Each morning, Bill Scher and Terrance Heath serve up what progressives need to effect change on the kitchen-table issues families face: jobs, health care, green energy, financial reform, affordable education and retirement security.
MORNING MESSAGE: Stand With Warren and Bair
OurFuture.org's Richard Eskow: " As Dave Clarke at Reuters reported, 'bankers guffawed and groaned' at [FDIC's Sheila] Bair when she told them they should support financial reform at a meeting of the American Bankers Association ... As Reuters reported, 'Audience members who complained about Dodd-Frank did not provide specific examples of what troubled them.' ... Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers were just as thuggish to Elizabeth Warren as the bankers were to Sheila Bair ... Warren more than held her own. But she deserved a little backup from the White House, and it was nowhere to be found ... Some well-targeted prosecutions, along with a strong defense of public champions like Bair and Warren, would be an enormous political boon. It would also be the right thing to do."
The Campaign To Smear Elizabeth Warren
NYT's Paul Krugman rips conservatives for their smear campaign against Elizabeth Warren: "The fact that she’s so well qualified is, of course, the reason she’s being attacked so fiercely. Nothing could be worse, from the point of view of bankers and the politicians who serve them, than to have consumers protected by someone who knows what she’s doing and has the personal credibility to stand up to pressure. The interesting question now is whether the Obama administration will see the war on Elizabeth Warren for what it is: a second chance to change public perceptions."
Naked Capitalism breaks with progressive defenders of Warren: "Have we heard zip from Warren, save when she’s been trotted out to serve as a punching bag for dyspeptic Congresscritters? She’s been effectively leashed and collared by being made an advisor and Treasury employee."
Geithner to decide how tough should foreign-exchange swaps be regulated under Wall St. reform law. W. Post: "The Dodd-Frank bill signed into law in July allows Geithner to decide whether the vast market in foreign-exchange swaps — a type of financial instrument that businesses often use to guard against fluctuations in foreign-exchange rates — should be subject to heightened regulations as other derivatives are ... the Dodd-Frank law requires that most swaps be traded on exchanges and be backed by clearinghouses that would ensure parties set aside enough collateral to pay off any bets that go bad ... Many financial companies argue that foreign-exchange swaps did not contribute to the financial crisis and that they are far less risky than other types of derivatives ..."
The American Prospect's Robert Kuttner expects Geithner to go easy on foreign-exchange swaps, creating a regulatory loophole: "... this loophole would invite traders to artificially bring foreign currencies into other derivatives transactions in order to avoid the scrutiny of Dodd-Frank. If the Wall Street-Geithner view prevails, Gensler's jurisdiction to protect the public from abuses in derivatives would effectively evaporate."
Debt Limit Crisis Fears Increase
NYT's John Harwood raises prospect budget stalemate will lead to debt limit crisis: "...United States might shake investor confidence by defaulting on its obligations ... if Congress fails to raise the federal debt limit once the current ceiling is reached sometime this spring. Leading Republicans say they will raise it only if Democrats accept more spending reductions ... A least-common-denominator outcome might yield targets for limiting spending and deficits as a proportion of the economy ... But even that possible fallback has not eased fears of stalemate."
Dem Sen. Joe Manchin threatens to vote against debt limit raise. The Hill quotes: "I will vote against raising the debt ceiling unless the vote is linked to a real budget plan that begins to fix our fiscal mess."
Hyped bipartisan Senate letter calling for deficit reduction deal actually meaningless, finds Capital Gains and Games' Stan Collender: "... all the letter from the 64 senators actually says [is, we're] in favor of reducing the deficit but either we're not going to tell you the specific ways it should be done or can't agree enough among ourselves to list how we think it should happen."
GOP budget cuts put child vaccinations at risk. Mother Jones' Suzy Khimm: "The House GOP's 2011 budget would chop $156 million from the Centers for Disease Control's funding for immunization and respiratory diseases [which would cut] state and local immunization programs ... Children of the working poor who don't qualify for Medicaid may have a harder time getting vaccinated against measles or the flu ..."
The states are not going to default on their bonds, but panicking about it will cause problems, notes Iris Lav in NYT oped: "...the fear of imminent defaults has led some politicians to call for a federal law allowing states to declare bankruptcy. That’s a solution in search of a problem that doesn’t exist — and a dangerous solution at that, since it likely would undermine investor confidence and thereby increase state borrowing costs for necessary capital improvements."
HuffPost's Ian Fletcher looks at the other deficit, the trade deficit, warning Washington to look at NAFTA's failure before approving more trade deals: "NAFTA was sold in Mexico as Mexico's ticket to the big time. Mexicans were told they were choosing between gradually converging with America's advanced economy and regressing to the status of a backwater like neighboring Guatemala. What actually happened? In reality, the income gap between the United States and Mexico grew (by over 10 percent) in the first decade of the agreement. This doesn't mean America boomed; we didn't. But Mexico slumped terribly."
One Year Of Health Reform. What's Next?
Many battles ahead in the second year of the health reform law implementation. The Hill: "Chief among the decisions taking shape over the next year is how much flexibility states will have to structure health insurance exchanges where individual and small-group plans will be offered, and how generous those plans will have to be."
W. Post sees mixed reviews for health reform after its first year: "Polls show that about 1 in 8 Americans believe they have been personally helped already, well before the main push to cover the uninsured scheduled for 2014 ... [In] Missouri, an insurance company’s campaign to get small businesses to sign up by taking advantage of new tax breaks has yielded mixed results. One of the chief promoters of the idea is Ron Rowe, an executive of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City. With some 150 previously uninsured businesses offering new coverage, his company’s efforts earned the praise of Obama administration officials. But Rowe says many business owners found the math didn’t work for them."
Sen. Tom Harkin rules out cutting funding for health reform. Politico: "...he shot down the idea that Senate Democrats might have to compromise with House Republicans on whether to block, or at least restrict, funding for the law ... 'These are riders that they're putting on the bill, and appropriations bills, we're not going to have any riders. So, that's just not going to happen. It won't be part of the deal,' Harkin said."
