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: The Secret Bailout -- What We Know, And Don't Know.
OurFuture.org's Richard Eskow: "We now know that the 10 biggest banks in America received $669 billion in emergency loans from the Fed ... We now know that the low interest rates they received were, in fact, a massive transfusion of cash - courtesy of the American taxpayer - just like TARP ... We now know that the total amount of this secret bailout is $1.2 trillion ... As for what we don't know yet ... Did JPMorgan Chase lie to investors when it bragged about its rock-solid balance sheet, or did it take emergency loans it didn't need in order to bilk the taxpayer? It's a crime to lie to investors about your own balance sheets, so how many bankers committed stock fraud by taking these loans, failing to disclose them, and making false statements about their own bank's financial stability? Why did the Federal Reserve and the government demand secrecy for these loans and fight so hard to prevent them from being exposed?"
Pressure On Bernanke Before Speech Today
"GOP lawmakers warn Bernanke against QE 3" reports The Hill: "Wall Street wants Bernanke to announce a large-scale purchase of U.S. treasuries, which would infuse banks with cash and create incentive to buy stocks by lowering the yield on long-term bonds. House lawmakers, however, say they were not impressed by the previous round of easing and don’t want Bernanke to flood more dollars into the economy."
NYT's Paul Krugman fears Bernanke is being politically intimidated into inaction: "...why isn’t the Fed pursuing the agenda its own chairman once recommended for Japan? Part of the answer is internal dissension ... The larger answer, however, is outside political pressure ... But it faced a political backlash out of all proportion to its modest effect on the economy, culminating in Mr. Perry’s declaration that any further monetary easing before the 2012 election would be 'almost treasonous,' ... just imagine the reaction if the Fed were to act on the other and arguably more important parts of that Bernanke 2000 agenda, targeting a higher rate of inflation and welcoming a weaker dollar."
Pressure On GOP To End Tax Cut Hypocrisy
NYT explores hypocritical Republican opposition to the payroll tax cut: "It is hard to find a tax cut that Congressional Republicans dislike. Unless it is a tax cut pushed by President Obama..."
Politifact deems Rick Perry tort reform claim "False.": "...we're examining his claim that that the state gained 21,000 doctors because of tort reform. First, we found the number is wrong ... The Texas Medical Board issues licenses and tracks whether those doctors actually work in the state. According to their numbers, between 2003 and 2011, the accurate increase is 12,788 ... can credit be put at the feet of tort reform? Not much. By far, the biggest driver is population growth ... [Further,] in the nine years before tort reform, the number of doctors grew twice as fast as the population. So Texas did a pretty good job attracting doctors before the law changed."
GOP candidates reach out to business owners, not employees or the unemployed. W. Post: "...in their most intimate campaign settings, when they actually chew over economic policy and solicit comments rather than questions, the candidates usually hear from the employers, not the workers."
House Budget Cmte Chair Paul Ryan avoiding unemployed constituents. Mother Jones' Andy Kroll: "Bright and early Wednesday morning, a lively band of Wisconsinites arrived at Rep. Paul Ryan's Kenosha constituent-services office for a fifth straight day of protests and sit-ins. The protestors were demanding face time with the Republican, who has scheduled no public town hall meetings in his district during Congress' August recess. This time, however, a police officer was waiting for the protesters at Ryan's front door with a message from the congressman: Get lost."
Pressure On Obama To Act On Jobs
President seeks to calm criticism from African-American lawmakers on jobs agenda. W. Post: "...Don Graves, the executive director of the president’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, told black lawmakers that the president would consider taking executive action to enact at least parts of jobs-related measures they have introduced to no avail in the Republican-led House ... One proposal would extend aid to communities with long-standing poverty problems. Another would help the long-term unemployed ... Still, pressure has been building on the White House over the past two weeks as the black caucus has used a series of town hall meetings and job fairs in major cities to highlight African American unemployment and question the Obama agenda."
AFL-CIO's Richard Trumka urges President to put jobs ahead of deficit reduction. The Hill: "'If he doesn’t and he falls into the nibbling around the edge, I think history will judge him on that. And I think working people will too,' Trumka said. Some of the bold actions Obama could take to fix the jobs crisis is rebuilding the nation’s crumbling infrastructure or letting tax cuts for the wealthy expire, according to Trumka."
Sen. Bernie Sanders proposes reform of the Social Security payroll tax cap. The Hill: "[Sen. Sanders] is proposing to make individual income higher than $250,000 per year subject to the payroll tax — an idea he says he is lifting from President Obama’s 2008 campaign for the White House ... the chief actuary for Social Security says the senator’s proposal to make the payroll tax applicable at higher income levels would create enough new revenue to keep the program solvent for the next 75 years."
Mortgage refi program won't be enough to stop housing and jobs crises, argues New Deal 2.0's David Woolner: "Given the inability of President Obama’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) to reverse the decline in the housing market, it is encouraging to see that the administration is considering further measures to shore up this critical sector of our economy ... But as most economists predict — and as the New Deal instructs — a massive refinancing program on its own may not be enough to restore the housing market. What we really need is more jobs — perhaps a modern version of the WPA — to rebuild the nation’s crumbling infrastructure and further funding for education and job training to restore our competitiveness in the world economy."
Breakfast Sides
Uncertainty over trade agreement compromise. NYT: "...the Obama administration ... insisted, as part of any trade deal, on renewing a program to assist people adversely affected and adding $964 million to the effort. That linkage has met resistance from Republicans ... enough Senate Republicans have said they would sign off on a slimmed-down version of the assistance money, but Republicans in the House have been less committal ... the worker assistance program has the support of the Ways and Means Committee chairman, Representative Dave Camp, Republican of Michigan, whose constituents would benefit greatly from it. His support strongly increases its likelihood of passage in the House. However, it does not guarantee that the House would not attempt to amend the bill."
SCHIP expansion s working, making it easier for states to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act: "Thirty states boosted the proportion of eligible kids covered under the federal-state program and the national average moved from 80 percent to nearly 85 percent ... the same techniques states used to sign up a rising number of uninsured kids during the recession could be applied to adults in 2014 when Medicaid income eligibility is ordered to expand from 100 percent of the federal poverty level to those earning 133 percent or less."
Yes Magazine interviews Van Jones about the growing American Dream movement. Click here to register for the Oct. 3-5 "Take Back the American Dream" conference.
