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 Edu-Bubble
OurFuture.org's Jeff Bryant: "Behold the next victim of capitalism's game of Russian roulette: education. What better target than a $1 trillion market with a 30+ percent growth rate? ... The first essential step to hyping up the edu-bubble was to find something new to monetize -- something that could be flipped from a public value into a private commodity that could be bought and sold ... speculators needed something that could pay out in the here and now. Most of the money in education is tied-up in just two areas -- physical plant and personnel ... [Then] all of a sudden everything monetarily related to schools -- operations budgets, teacher salaries, classroom costs, government funds, grant money -- could be related to a test score output ... much like the 'eyeballs' from the dot-com bubble and the mortgage derivatives of the housing bubble, test scores driving the edu-bubble are of marginal value."
GOP Provokes New Shutdown Threat
President opposes provisions in current "omnibus" bill to keep government open. HuffPost: "...an administration official highlighted two examples of language in the omnibus bill that the White House found problematic. The official described these examples as 'undermining Wall Street reform by not adequately funding [the Commodity Futures Trading Commission] and impinging on the President's power to conduct foreign policy in this case with regards to Cuba policy.' (The omnibus, as currently envisioned, would reinstate restrictions on travel to Cuba that were loosened by the president in 2009)."
House GOP tries to ram its version through today. Bloomberg: "Passing the spending bill would let Republicans leave for their Christmas holiday, increasing pressure on the Democratic-controlled Senate to accept it as well as Republicans’ version of the payroll tax cut ... Some Republicans expressed qualms about their party’s strategy. Representative Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, said lawmakers will be asked to vote on legislation they won’t have enough time to read."
Dems huddle to craft payroll tax compromise without millionaire's tax. The Hill: "A Democratic source familiar with Wednesday’s White House meeting said the president and leaders agreed to look for ways to offset the cost of the tax holiday without raising taxes on millionaires. The source said Reid has ruled out further cuts to discretionary spending levels — which Republicans had proposed — leaving mandatory spending reductions a possibility. But Republicans did not show any inclination to make concessions of their own in return for dropping the tax on millionaires."
Federal workers livid at GOP plan to offset payroll cut with extended pay freeze, pension cuts. W. Post's Joe Davidson: "Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the committee that oversees the federal workforce, caused heartburn Tuesday when he said federal employees should prepare for a third-year freeze. He previously had recommended extending the freeze as part of a deficit-reduction effort. There is, however, strong opposition among Democrats to provisions in the House bill affecting federal workers."
GOP Sen. Tom Coburn calls liberal senators "more intellectually honest" about the deficit reports ThinkProgress.
Dem and GOP versions of economically illiterate Balanced Budget Amendment fail in Senate reports NYT.
Dem Goes Rogue, Backs New Medicare Privatization Plan
Dem Sen. Ron Wyden break ranks, partners with Rep. Paul Ryan to partially privatize Medicare. TPM: "The move makes Wyden the first elected Democrat to endorse creating a premium-support system to compete with traditional fee-for-service Medicare ... The policy itself allows insurers to compete with traditional Medicare turning Medicare essentially into a public option on a private insurance exchange. Wyden and Ryan would give patients subsidies that could be applied to either private insurance or fee for service Medicare ... those subsidies would rise and fall with the cost of the plans themselves — not at a fixed rate below the explosive rate of health care inflation. But capping subsidy growth is exactly how Ryan’s original plan cut federal spending so much. This plan relies mostly on the theory that competition among insurers could hold down costs — a proposition with little evidence behind it — and would therefore save the government much less, if any, money at all."
NYT adds: "In addition, the growth of Medicare would be capped. In general, spending would not be allowed to increase more than the growth of the economy, plus one percentage point — a slower rate of increase than Medicare has historically experienced. To stay under the limit, Congress could cut payments to providers and suppliers responsible for the overspending and could increase Medicare premiums for high-income beneficiaries, the lawmakers said."
The Wyden-Ryan plan would raise costs, argues Dean Baker: "The basic problem is that private insurers are very good at cherry picking patients -- better than government bureaucrats in preventing cherry picking. This means that private insurers will find ways to get patients who cost them less than the average payment, or less than the average risk-adjusted payment, for Medicare beneficiaries. This is the reason that Medicare Advantage and its precedessor in the 90s, Medicare Plus Choice, raised the cost of Medicare."
Business groups praise implementation of health care reform. LAT: "The campaign to minimize disruptions — by easing requirements for insurers, employers, doctors and others — is winning cautious praise from some of the toughest critics of the law in the business community ... But the administration's careful strategy — which has marked its approach to other hot-button issues such as smog regulation and emergency contraceptives for teenage girls — is stoking frustration among Obama's allies ... Now, the White House is facing several crucial decisions about the law that threaten to erupt into a battle royal on the eve of the 2012 campaign. One of the most potentially explosive involves which medical benefits insurers will have to offer individuals and small businesses beginning in 2014, a key protection cherished by consumer groups."
President proposes wage boost for home care works. USA Today: "Nearly 2 million home care workers could qualify for federal wage and overtime protections under a rule being proposed today by the Obama administration ... they average $17,000 to $20,000 a year — more than the $7.25-per-hour minimum wage, but low enough to put many beneath the poverty line and enable them to qualify for public assistance ... About 1.6 million of the 1.8 million workers are employed by agencies that pay more than the minimum wage but not overtime ... The exemption from the Fair Labor Standards Act's wage and overtime rules dates to 1974."
Breakfast Sides
The President nominates two for NLRB vacancies. Bloomberg: "The president is nominating Sharon Block, deputy assistant secretary for Congressional affairs at the Labor Department. She worked from 2006 to 2009 as senior counsel for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee when Edward M. Kennedy was in the Senate. Mr. Obama also announced his intent to nominate Richard Griffin to the board. He is the general counsel for the International Union of Operating Engineers and has served on the board for the Lawyers Coordinating Committee at the A.F.L.-C.I.O. since 1994 ... Mr. Obama may have a difficult time getting the nominees confirmed."
W. Post chronicles the companies Romney helped go bankrupt while leading Bain Capital: "In 1992, Bain bought American Pad & Paper for $5 million. The company turned a profit of $100 million for investors but later filed for bankruptcy in 2000 ... A year after the Ampad deal, Bain acquired steel firm GS Industries. In 2001, the company filed for bankruptcy. In yet another bad outcome, Bain bought the electronics company DDi, based in Anaheim, Calif., in 1997. Six years later, it declared bankruptcy. Another example: Stage Stores, which Bain bought in 1988 and later filed for bankruptcy in 2000. In the case of medical diagnostics firm Dade Behring, more than 1,000 jobs were cut as Bain and other investors tried to make the company more profitable through acquisitions and consolidation."
