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: On April 4, We Are One
OurFuture.org's Terrance Heath: "In his final speech, King used a biblical parable to urge his audience to practice a 'dangerous unselfishness' by supporting sanitation workers ... We need more dangerous unselfishness today. We saw it in Wisconsin, Ohio and other states, as non-union workers asked not just 'What will happen to me?' but 'What will happen to us?' We are seeing more of it in the We Are One events across the country today."
"We Are One" Rallies Across America Today
"We Are One" rallies today, and throughout the week. AFL-CIO's James Parks: "With all of next week as window for action, it’s not too late to plan an event. Click here to find an event near you. With all of next week as window for action, it’s not too late to plan an event. Click here for ideas you can use to stage your own event, here for resources and here to add an event to our We Are One calendar. (Follow the events and tell about yours on Twitter with the hashtag #april4)."
Rallies coincide with anniversary of MLK assassination. Robert Creamer remembers: "Martin Luther King was in Memphis to support the strike of the city's garbage collectors who were demanding the right of collective bargaining. He was there because the right to sit across a table and negotiate wages and working conditions gave otherwise powerless workers, the right to have a say. Then -- as now -- collective bargaining was, as the AFSCME banner said in the Wisconsin Capitol Rotunda, about freedom."
From MLK in Memphis, to the workers in Madison. See the video at OurFuture.org.
Shutdown Looms
No signs of final compromise. W. Post: "... leaders of both parties publicly staked out seemingly inflexible positions while staff members worked in private on a possible compromise ... neither side intends to officially announce a 'deal' on that plan. Instead ... the legislation will be presented to rank-and-file lawmakers to determine if there are enough votes to pass it ... Under new House Republican rules, any bill to be voted on Friday would have to be posted by Tuesday night ... Some House aides have floated the idea of breaking the 72-hour pledge ..."
GOP making compromise difficult by proposing more military spending. NYT: "Mr. Schumer said Democrats were urging Republicans to consider reducing some of the automatic annual spending in Agriculture, Treasury and Justice Department programs to reach a target of about $33 billion in cuts rather than insisting that it all come out of what is known in budget parlance as discretionary accounts. A Democrat involved in the negotiations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said alternative spending cuts from the White House and Senate Democrats would range up to $8 billion. But to the Democrats’ dismay, not only were Republicans resisting those cuts, they were also proposing more spending than the Pentagon wants for military and homeland security programs."
House GOP first-termers not monolithic. The Hill: "In many cases, the drive for deeper spending cuts has been led by veteran GOP conservatives such as Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Mike Pence of Indiana and Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. While some freshman lawmakers have veered closer to the Tea Party, many others have fully embraced the leadership’s strategy and message. Boehner’s repeated reminders about the limits of Republican power, for example, have seeped into their own talking points."
FT's Clive Crook chastises GOP congress for threatening economy with shutdown: "Monetary policy is about to move from expansionary to neutral ... Fiscal policy, properly measured, is moving abruptly from neutral to contractionary. To make matters worse, Republicans in Congress are playing an outrageous game of brinkmanship over the budget for the current fiscal year ... In short, with the US labour market at a turning point, whatever Congress can do to undermine confidence and add to uncertainty, it is doing."
Sen. Maj. Leader Reid says no compromise on EPA authority to cut carbon. AP quotes: "Neither the White House or the Senate leaders is going to accept any EPA riders."
IRS cracking down on wealthy tax cheats. WSJ: "About 18% of Americans earning at least $10 million were audited in fiscal 2010, up from 11% in fiscal 2009, according to the IRS. For those earning $500,000 to $1 million, the audit rate rose to 3.4% from 2.8%."
GOP Set To Propose Radical Budget
Bipartisan Senate group wants to cut deficit by $4 trillion. USA Today: "The best chance for bipartisan action on the debt could come later this year if a group of six senators working in private produces a plan to cut $4 trillion over the next decade that both Democrats and Republicans can support."
House GOP budget to be unveiled this plans to cut more than $4 trillion. USA Today: "Instead of using changeable spending caps as a percentage of the economy, the plan would use budget caps set by law on the portion of the federal budget that is negotiated by Congress and the president each year ... The plan would also lower federal tax rates ... he said the plan would change Medicare, the federal health care plan for seniors, by creating a 'premium support' system that allows seniors 'to pick the (private health) plan of their choosing, and then Medicare subsidizes that plan.'"
House GOP budget would break health care covenant with the American people, argues TNR's Jonathan Cohn: "The Republicans will propose to transform Medicare from a government-run program into what most people would call a voucher system. They will also propose to convert Medicaid from an entitlement to a block grant. ... The key question is whether the new scheme would make the same guarantee of comprehensive, affordable coverage that Medicare does. The answer would seem to be no. Princeton University economist Uwe Reinhardt [explained:] '...most of the risk of future health-care cost increases would be shifted onto the shoulders of Medicare beneficiaries. This feature makes the proposal radical.'"
Will President Obama challenge GOP budget, asks W. Post's E.J. Dionne: "The Ryan budget’s central purpose will not be deficit reduction but the gradual dismantling of key parts of government ... The coming week will test who he is. When Ryan releases his budget, will the president finally engage?"
BP Wants To Go Back In The Water
BP looks to resume deep-water drilling. W. Post: "BP is in talks with the Interior Department about permits that would allow it to resume deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, according to two sources familiar with the discussions. The company hopes that it can restart several projects sometime this summer ... But critics of BP and the industry say little has been done to make sure that a blowout does not happen in the first place."
Koch-funded climate change skeptic changes mind after conducting science. NYT's Paul Krugman: "Instead, however, Professor Muller reported [to Congress] that his group’s preliminary results find a global warming trend 'very similar to that reported by the prior groups.' ... Anthony Watts, who runs a prominent climate denialist Web site, praised the Berkeley project and piously declared himself 'prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.' But never mind: once he knew that Professor Muller was going to present those preliminary results, Mr. Watts dismissed the hearing as 'post normal science political theater.'"
Conservatives fight President's plan to double land conservation spending. W. Post: "... with the nation deep in debt and facing a long backlog of projects on its public lands, many Republicans are lining up against Obama’s plan, leaving its fate uncertain ... Backers of the fund say it’s important for Congress to keep pumping money into it as the nation loses roughly 3 million acres to development each year. They say it’s a race against time, noting that a third of the nation’s developed land was developed from 1982 to 2007. The National Park Service has identified 1.8 million additional acres that it wants to acquire, at a cost of $1.9 billion."
Breakfast Sides
"Greenspan is wrong" about Wall St. reform law, says Rep. Barney Frank in FT oped: "The assertion that regulators can never get 'more than a glimpse' of the financial system is self-fulfilling if regulators are not given the mandate or the tools to do so, or if they fail to use the tools they have ... When technology can track billions of transactions in real time, a failure to pierce the opaqueness of the system is mostly a question of will, not capacity."
WH formally appeals judicial ruling against health reform law reports CNN.
