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: Harry's Fight Is Social Security
OurFuture.org's Richard Eskow: "One group of Senators is determined to cut Social Security benefits. Another is equally determined to stop them. And nearly two-thirds of the Senate signed a letter that took a clear stand in favor of ... well, it's not exactly clear what they want. Now Harry Reid is stepping into the ring. ... He will appear at a 'Protect Social Security Press Event' on Monday to kick off his efforts. In response, citizens' groups are offering support with actions like the 'Support Social Security Call-In Day,' which is scheduled for Monday and Tuesday. Reid's Social Security stance is striking in its Shermanesque clarity ... while others make vague declarations, Reid's position seems clear: No cuts."
Countdown To Shutdown
No signs of deal to avert shutdown. Time: "House Republicans are hewing to the $61 billion in spending reductions the chamber supported earlier this year ... Senate Democrats have reportedly countered with up to $20 billion, on top of the $10 billion the two sides [already] lopped off ... a band of House conservatives are insisting that any budget blueprint include ... provisions [to] de-fund the health-care reform law and Planned Parenthood [as well as] gut the EPA and the FCC's new net-neutrality rule ... For many Democrats, these riders are non-starters."
Negotiations broke down Friday. AP: "The frustration boiled over on Friday, with Republicans criticizing Democrats for not presenting significant cuts. An offer a few days earlier had ponied up just another $10 billion or so, GOP officials said ... . That prompted Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to accuse Republicans of blowing up a near agreement on a 'top line' of spending cuts that would have likely given Republicans more than half of their $60 billion-plus in reductions."
House Republicans prepare to cut Social Security and Medicare, but try to reassure seniors. AP: "[Florida Rep. Allen] West and many other Republicans say current and soon-to-be retirees should see no benefit cuts. Their calls for changing Medicare and Social Security often lack specifics, and it's unclear whether the divided Congress will tackle the programs' long-term problems or postpone action ... West's desire to slash spending seems to stop at his district's doorstep. The Coral Springs audience cheered loudly when he said he helped secure a $21 million grant for a new runway at the nearby Fort Lauderdale airport."
Joseph Stiglitz explains why he didn't join other former presidential economic advisers pushing Simpson-Bowles as a starting point for deficit deal: "I believe the Bowles Simpson recommendations represent, to too large an extent, a set of unprincipled political compromises that would lead to a weaker America — with slower growth and a more divided society."
Libya conflict may slow momentum for military spending cuts, suggests Politico: "The airstrikes are already being used by some in the Republican establishment to blunt momentum in favor of the cuts, long considered heretical in a town in which defense contractors constitute a formidable lobby and members of Congress view the Pentagon budget as a jobs program and fear being tagged as unpatriotic."
State Cuts Causing Headaches For Governors
Conservative governors facing backlash. Politico: "Almost every governor who’s tried to start that kind of take-your-medicine debate has paid the price. And widespread polling data suggests a chasm between what Americans say they want and the price they’re prepared to pay to get there."
NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo strikes budget deal to cut taxes on wealthy, and cut health care and education spending. NYT: "Seeking to avoid the blistering attack ads from labor unions and hospitals ... Mr. Cuomo also persuaded the state’s most powerful health care interests to draft a side deal with him [including] concessions that would not directly affect the budget, like a 'living wage' law for home care workers ... Advocates for increased school aid were livid over the deal, suggesting that Mr. Cuomo’s cuts — and his refusal to consider a 'millionaires’ tax' to offset those cuts — would hurt students."
Several states consider raising taxes on working poor. Stateline: "...a growing number of states [are targeting] their earned income tax credits. Those credits are patterned after a federal program of the same name that supporters say reduces poverty and encourages work. State policymakers in Kansas, North Carolina and Wisconsin are among the 23 states with EITCs that are considering scaling back those programs ... the people who qualify for the benefit usually come from working families with children. Their annual incomes are below about $36,000 to $49,000,"
Maine Gov. LePage claims he is unable to tax the rich. Bangor Daily News: "A talk to a University of Maine at Farmington class by Maine Gov. Paul LePage on Thursday was interrupted by a heckler yelling for LePage to 'tax the rich,' leading the governor to retort, 'I would love to tax the rich if we had any in Maine.'"
More Profits, Fewer Jobs
Corporations still hesitant to hire despite big profits. McClatchy: "Over the past six months, the economy has gathered steam, and demand is picking up ... but the bigger part of the story remains workforce reductions, technological advances, low lending costs and minimal borrowing. All have combined to give companies unusual control over their balance sheets, and thus their profits."
Simon Johnson rebuts Alan Greenspan's claim that less government would mean more hiring. Bloomberg oped: "” If only, he says, the government would back off, firms would become more willing to use their cash hoards to increase investment spending and hiring. But Greenspan today ignores the more brutal reality: We are still experiencing the aftermath of a major financial crisis ... . The recovery is similar to those following almost all financial crises: When part of the financial system fails, the rest comes back only through active resuscitation."
"End Tax Breaks for Profitable Corporations" says Sen. Bernie Sanders: "At a time when we have a $14.2 trillion national debt and a $1.6 trillion federal deficit, it is unacceptable that Exxon Mobil, General Electric, Bank of America, Chevron, Boeing, and other large, profitable corporations are not only avoiding paying any federal income taxes at all but have actually received huge refund checks from the IRS."
IRS steps up auditing of the ultra-rich. HuffPost: "... the federal government increased their audits of America's richest taxpayers -- those with incomes above $10 million -- by 75 percent last year. Nearly one in five -- 18.5 percent -- of America's richest households dealt with an audit. In 2009, the Global High Wealth Industry's first year of operation, the IRS audited only one in ten of America's richest taxpayers."
What Next For Manufacturing?
America still needs an industrial policy to revitalize manufacturing, says HuffPost's Robert Kuttner: "As energy and the cost of shipping become expensive, and production becomes more automated, the logic of production shifts back in favor of more domestic manufacturing. However, absent some kind of industrial policy, that will not be sufficient to bring back manufacturing jobs. Why? Because labor and transportation costs are not the only factors ... Higher environmental and labor standards in the US also make it attractive for multinational companies to outsource production to nations where workers not only have lower wages but no rights, and companies are freer to pollute."
NYT's Allison Arieff argues "The Future of Manufacturing is Local": "[Kate] Sofis, executive director of SFMade, is helping breathe new life into a forgotten potential economic driver: manufacturing. 'Manufacturing isn’t dead and doesn’t need to be preserved,' she says. 'Let’s stop fixating on what’s lost. Let’s see what we have here, what’s doing well, and let’s help those folks do better.' ... Both SFMade and its New York cousin, Made in N.Y.C., are increasingly able to share success stories of how manufacturing has developed new models for doing business in the 21st century. The monolithic single-industry model has evolved as manufacturers see the benefits of being smaller and paying attention to how patterns of consumption, ownership and use are shifting."
Conservative seek to tag WH transit policy, "ObamaRail" reports The Hill.
Nuclear Industry Claims Safer Technology
Nuclear industry argues new plants are safer. W. Post: "With the renaissance of nuclear power at stake, the atomic industry faces the challenge of persuading an increasingly skeptical public that new reactors like the EPR units being built by French company Areva in Finland, France and China are not just safer than the old ones but are virtually disaster-proof ... Areva CEO Anne Lauvergeon has said an EPR plant would have survived the earthquake and tsunami without radiation leaks ... 'sheer arrogance,' said Mycle Schneider, an independent researcher on France’s nuclear industry. 'There’s no way we can say today that any plant in the world would have survived what happened in Japan,' he said."
NYT's Nancy Folbre argues that support for renewables is rising as nuclear power expansion is being questioned: "The cost per kilowatt hour of generating electricity from wind and solar power has declined steadily in recent years and is projected to decline further ... The cost of nuclear power, by contrast, has increased, even without factoring in the huge social costs imposed by accidents ... Can wind, water and solar power be scaled up in cost-effective ways to meet our energy demands, freeing us from dependence on both fossil fuels and nuclear power? Yes, they can, say two highly respected scientists..."
Breakfast Sides
Predicting what Justice Anthony Kennedy will do on health reform is impossible, says Kennedy expert Frank Colucci in TNR: "The question of the individual mandate’s constitutionality is closely tied to two competing values that Kennedy believes in deeply: a judicial duty to enforce limits on the federal government, and acceptance of a practical post-New Deal conception of the federal power to regulate a national economy. His record contains repeated defenses of both commitments, and when confronted with cases that pit them against each other, he often tries to have it both ways. With the mandate, though, Kennedy will have to choose."
Reuters' Felix Salmon worries that any foreclosure fraud settlement will be hard to enforce: "...if and when any settlement is announced, the first order of business will be to look very closely at the enforcement mechanisms built in to it. If there’s anything less than a dedicated watchdog devoted to holding banks’ feet to the fire in such matters — and which is able to take complaints directly from the public — then I fear that nothing much will happen in reality..."
Will Goldman Sachs have to sacrifice all of its proprietary trading under the Volcker Rule? Bloomberg: "Goldman Sachs already has shut two units that made bets with the company’s money because such proprietary trading by banks will be prohibited under the Volcker rule approved by Congress last year. Still, the Special Situations Group, known as SSG, continues to make investments ... The effort to defend it illustrates how important the business is to Goldman Sachs and may be a test of how flexible regulators will be in defining proprietary trading."
