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: Bring Our Soldiers Home
OurFuture.org's Isaiah Poole: "In his speech, the president set the right direction and tone, but not the right level of urgency. The schedule he laid out means there will still be 68,000 troops fighting the longest war this nation has ever fought in the fall of 2012 ... Meanwhile, President Obama could have told a sobering tale of nation-building needs here in this country. A National Priorities Project article earlier this week matched how much of the federal tax paid by residents of some major cities in the United States is being spent on Afghanistan with some of the fiscal conditions being faced by these same cities."
President Calls For Afghan Drawdown, Slowly
President calls for shift in focus away from Afghanistan back to America, but is it enough? Time's Michael Scherer: "Just what this meant, Obama did not say. He has proposed a series of rather modest domestic programs that could stimulate the economy [but] hardly of the scale that would 'recapture the common purpose that we shared at the beginning of this time of war.' ... Senate Democrats Wednesday took a political risk by announcing a 'Jobs First' package' that called for more costly, short-term assistance to the economy, a verboten topic in a city now shaped by Republican efforts to cut spending. Obama has not embraced those plans, but his comments Wednesday suggest that he does plan to offer Americans a clearer vision of prosperity and success in the face of hardening economic projections of more heartache."
Sign the petition: Draw Down Afghanistan. Build Up America.
Push To Add Jobs To Deficit Reduction Talks
Senate Dems push for jobs component to any debt limit deal. W. Post: "Top Senate Democrats, led by Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.), said they have told Vice President Biden, who is leading the talks, that any agreement on raising the legal borrowing limit must include an effort to boost the flagging economic recovery alongside deep spending cuts sought by Republicans. The Democrats said they would prefer to see new spending on roads, bridges and other transportation projects; new investment in green energy; or additional resources for job training ... they would also accept a payroll tax cut for employers..."
House Dems say no to Social Security cuts. The Hill: "'You want a fight?' Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) said during a press conference in the Capitol. 'If anybody in this building wants to take on Social Security — privatize it, change the benefits by altering the consumer price index or by any other method — know this: You’ve got a fight on your hands.'"
Conservatives demand immediate job-killing cuts. ABC: "A group of conservative lawmakers in the House and Senate have signed onto a pledge to oppose an increase to the debt ceiling if the legislation does not include three conditions: substantial spending cuts for the upcoming year, caps on federal spending, and a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. So far, 11 senators and 14 representatives ... have signed onto the pledge."
GOP splits over raising revenue by ending tax subsidies. The Hill: "Several colleagues, such as Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), are talking about a broad proposal to eliminate billions of dollars in tax subsidies and have not ruled out using the revenue to reduce the $1.6 trillion budget deficit. But they’ll have to battle [Sen. Orrin] Hatch first [who] warned his GOP colleagues they risked falling into the same camp with liberals such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)."
Bipartisan talks hung up on budget maneuvers. AP: "...both President Barack Obama and House Republicans have claimed in their budgets more than $1 trillion in savings by taking advantage of the peculiar way government scorekeepers project war costs and by lowballing projected costs in future years ... [But] a GOP participant in the talks said it would be wrong to claim the savings ... Another option is to lengthen the time frame over which any deficit savings accumulate from 10 years to perhaps 12 years ... a proposal to lower the inflation adjustment for federal benefit programs and income tax brackets to the so-called chained Consumer Price Index is a way to generate up to $300 billion in deficit savings ... [Although,] Democrats are unlikely to permit the chained CPI to apply to Social Security within the confines of the Biden talks..."
New CBO report tells old story. W. Monthly's Steve Benen: "I don’t doubt Republicans will seize on the CBO report and say, “See? We have to prioritize debt reduction immediately.” But party officials simply won’t consider a basic fact: if we do as Republican leaders demand, the debt they pretend to care about — the debt they largely created during the Bush era — gets much worse ... but if policymakers simply leave the status quo in place, and let nature take its course, taxes will return to Clinton-era rates, the Affordable Care Act will save us a lot of money, and the deficit will shrink considerably."
House Republicans wouldn't cut subsidies for wealthy landowners. NYT: "One proposal would have halted subsidies to those with more than $250,000 in adjusted gross annual income. Currently farmers can make as much as $750,000 a year and still receive payments. Another proposal, from Representative Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat with some farming in his district, would have capped payments and was also defeated ... payments tend to benefit landowners who live far from rural America, in places like New York City, Phoenix and Chicago."
Indiana's austerity agenda has its own costs. NYT: "Although the state’s unemployment rate is slightly better than that of its neighboring states, a striking number of people here — a significantly greater percentage than in Illinois or Ohio — have simply left the work force altogether since the dawn of the recession.... Hoosiers ranked fifth nationally in personal bankruptcies ... Property tax caps ... have pushed school boards and city leaders, they say, into rounds of budget cutting and layoffs ... One in three Hoosiers qualifies as low-income now, compared with one in four a decade earlier."
Fed Lowers Expectations, Pulls Back Stimulus
Fed sees economic slowdown as temporary, ends stimulus program, warns Congress against cuts. McClatchy: "'We don't have a precise read as to why this slower pace of growth is persisting,' the Fed chief answered. 'One way to think about it is that maybe some of the headwinds that have been hurting us, like, you know, weakness in the financial sector, problems in the housing sector, balance sheets ... some of these may be stronger and more persistent than we thought.' The Fed chief warned that steep near-term cuts in government spending would slow the economy and cost jobs. He advocated a budget deal in Congress that begins to address long-term challenges, but warned against sharp spending declines too soon."
"Bernanke leaves door open" to renewed stimulus later, reports Bloomberg: "'The Fed would be “prepared to take additional action, obviously, if conditions warranted,' including the purchase of more Treasury securities, Bernanke said yesterday after U.S. central bankers met in Washington. The economy will probably overcome constraints from elevated energy prices and Japan- related disruptions to manufacturing, he said. Still, declining home prices, high unemployment and weaknesses in the financial system may restrain the recovery in the longer term, he said."
Krugman calls the Fed cowardly: "The Fed predicts disastrously high unemployment as far as the eye can see ... And in response to this dire prospect, it declares its work done ... it washes its hands of the problem, even though Bernanke and his colleagues are well aware that nobody else will act. I’m aware that there are doubts about how much the Fed could accomplish; I share those doubts. But that’s no reason not to try."
High-Speed Rail Speeds Up In China
China takes big leap in high-speed rail, transforming its economy. NYT: "Just as building the interstate highway system a half-century ago made modern, national commerce more feasible in the United States, China’s ambitious rail rollout is helping integrate the economy of this sprawling, populous nation ... Work crews of as many as 100,000 people per line have built about half of the 10,000-mile network in just six years, in many cases ahead of schedule ... China’s manufacturing might and global export machine are likely to grow more powerful as 200-mile-an-hour trains link cities and provinces that were previously as much as 24 hours by road ..."
Last remaining Republican moderates call for stronger fuel efficiency. W. Post: "A group of more than a dozen moderate Republicans ... urged President Obama in a letter Wednesday to set tough new standards to curb carbon emissions ... The letter comes as the administration is debating what sort of greenhouse gas emission limits it should impose on vehicles that will be sold in the United States for the model years 2017 to 2025 ... Automakers argue that ... 62 miles per gallon by 2025 ... is unrealistic ... The group of former elected and appointed GOP officials, however, argued that stricter carbon limits have economic and national security benefits."
Climate change may give you kidney stones. Time's Tara Thean: "...a number of illnesses and health conditions [are] exacerbated by unrelenting heat, including diabetes, urinary tract and renal diseases such as kidney stones, respiratory conditions, accidents and even suicide attempts. For every 2 degrees the mercury in your thermometer rises over 85 Fahrenheit, hospital admissions for conditions such as diabetes and kidney disorders are predicted to rise by 13 percent."
