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: Social Security Fight Is Not Over
OurFuture.org's Richard Eskow: "Whatever the President says about Social Security in his State of the Union speech, the push to cut it will continue. A great deal of time, effort, and money has been expended to make sure that it does, and to promote a very limited set of policies for reducing retirement benefits. The centerpiece of those proposals is a plan to raise the retirement age to age 69 by 2075 ... There are many reasons why this solution won't work, and here are eight of them..."
SOTU Expected To Push Investment In Jobs, Not Social Security Cuts
Social Security cuts appear off the table for the SOTU, but other moves trouble Robert Kuttner: "Obama has gestured right by appointing centrists to top positions and embracing a pro-business rhetoric decrying regulatory excess, but ... the President's State of the Union Address will be better than some progressives feared. They can take some credit for warning him off Social Security cuts. And good for Obama for calling for more public investment and letting Republicans jeer, revealing the emptiness of the Republican recovery program. When he finishes, Rep. Paul Ryan, chair of the House Budget Committee, will give the Republican response. Let's hope we don't feel that someone should get equal time to give a Democratic response."
NYT's Paul Krugman argues President shouldn't connect jobs crisis to America's "competitiveness": "...ultimately, we’re in a mess because we had a financial crisis, not because American companies have lost their ability to compete with foreign rivals ... if the president does propose a serious increase in spending on infrastructure and education, I’ll be pleased. But even if he proposes good policies, the fact that Mr. Obama feels the need to wrap these policies in bad metaphors is a sad commentary ... The financial crisis of 2008 was a teachable moment, an object lesson in what can go wrong if you trust a market economy to regulate itself."
Robert Reich urges President to properly define "American competitiveness": "[Corporate] profitability has little or nothing to do with the number and quality of jobs here in the US ... the president must not be seduced into believing -- and must not allow the public to be similarly seduced into thinking -- that the well-being of American business is synonymous with the well-being of Americans."
Fed expected to stick with bond-buying program to support job growth. NYT: "The statement it will issue on Wednesday, according to people familiar with the private deliberations of Fed officials, is likely to reflect a guarded optimism about the economy, while also maintaining the Fed strategy announced last November ... Noisy and harsh dissents now seem less likely ..."
GOP Suffers Rift As It Prepares To Battle Public Investment
GOP leaders criticize President's expected focus. NYT: "[Senate Min. Leader Mitch] McConnell tartly ridiculed that plan as a camouflage for spending. 'With all due respect to our Democratic friends, any time they want to spend, they call it investment, so I think you will hear the president talk about investing a lot Tuesday night.'"
House to vote on immediate, severe cuts to government services today, causing intra-party friction. W. Post: "The resolution on the House floor Monday would instruct [House Budget Cmte Chair Paul] Ryan to cut non-defense spending immediately to 2008 levels, a demand that would require slashing 30 percent from most agency budgets over the next seven months. Ryan and other veteran Republicans have called that goal too ambitious ... At the same time, the Republican Study Committee, a conservative bloc that includes most of the House Republican conference, is pressing House leaders to trim spending back to 2006 levels starting next year, [which] would require all agencies other than the Pentagon to slash spending by more than 40 percent by 2021..."
Time's Alex Altman questions conservative GOP strategy of proposing specific, draconian cuts to government services: "...many of the folks who trumpet belt-tightening measures may balk when they learn it means sacrificing services most people see as valuable — from highway funding and Pell Grants to medical research and education funding ... Other items could wreak chaos on a fragile economy, including a repeal of Medicaid assistance to cash-strapped states and the privatization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which would introduce further turbulence to an already shaky housing market ... Tea Party leaders, many of whom are already frustrated by the chasm between rhetoric about spending cuts and reality, may be primed for a disappointment."
SOTU responder Rep. Ryan has all sorts of disastrous ideas. TNR's Noam Scheiber: "We've all heard that Republican ideas man Paul Ryan ... has some deep thoughts on how to save the country from fiscal ruin. (Though, alas, not everyone understands that these ideas are spectacularly vague and substantively dodgy.) Less well known is that Ryan has some equally dodgy ideas about monetary policy."
GOP tries to bluff better over debt ceiling vote. CQ: "After months of uncertainty and some conflicting statements, House Republicans appeared to agree on a common message on the debt limit ... Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said Republicans are 'simply not going to accept an increase in the debt limit without serious cuts and reforms.' ... Still, it’s unclear just how far Republicans are willing to take this strategy ... Cantor stopped short of tying any specific spending goal to the debt-limit vote."
Senate GOP Still Wants Repeal Vote
Senate GOP still pushing health reform repeal, Dems say bring it on: "[Sen. Chuck Schumer said,] 'we will require them to vote on the individual protections in the bill that are very popular and that even some of the new Republican House members have said they support.'"
GOP doesn't intend to try to cover as many uninsured people as the current health reform law. Politico: "The closest model to what Republicans are suggesting now — a substitute plan they offered in the House in November 2009 — would have covered just 3 million of the [50 million] uninsured ... Republicans are betting the public is so turned off by what it sees as a massive government overreach that it won’t care."
Conservative health reform backed by Sen. John McCain would have covered less people at almost twice the cost, at least. TNR's Jonathan Cohn: "...it's actually worse than that. I took the 2016 figures for the Affordable Care Act but used a 2008 figure for the McCain plan. That means I didn't even account for the effect of health care inflation over the intervening eight years, an effect that would have made the McCain plan even more expensive ... all of this assumes that the estimate of McCain's plan cited by [W. Post's Jennifer] Rubin was accurate."
Arizona wants federal government waiver to make it harder for poor to get coverage through Medicaid. W. Post: "...Arizona is the first state to, in effect, play chicken with the Obama administration by directly requesting a reprieve and daring Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to refuse ... Beginning in 2014, the health-care law will require states to open eligibility to all individuals who earn up to 133 percent of the poverty level - with the federal government covering the lion's share of the extra cost ... The waiver Brewer is seeking would effectively push out all 250,000 childless adults on Medicaid. An additional 30,000 parents whose incomes are above 50 percent of the poverty line would also lose their coverage."
Most states challenging constitutionality of health reform, are preparing to implement health reform. AP: "States have to be ready to take on major responsibilities when the coverage expansion gets going in 2014. If not, the federal government will come in and run things ... If state officials are unsure about the Medicaid expansion, they're intrigued about what they might be able to do with the new insurance markets, known as exchanges ... Nearly every state has applied for an initial round of federal planning grants to explore how to design the markets."
SEC Proposes New Stockbroker Standard
SEC recommends stronger oversight of stockbrokers to put consumer interests first. NYT: "Investment advisers and stockbrokers should be subject to the same fiduciary standard of conduct — putting a customer’s interests above their own ... retail investors 'generally are not aware' that stockbrokers and their firms are subject to a lesser legal standard, one that requires brokers to make sure the products that they sell are suitable for their clients ... Wall Street groups and investor advocates generally applauded the recommendations..."
Fannie and Freddie spent taxpayer money on legal bills. NYT: "The bulk of those expenditures — $132 million — went to defend Fannie Mae and its officials in various securities suits and government investigations into accounting irregularities that occurred years before the subprime lending crisis erupted. The legal payments show no sign of abating."
Scalia Drinks The Tea
Justice Scalia to address Tea Party caucus today. NYT: "Critics ... have said the arrangement could raise the specter of collusion between conservatives members of the Court and Congress, and lead to further political polarization of the Court ... Justice Scalia’s appearance, [Prof. Jonathan Turley] said, magnifies a larger problem of justices entering the public debate over the law at the expense of judicial neutrality."
USA Today adds: "...interactions between justices and the two elected branches have become more politicized ... Court scholars say the trend could lead to public doubts about the ability of judges to be impartial and above politics..."
