repeal..."
House GOP breaks another pledge, flinches from cutting $100B this year. NYT: "... Republican leaders are scaling back that number by as much as half, aides say ... Now aides say that the $100 billion figure was hypothetical, and that the objective is to get annual spending for programs other than those for the military, veterans and domestic security back to the levels of 2008 ... Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said, '...it’s easy to talk about these things in the abstract. It’s another thing when you start taking away people’s college loans and Pell Grants or cutting early education programs.'"
House GOP may try to pass another "continuing resolution" keeping spending levels roughly where they are now, risking Tea Party ire. The Hill: "The continuing resolution to fund the government runs out on March 4 ... House lawmakers are in session for only nine days in February and three days in March, which is when the bulk of the work on a 2011 spending bill would likely happen ... 'I don’t see how it is all going to get done,' one aide said of the work that lies ahead. 'I think a CR combined with a rescission package is the most likely option.' ... Simply extending the current CR ... is an unsavory option for Republicans, since they’ll need the support of their own members — many elected on a platform of cutting government spending — to pass it."
NYT sees Speaker Boehner struggling to tame the Tea Party caucus: "'...gee whiz, it is not going to be easy,' [GOP Sen. Saxby] Chambliss added. 'We have a bunch of those House guys who are really on fire.' ... despite promises to run a more open House, Republicans are racing to overturn the health care law without hearings, without allowing floor amendments and without worrying about its impact on the federal deficit."
Dems respond to GOP Rep. Darrell Issa inviting corporate lobbyists to propose ways to weaken regulations. NYT: "'This is even more evidence that House Republicans are in the business of protecting corporate special interests instead of creating middle-income jobs,' the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said in a statement."
Michael Tomasky argues we're about to relearn that the GOP is "good at theatre, dreadful at governing": "... Republicans now have to govern. They have to do things like make a budget. And not just a fake budget, like in a campaign. A real budget, that adds up, more or less. They have to negotiate with a Senate still in Democratic hands over the final shape of appropriations to the various federal agencies. All that sounds suspiciously like hard work. And Washington Republicans, for all their thumpety-thump rhetoric about hard work and personal initiative and so on, are largely lazy and unserious people. They won't do the work, and in two years, it will show."
Blue Dog Dem Rep. Heath Shuler will vote for himself for Speaker instead of Pelosi. McClatchy: "The election decimated the membership of the moderate Blue Dog Coalition, of which Shuler is now co-chairman, and saw significant damage among Southern Democrats from Virginia to Texas."
NYT's Matt Bai questions the Tea Party mandate: "...sizable majorities of voters were against, say, revoking the home interest mortgage deduction ... or raising the Social Security retirement age, or scaling back federal financing for education or road building ... while voters endorsed the Tea Party ideal of a radically more parsimonious federal government, they haven’t yet gotten their heads around the excruciating choices it entails — or even the relatively easy ones. And that’s not really much of a mandate, when you think about it."
GOP Supports "NoCare" Bill
Dems slam health care repeal bill as "NoCare." Politico: "'The Republicans’ NoCare plan would raise the number of uninsured by 32 million, balloon the deficit, raise health care costs for seniors, and raise taxes on small businesses that provide health care for their employees,' said Rep. Pete Stark (D-Cailf.) ... 'No wonder they want to skirt their own rules to jam this bill through.'"
The White House need not fear GOP attempts to defund health reform, argues Health Affairs' Melissa Seeley: "The pillars of the law’s health insurance expansion strategy—increased eligibility for Medicaid and the new premium and cost-sharing subsidies for private health insurance—are exempt from the annual appropriations process ... the Department of Health and Human Services has the ability to fund related provisions without seeking additional appropriations ... The Obama Administration already has much of the funding it needs to carry out the main elements of reform, and this funding will not likely come under serious threat."
But Wonk Room's Igor Volsky notes: "All of this is true, but it’s unclear what happens after the current CR expires in March or if Republicans try to shut down the government over the debt ceiling vote."
TNR's Jonathan Cohn debunks the latest "death panel" smear: "Last month, the Food and Drug Administration announced that it was withdrawing approval of the drug [Avastin] for treatment of late stage breast cancer ... Breitbart's 'Big Government' deems it 'the result of ObamaCare' and its determination 'to ration care to the sick and elderly.' ... You wouldn't know it from the commentary, but the FDA has been rejecting drugs without proven benefits and with such serious side effects since long before the phrase 'Obamacare' was even part of the political lexicon."
States moving ahead on health care reform, ignoring repeal vote. Politico: "Governors who ran on strong anti-health-reform platforms now find themselves walking a tightrope, publicly opposing the law while, recognizing the law of the land — and the federal funding that’s on the table for states — moving forward on implementation."
Conrad Pushes Simpson-Bowles Vote This Year
Sen. Kent Conrad urges enactment of Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan this year in Politico oped.
DKos' Joan McCarter says Social Security supporters have good reason to fear a back-room deal: "There's precedent for this fear. The health insurance reform deals with for-profit hospitals and with pharmaceutical companies, the tax-cut deal that actually does jeopardize Social Security provide good reason to fear back-room dealmaking with this President. ... Given Social Security's foundational importance to the economic security of most of America, any changes to it have to be done in the open, with accountability from our President and our members of Congress."
GOP Flip-Flops On Abolishing Fannie/Freddie
After GOP insistence to abolish Fannie and Freddie, no reform is expected this year. The Hill: "The effort to reform Fannie and Freddie, which back the vast majority of the nation’s mortgages, is simply too large to tackle quickly, housing experts say ... a GOP aide said the party is willing to slow a wind-down of Fannie and Freddie to accommodate market conditions ... While in the minority, Republicans pushed fast-acting legislation that would begin winding down the government-sponsored enterprises ... in as little as two years, with the goal being full liquidation after five years."
Fed plan would assist predatory lenders. HuffPost's Zach Carter: "Under the Fed's new proposal ... borrowers would be required to pay off the balance of the loan before the bank loses its right to foreclose -- that means borrowers could still lose their homes, even in cases where banks have broken the law ... Six Democratic senators, led by Sherrod Brown of Ohio, also urged the Fed to reconsider its rule in a Monday letter ..."
Banks bringing on the fees. WSJ: "As regulation curtailing financial institutions from levying certain charges on consumers has mounted over the past year, banks have had to dream up new fees to replace those now trimmed by laws. Credit-card users have experienced new inactivity fees and foreign-exchange charges, while checking accounts have gotten hit with new monthly maintenance fees ... they also are looking at new ways to make money on cash machines and especially debit cards..."
No Signs Of Fed Letting Up
Fed won't pull back until unemployment drops. Bloomberg: "Federal Reserve officials signaled they’ll probably push ahead with unprecedented stimulus until the recovery strengthens and many of the 15 million unemployed Americans find work ..."
W. Post's Harold Meyerson argues corporate institutions must be reformed to bring back prosperity: "Those who believe our downturn is cyclical argue that job-creating public spending can restore us to prosperity, while those who believe it's structural - that we have too many carpenters, say, and not enough nurses - believe that we should leave things be while American workers acquire new skills and enter different lines of work. But there's a third way to look at the recession: that it's institutional, that it's the consequence of the decisions by leading banks and corporations to stop investing in the job-creating enterprises that were the key to broadly shared prosperity."
At FT, Joseph Stiglitz writes that globalization may be facing a global reversal: "2011 will be a hard year for globalisation. 2008 showed that our global era can bring faster growth, but faster declines too – as a crisis made in America spread quickly. 2009 saw the benefits of a global response, but in 2010 divisions returned. Asian growth bounced back, but advanced countries were mired in high unemployment. 2011 will see further divergences. In spite of evidence that Keynesian policies worked (China being the pre-eminent case) and austerity led to predictable contractions, much of Europe is pushing austerity anyway ... Globalisation’s cheerleaders will thus face an increasingly hard time, as the boom in Asia is seen to come at the expense of jobs elsewhere."
WH Staff Changes Imminent
Laura Flanders sees the possible WH hiring of William Daley as bad news for trade: "Daley was Clinton's NAFTA czar ... Now there's a new trade deal, with Korea, hovering over Congress, and despite opposition from a trans-partisan coalition that runs from Rep. Ron Paul to Sen. Sherrod Brown, it looks like Obama's turning to an expert to ram it through."
Ezra Klein dismisses focus on WH staff changes: "If the administration wants more support from the business community, that's going to mean giving the business community more things that it wants, or at least fewer things that it doesn't want. So far, that's not happened because the administration has thought that good policy meant pushing some high-profile changes -- such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- that the business community really didn't like. If the administration decided it was wrong about that ... it can build a better relationship with the business community even without [Bill] Daley. Conversely, if the administration plans to keep pushing policy it likes even if business doesn't like it, then relations with corporate America will be icy even if Daley is working the phones..."
