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: Conservatives Punish Their Victims
OurFuture.org's Richard Eskow: "Arizona's conservatives have committed an extraordinarily mean and petty act, even by the low standards of today's Right. They've refused to change one word in a state law - a change that would have let at least 15,000 people keep receiving unemployment benefits. And they've done it even though it wouldn't have cost their state a penny."
Senate Dems Ready Jobs Agenda
Senate Dems plan jobs focus. CNN: "In a strategic shift beginning this week, designed to show their heightened concerns, Senate Democrats will try to put new focus on job creation, so it is on equal footing with deficit reduction ... At the top of the Democrats' list is a proposal to extend a 2% payroll tax cut adopted last year to help put additional dollars in the pockets of workers and help stimulate the economy. Democrats are considering giving employers a similar 2% break on their portion of payroll taxes in an effort to spur hiring ... Another bill Democrats are considering... would boost road and bridge construction spending through a new 'infrastructure bank' that would help states finance their big public works projects. Democrats are also increasingly confident a bipartisan deal will be reached soon on a new highway funding bill ..."
Actual economist Alan Blinder, explains slowly to WSJ readers that government spending cannot "kill" jobs: "...even building bridges to nowhere would create jobs, not destroy them, as the congressman from nowhere knows ... Dumb public spending deserves to be rejected—but not because it kills jobs ... How can the government destroy jobs by either hiring people directly or buying things from private companies? ...how is it that public purchases of computers destroy jobs but private purchases of computers create them?"
Sen. Maj. Leader Reid accuses GOP of filibustering public works bill. The Hill: " The sheer number of amendments, combined with an apparent unwillingness for cooperation in reducing their number, makes it likely the underlying bill will die on the Senate floor when it faces a cloture vote Tuesday afternoon ... 'I guess their goal is "let's make things as bad as they can … and maybe we will get somebody elected to replace President Obama,'"' said Reid."
WI Gov. Walker brags about increasing jobs by 0.7%. W. Post's Dana Milbank: "...it does suggest that the conservatives criticizing the Obama administration’s handling of the economy don’t have a silver bullet of their own. Walker, who has large Republican majorities in the Wisconsin legislature, experimented with a long conservative wish-list, but the state hasn’t been a standout in job creation during his six-month tenure."
GOP Resisting New Revenues
Senate GOP tries to slow momentum for raising revenue in any debt limit deal. Politico: "...top Senate Republicans are redoubling their efforts to keep revenues out of the mix—even after voting to end a multi-billion dollar tax expenditure for the ethanol industry last Thursday ... [Sen. Jon] Kyl told reporters Monday that negotiators must come close to a deal to simply cut spending 'by the end of this week or we’re really going to have to reassess the situation.'"
GOP pushing for 10-year spending cut plan. The Hill: "Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) on Monday said Senate Republicans want commitments on a 10-year budget plan that guarantees reduced spending as part of any agreement to increase the debt ceiling ... Kyl added that Republicans also want real entitlement reform, to make sure spending continues to drop after 10 years. He said Republicans are likely to be uninterested in any agreement that does not include these elements."
Time is running out, notes W. Post: "Over the next six weeks, negotiators must strike a bipartisan compromise ... one or both chambers is due to be on break for three of those weeks. And when Congress last reached a big debt-reduction deal, it took more than a month just to draft the legislation..."
Supreme Court Says Law Gives EPA Sole Power To Cut Emissions
Supreme Court rejects states power to sue polluters for carbon emissions, says EPA in charge. Politico: "In an 8-0 decision Monday, justices denied states and environmentalists the right to sue power plants in federal courts over their emissions, explicitly saying that regulating greenhouse gases is the EPA’s job."
Pressure on EPA to act, says NRDC's David Doniger: "Many power companies support EPA action ... But some of the biggest polluters, such as American Electric Power and Southern Company, have combined with the coal industry and Tea Party politicians to attack the Clean Air Act ... So it’s encouraging to see, as reported by Politico, that when asked last Thursday whether the White House would consider legislation to block or delay EPA’s carbon pollution standards, the President’s chief of staff Bill Daley responded: 'No, we’re not going to allow any legislation that impedes the need to improve our health and safety.' ... The Court has confirmed again that this is EPA’s job. It’s time for EPA to act."
Conservative governors may regret attacking EPA. Budget cuts hitting states hardest. W. Post: "Because the EPA passes the vast majority of its money through to the states, it has meant that these governments — not Washington — are taking the biggest hits. Already constrained financially at home, state officials have millions of dollars less to enforce the nation’s air- and water-quality laws, fund critical capital improvements and help communities comply with new, more stringent pollution controls imposed by the federal government."
Corporations Win, Workers Lose In Wal-Mart Ruling
USA Today edit board slams Supreme Court's "all male majority" for blocking discrimination suit against Wal-Mart: "Perhaps there's a legitimate reason why numbers like these aren't evidence of discrimination, but that's the sort of issue that could best be resolved at trial. Instead, the court's all-male majority tried unconvincingly to minimize the force of the numbers by insisting they don't prove discrimination at every one of Wal-Mart's 3,400 stores, as if discrimination at 3,339 would be OK. Worse, the majority's arguments dredged up anachronistic excuses for passing over women, such as the one that there might not be enough of them available, qualified or interested."
"Major setback for worker rights," argues Time's Adam Cohen: "...the court has severely curtailed one of the few legal tools afforded to individuals who have disputes with corporations. Class actions let individuals who may not have the money to hire a lawyer band together and get top-flight legal representation ... It is not hard for an employer to say that an individual employee was bad at her job, or is just a complainer. It is harder to make that case to a judge or a jury when many thousands of workers are all saying the same thing."
Wal-Mart women vow to push discrimination suits anyway. Bloomberg: "Wal-Mart may now face thousands of lawsuits nationwide and claims of discrimination before federal agencies as plaintiffs’ lawyers fan out to courts across the country to file new complaints on behalf of members of the failed group suit."
Another Recess May Be Thwarted
House conservatives propose continuing to refuse to adjourn to prevent recess appointments, including to CFPB reports NYT.
Capital requirement reform key to bank reform, but Republicans stand in the way, says NYT's Joe Nocera: "Adequate capital hides a plethora of sins. And because, by definition, it forces banks to use less debt, it can also prevent sins from being committed in the first place ... Which is why a hearing held last week by the House Financial Services Committee was such a sorry sight ... the Republican majority peppered U.S. regulators ... with skeptical questions about the need for increased capital requirements. It was pathetic ..."
Is Huntsman A Moderate?
"Jon Huntsman To Kick Off His Campaign By Tying Himself To Paul Ryan" reports TPM.
"...while Huntsman’s temperament is moderate – his record isn’t. Indeed, his policy positions should endear him to most conservatives," argues Daniell Allott in Politico.
Gov. Rick Perry has little to brag about, says TNR's Abby Rapoport: "...Texas’s budget gap—$27 billion short of what it would need to maintain its already lean services in the next biennium—was among the worst in the nation .... In the face of Perry’s promise to veto any use of the rainy day fund, lawmakers turned to accounting tricks like deferred payments to soften the blows to state programs. Fees, too, on everything from getting help collecting child support to registering as a lobbyist, are going up all over the state, and almost nowhere does the budget account for normal growth in social services enrollment. The final budget short-funds Medicaid by almost $5 billion. Legislators had to return for a special session to hammer out the cuts to education, which will likely end up around $4 billion. It will mark the first time Texas has cut funding for public schools since 1949..."
Breakfast Sides
President to announce Afghan drawdown specifics today. LAT: "...Obama was leaning toward withdrawing all the additional troops by the end of 2012 or early 2013. That would leave close to 70,000 U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Withdrawing 10,000 or so troops this year represents a steeper drawdown than Gen. David H. Petraeus and senior Pentagon officials preferred."
AMA renews support for individual mandate. WSJ: "after an extensive debate, two-thirds of the delegates voted Monday to uphold the group’s support for the mandate."
