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: Jobs -- Action Now
OurFuture.org's Robert Borosage: "The president has drawn the line. If he fulfills his promise to take this agenda across the country, Americans will begin to understand the choice that only they can make. The president’s Jobs Act is bold enough to draw a stark contrast with conservatives. But it is worth noting just how modest it is, how cautious in conception and conservative in substance ... His agenda is a first step, designed to attract bipartisan support. If Republicans oppose this, they will be turning their backs on working people either out of misguided ideological extremism or for partisan political advantage. The president is right. It is time to act."
President Demands Congress Pass "American Jobs Act"
Presidents demands Congress pass new jobs bill "right away.": "There should be nothing controversial about this piece of legislation. Everything in here is the kind of proposal that’s been supported by both Democrats and Republicans -- including many who sit here tonight. And everything in this bill will be paid for. Everything."
Deeper payroll tax cut big piece of plan. CNN: "Employees normally pay 6.2% on their first $106,800 of wages into Social Security, but they are now paying only 4.2%. That tax break is set to expire at the end of the year, and Obama would like to expand and extend it. He would cut it in half to 3.1%. Obama also wants to cut the payroll tax businesses pay in half -- to 3.1% -- on the first $5 million in wages. And if a business hires a new worker or gives an existing worker a raise, all payroll taxes will be waived. Total cost: $240 billion, or more than half the total package."
USA Today details infrastructure components: "The plan calls for $30 billion to upgrade at least 35,000 public schools with emergency repairs, energy efficiency upgrades and asbestos abatement, giving rural schools priority. The money could be disbursed to schools within 30 days through existing funding formulas. And it would put people, rather than heavy machinery, to work, employing perhaps 250,000, economists say. Another $50 billion would fix the nation's crumbling and congested highways, rail lines and airports, and $15 billion to refurbish thousands of foreclosed homes and businesses ... Obama's plan also would create an infrastructure bank funded with $10 billion to use for loans and guarantees and leverage several times that amount in private investment. The problem: It could take at least a year or two to get it up and running."
Plan also seeks to avert teacher layoffs and extend long-term jobless aid. W. Post: "His plan proposes $40 billion in aid to prevent the layoffs of up to 280,000 teachers — as well as police officers and firefighters. The final part of the plan seeks to extend unemployment insurance benefits for the jobless. This effort, which would cost $62 billion, would overhaul unemployment insurance so that the jobless could continue to receive benefits while in job training. It also would offer tax credits of up to $4,000 for companies that hire people who have been unemployed for more than six months."
House GOP suggests cherry-picking tax cuts from President's proposal. NYT: "[GOP Majority Leader Eric] Cantor said he liked some of the president’s proposals, including one to provide tax relief to small businesses, and would try to 'peel off' such elements and pass them separately."
Republican presidential candidate all trash American Jobs Act finds CNN.
GOP co-chair of Super Cmte complains about President's call to pay for American Jobs Act with additional long-term deficit reduction. The Hill quotes: "... the president is essentially tasking a committee designed to reduce the deficit to pay for yet another round of stimulus."
But HuffPost suggests American Jobs Act could pass as part of Super Cmte bill: "The administration officials in the pre-speech briefing left open the door to having the super committee write the president's bill into their final set of recommendations, rather than just offset the cost of a separate proposal. Doing so would mean that the jobs plan wouldn't come up for a vote until late December. But it would also give it a much more likely chance of passage..."
Moody's economist Mark Zandi estimates 2M jobs from American Jobs Act. USA Today: "The plan, if enacted would boost economic growth next year by 2 percentage points and create 2 million additional jobs, says Mark Zandi ... Zandi says the extra cash ripples through the economy and employment would fall by an average of 750,000 next year if the [payroll tax] cut isn't extended."
Krugman approves: "...the plan would be a lot better than nothing, and some of its measures, which are specifically aimed at providing incentives for hiring, might produce relatively a large employment bang for the buck ... But his plan isn’t likely to become law, thanks to Republican opposition ... Now, however, leading Republicans are against tax cuts — at least if they benefit working Americans rather than rich people and corporations."
AFL-CIO's Richard Trumka calls jobs plan the "opening bid": "The President took an important and necessary step tonight: he started a serious national conversation about how to solve our jobs crisis. He showed working people that he is willing to go to the mat to create new jobs on a substantial scale. Tonight’s speech should energize the nation to come together, work hard and get serious about jobs."
Leading bond fund investor, PIMCO's Mohamed A. El-Erian, praises speech as "powerful": "The program is a credible attempt to address structural obstacles that undermine economic growth and employment ... Democrats and Republicans now have a choice. They can either coalesce around the President's program, drawing comfort from individual elements that appeal to them; or they can hold out for more and, in the process, turn the pursuit of their personal best into an enemy of the public good."
Jeff Madrick's laments emphasis on tax cuts, in Daily Beast: "...these tax cuts for business and workers will not have the pop per dollar that direct spending would have had—direct spending on infrastructure, on education and so on. For every dollar of direct spending, you get more GDP than you do for every dollar of tax cuts."
Super Committee Convenes, Threatening Retirement Security
NYT suggests debate over Social Security and Medicare has shifted to "how" to cut them: "... Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill expressed a willingness to wring savings from the long-untouchable programs during the first meeting of the special committee that is charged with recommending $1.5 trillion in deficit reductions over the decade. Then President Obama, in his address to a joint session of Congress on spurring job creation, reiterated his call for a plan reducing long-term debt with both changes in entitlement programs and taxes from the wealthy."
GOP Super Cmte member Sen. John Kyl rules out further military cuts. CNN: "'Defense should not have any additional cuts,' said Kyl, who also told [a conservative luncheon] that he would quit the special committee rather than consider further defense cuts. 'In a $3.5 trillion budget -- two-thirds of which is entitlements -- there is enough slop in the system, that you can find $1.5 trillion in savings without deeply cutting into benefits or totally readjusting how these programs work, although they will require some adjustment,' Kyl added."
Breakfast Sides
Romney tries to embrace Social Security to dispatch Perry. CBS: "...the Romney campaign came out of the debate delighted with its progress arresting some of Perry's momentum after the Texan compared Social Security to a type of investor fraud poised to cheat future generations of retirees. 'Rick Perry: Reckless, Wrong on Social Security' blared a headline from the Romney message machine on Thursday."
Federal appeals court throws out Virginia challenges to ObamaCare: "Lawyers for Liberty University, a Christian school in Lynchburg, Va., founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, filed suit on the day Obama signed the bill and said the mandate should be declared unconstitutional. But Judge Motz said the law bars her and other judges from ruling on this issue before the tax takes effect ... the 4th Circuit [also] said [VA AG] Cuccinelli had no standing to sue and the judge had no basis for ruling on his claim. The attorney general was not suing as a taxpayer but instead claimed to be defending the sovereignty of the state."
