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: A Five-Point Jobs Checklist For Obama's Speech
OurFuture.org's Isaiah Poole: "Leading progressive organizations have joined us in making a united push for a bold jobs agenda, and we will be listening for how many of the common-sense proposals ... are embraced by the president ... Here is a checklist of what we will be looking for in President Obama's speech ... Fix our transportation system for future economic growth ... Repair our public schools ... Reverse the layoffs of public servants and engage in direct job creation ... Revive manufacturing in America ... Fix the housing crisis to help stimulate Main Street ... "
Progressives Tell Obama: "Jobs, Not Cuts"
Progressive coalition forms to press President to embrace bold jobs plan. OurFuture.org's Roger Hickey: "The Campaign for America’s Future on Aug. 30 joined with Rebuild the Dream, MoveOn, NOW and more than 80 other groups to send a letter to President Obama. The groups told Obama, 'A problem this serious needs a plan to match it in scope. Tax cuts and incentives for corporations have repeatedly failed to put Americans back to work. It is time to move beyond these half measures designed to appeal to a narrow ideological minority who have repeatedly shown their unwillingness to negotiate and their disinterest in real solutions."
President to focus on jobs, not deficit reduction in Thursday address. Politico: "By intermingling the jobs with the deficit, Obama raised fears among progressives that the White House planned to tackle both issues in the same speech. It was the last thing they wanted after the president and Congress spent months preoccupied with cutting government spending. 'We told him that would be a disaster,' said Roger Hickey, co-director of the progressive Campaign for America’s Future, who has spoken with White House staff. 'We made it very clear that we think he would be undercutting himself.'"
President Previews Jobs Address For Labor Day
President previews jobs address to labor rally at Detroit GM plant: "We’ve got roads and bridges across this country that need rebuilding. We’ve got private companies with the equipment and the manpower to do the building. We’ve got more than 1 million unemployed construction workers ready to get dirty right now. There is work to be done and there are workers ready to do it. Labor is on board. Business is on board. We just need Congress to get on board ... We’re going to see if congressional Republicans will put country before party. We’ll give them a plan, and then we’ll say, do you want to create jobs? Then put our construction workers back to work rebuilding America. Do you want to help our companies succeed? Open up new markets for them to sell their products. You say you’re the party of tax cuts? Well then, prove you’ll fight just as hard for tax cuts for middle-class families as you do for oil companies and the most affluent Americans."
Labor Day speech embraces labor movement. HuffPost: "... the president stood up for the besieged labor [movement], quoting Harry Truman from a Labor Day speech 63 years earlier, which said, 'the gains of labor were not accomplished at the expense of the rest of the nation. Labor’s gains contributed to the nation’s general prosperity.' Obama, accustomed to speaking about the need for 'shared sacrifice,' spoke instead on Monday about shared prosperity."
Jared Bernstein readies counter to GOP attacks on spending to create jobs: "Temporary spending does NOT increase either the long-term deficit or the growth of the national debt ... As you can see [from the Recovery Act], even a large spending measure, as long as it’s temporary, expands the deficit only for a few years, and then becomes a very small factor. While it raises the level of the debt, once it’s over, it does not contribute to its growth."
Low-wage jobs are not the answer, argues MIT economist Paul Osterman in NYT oped: "Last year, one in five American adults worked in jobs that paid poverty-level wages. Worker displacement contributes to the problem. People who are laid off from previously stable employment, if they are lucky enough to find work, take a median wage hit of over 20 percent, which can persist for decades ... To understand the impact of low wages ... we interviewed a wide range of people ... Everyone described a life of constantly trying to scrape by..."
House Republicans plan attack on enviro and workplace rules instead of job creation. USA Today: "GOP freshmen sponsored four of the six bills House Republican leaders plan to bring to the full chamber this fall, starting this week with an effort by South Carolina Rep. Tim Scott to bar the National Labor Relations Board from restricting where a company can locate jobs ... Other measures teed up for rapid action include efforts to roll back rules on emissions from coal-fired power plants and other environmental regulations ..."
Mitt Romney publishes "jobs plan" in USA Today, cut taxes for wealthy, scrap regulations for corporations: "First, President Obama has raised or threatened to raise taxes on both individuals and businesses. I would press hard in the opposite direction ... I will pare back regulation, including eliminating 'ObamaCare' ... The impact of any proposed new regulation must be offset by removing another regulation of equivalent cost ... I will ensure we utilize to the fullest extent our nation's nuclear know-how and immense reserves in oil, gas and coal ..."
Tea Party GOP congresspeople again pressing Speaker Boehner to instigate a government shutdown. Time: "In addition to potentially bitter fights over the deficit-cutting supercommittee tasked with finding $1.5 trillion in savings by Thanksgiving and the expiration of the federal gas tax on Sept. 30, Boehner must again negotiate a continuing resolution to fund the government in order to prevent another shutdown at the end of September when the fiscal year ends. And once again many of his freshmen are pushing him to go to the brink."
Jobs Crisis Drives Down Approval For President ... and GOP
Obama at 45% in Politico poll, as voters demand jobs: "Voters may disapprove of Obama’s overall handling of the economy, but when stacked against congressional Republicans, the president runs even with the GOP on who will create jobs and turn the economy around ... A 'large scale federally subsidized nationwide construction program' would be popular, with 51 percent saying they favor it, 21 percent opposing it..."
Obama at 44% in NBC/WSJ poll: "If there's a silver lining for Obama, it's that a combined 70 percent of respondents still find him likeable ... But for the first time in the poll, more say they'd probably vote for a generic Republican candidate (44 percent) than say they'd probably vote for Obama (40 percent)."
Obama at 43% in ABC/W. Post poll: "The urgency for Obama to act is driven not just by the most recent unemployment report, which on Friday showed no job growth in August and the unemployment rate stuck at 9.1 percent, but also by the depth of the political hole in which the president finds himself. Even more than two-thirds of those who voted for Obama say things are badly off course ... Obama does, however, rate better than do congressional Republicans ... Just 28 percent approve of the way Republicans in Congress are doing their job..."
Super Committee Member Promises Jobs Focus
Supercommittee member Rep. James Clyburn says deficit reduction plan must include "jobs, cuts, and revenue.": "Job creation will generate tax revenue and reduce the need for government assistance ... Pursuing them separately will weaken our efforts and could doom our mission."
Lobbyists well represented on Super Committee. W. Post: "Nearly 100 registered lobbyists used to work for members of the supercommittee, now representing defense companies, health-care conglomerates, Wall Street banks and others with a vested interest in the panel’s outcome, according to a Washington Post analysis of disclosure data. Three Democrats and three Republicans on the panel also employ former industry lobbyists on their staffs."
Trade Rule Actually Enforced
WTO sides with US over China on tire imports. The Hill: "The WTO Appellate Body on Monday ruled in Geneva that safeguard tariffs imposed by President Obama on China two years ago were legal under WTO rules. Obama had imposed the penalties for three years in response to a petition filed by the United Steelworkers union and findings by the U.S. International Trade Commission."
China threatens to block Chevy Volt imports without access to its technology. NYT: "The Chinese government is refusing to let the Volt qualify for subsidies totaling up to $19,300 a car unless G.M. agrees to transfer the engineering secrets for one of the Volt’s three main technologies to a joint venture in China with a Chinese automaker, G.M. officials said. Some international trade experts said China would risk violating World Trade Organization rules if it imposed that requirement."
Breakfast Sides
Conservative push by state legislatures stalled by courts. NYT: "Federal judges have issued injunctions temporarily blocking all or parts of laws on contentious issues including abortion restrictions (South Dakota and Texas), financing for Planned Parenthood (Indiana and North Carolina) and immigration enforcement (Alabama and Georgia)."
Dean Baker slams David Brooks' ant-green jobs NYT column: "... the Smart Grid is creating jobs now, as workers are hired to install it. However, a few years down the road it will be a jobs destroyer, exactly as Brooks says, since workers will no longer be needed to read meters. Okay, what's the problem? Right now we have an excess supply of labor. We need things for people to do to give them jobs. Installing the Smart Grid does that. However, we expect to be back at full employment at some point in the future. At that point, we will value efficiency. If we don't have to send tens of thousands of people around to read meters then they will be available to do other productive work."
CFPB nominee faces Senate cmte. The Hill: "There is no indication that the opposition of 44 GOP senators is wavering. In fact, they argue that the nomination of [Richard] Cordray is pointless now, as any selection will be ignored without those changes in place [to gut the CFPB.]"
