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: Today's Big Idea -- Rebuild Our Infrastructure
OurFuture.org's Dave Johnson: "In the midst of the July heat wave, some Oklahoma City commuters got a nasty surprise as they drove down Interstate 44 one morning: an expansion joint on a 36-year-old bridge buckled ... The reason incidents like this one keep popping up all over the country is that for decades now America has been putting off necessary investments in our public infrastructure ... We must make the case for doing the work now that will create good, middle-class jobs ... Reauthorize the six-year surface transportation reauthorization bill ... Create national and state infrastructure banks ... Invest $20 billion in school construction ... Implement The National Broadband Plan ... Build high-speed rail..."
Pressure Builds For Bold Jobs Agenda
President pledges new jobs ideas that don't cost money. W. Post: "Administration aides said the president is planning to advance new ideas to help the economy in September. But any measures that would make a significant near-term difference to economic growth would probably require new spending, and Republicans insist that such spending would actually hurt the economy. Unless he can convince enough of them otherwise, Obama might be forced to make modest proposals that could not provide a major boost to the flagging recovery."
NYT presses Obama for a bolder jobs agenda: "A $13 billion hiring tax credit passed in 2010 is estimated to have led to 250,000 new hires. In contrast, a stimulus program that subsidized the hiring of low-income Americans generated 250,000 jobs for roughly $5 billion. That program deserves revival ... A serious jobs agenda should also ensure that federal funds are available to rehire teachers, police officers and firefighters who have lost their jobs in state and local government budget cuts. It should include new programs to hire unemployed young people, say, in federal parks and in community centers and new financing for national service programs..."
Stateline reviews the looming transportation funding battle, as the gas tax nears expiration: "Even if members can be persuaded to support an extension, they must deal with the fact that the federal gas tax does not bring in enough money to pay for all of the transportation projects it is now supposed to fund ... House Republicans, led by U.S. Representative John Mica of Florida, have drafted a six-year plan that would scale back federal transportation spending to the levels brought in by the current gas tax. Depending on how you look at it, this would amount to between a 6 percent and a 35 percent reduction to states ... In the Senate, Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, put together a plan with modest spending increases. Her plan would only last two years."
Perry Record Under Microscope
Perry stands by threat to Bernanke. NYT: "Lawrence H. Summers ... said, 'This may be the least responsible statement in the modern history of president politics. While there is room for sharp debate over many economic issues ... the economic thinking is primitive, the mention of treason is outrageous and the intimation of violence is abhorrent.' ... 'Look, I’m just passionate about the issue,' Mr. Perry said, as aides hustled him away from a lunch with business leaders in Dubuque. 'We stand by what we said.'"
Rick Santorum assumes the voice of reason. CNN quotes: "We don’t charge people with treason because we disagree with them on public policy. You don’t up the ante to that type of rhetoric. It’s out of place.”
Perry says "I don’t think the federal government has a role’ in education, reports ThinkProgress' Ian Millhiser and Scott Keyes: "If the federal government truly has no role in education, that means millions of college students must lose their Pell Grants and federal student loans overnight..."
W. Post's Harold Meyerson on Perry's embrace of low-wage, no-benefit jobs: "Rick Perry’s Texas is Ross Perot’s Mexico come north. Through a range of enticements we more commonly associate with Third World nations — low wages, no benefits, high rates of poverty, scant taxes, few regulations and generous corporate subsidies — the state has produced its own 'giant sucking sound,' attracting businesses from other states to a place where workers come cheap."
Perry's anti-spending stance ignores pro-spending policies as governor. W. Post's Suzy Khimm: "When Perry took office as governor in 2001, one of his earliest and most ambitious initiatives was the Trans-Texas Corridor, a $184 billion plan to build a network of toll highways, rail corridors and utility lines ... the project was dubbed a 'NAFTA Superhighway' that appeared intended to create an open roadway between Mexico and Canada. The blowback ultimately scuttled Perry’s plan ... Perry has proposed putting $260 million into a state-run water infrastructure fund to speed up the construction of reservoir sites across the state ... But Perry’s reform plans have never been fully realized, because the GOP-dominated state legislature has shot down every funding proposal for water infrastructure over the past five years."
Mixed Signals From Super Committee
Senate Dems on Super Committee write joint WSJ oped calling for "grand bargain": "...our goal is to reduce spending ... we are ready to get to work with our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to report out a balanced plan, with the shared sacrifices this moment requires."
GOP Super Committee member Rep. Fred Upton says he won't support increasing Social Security retirement age. ThinkProgress' quotes: " It’s critical…for people that are benefiting today from Medicare and Social Security, that they do not see benefit reductions. It’s awfully hard to tell someone…who might be 82 that they’ve got to go back to work because their benefits are going to be chopped. That’s not going to happen. We’re not going to let that happen."
"Gingrich blasts deficit super committee at Heritage" reports CBS: "'Why do these 12 get extraordinary power and the rest of you are just the chorus of the Opry?' Gingrich asked. He also questioned the wisdom of the 'trigger' which would require automatic, across-the-board spending cuts if the committee cannot come up with $1.5 trillion in savings. 'If you have a Congress that has to invent a suicide mechanism in order to avoid something, you have a total breakdown of the legislative process,' he said. Gingrich's alternative: Restructure the federal government along the lines outlined by Six Sigma, a business management strategy used by corporations and the military to cut waste. It has also been satirized on '30 Rock.'"
U.S. Chamber of Commerce urges Super Committee to strike "grand bargain." The Hill: "...the Chamber urged the group to overhaul the tax code while undertaking a fundamental reform of entitlements. But in its statement, the Chamber was silent on the controversial question of whether any revenue should be increased in a big deal, but it did lay out other guidance for how tax reform could be completed."
GOP Rep. Vern Buchanan calls for Super Committee proceedings to be public. Politico: "I introduced legislation Aug. 5 requiring the supercommittee’s work be done in full public view ... Moving the biggest deficit reduction package ever created through the legislative process in full view of the public is an opportunity within our reach. Let’s seize it."
Defense Sec. Panetta keeps up pressure for deal to avoid triggering automatic military cuts. AP: "This kind of massive cut across the board, which would literally double the number of cuts that we're confronting, that would have devastating effects on our national defense; it would have devastating effects on certainly the State Department."
Breakfast Sides
Bank of America considering concession in foreclosure fraud talks. Bloomberg: "Bank of America Corp. may settle a state and federal probe of foreclosure practices in a deal that lets New York proceed with an inquiry into securitizations ... Bank of America executives, concerned that a delay in resolving the case is hurting the firm’s stock, are open to a deal that would resolve most of it, even if some mortgage investigations continue..."
Rising protests against President's immigration enforcement program. NYT: "A program that is central to President Obama’s immigration enforcement strategy has drawn protests by Latino and immigrant organizations in six cities in the last two days ... Under Secure Communities, fingerprints of anyone booked into jail by the state and local police are sent to the F.B.I. for criminal checks — long a routine practice — and also to the Department of Homeland Security, which records immigration violations. Immigration agents decide whether to detain noncitizens signaled by fingerprint matches ... Gregory Chen, director of advocacy for the lawyers’ association, said his office was deluged with responses. 'Department of Homeland Security practices have ushered in a sea change in who is being deported, and our attorneys have literally been flooded with people coming in to their offices who have been picked up by local police for small time stuff,' Mr. Chen said..."
Democrats hold WI state Senate seats in last two recalls elections reports NYT.
FL Supreme Court delivers setback to Gov. Scott. NYT: "The Florida Supreme Court concluded that Mr. Scott 'overstepped his constitutional authority' and 'violated the separation of powers' when he suspended all proposed rules until he could review and approve them. It was the governor’s first executive order."
