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: Law and Order, Except at Tax Time
OurFuture.org's Sam Pizzigati: "Tax evasion between 2001 and 2006, a new IRS study documents, actually increased. In 2001, $290 billion in individual and business taxes due went uncollected. In 2006, $385 billion ... If the IRS had been able to collect every dime cheating taxpayers cost Uncle Sam in 2006, the federal treasury would have ended the year $137 billion in the black ... Average Americans get most of their income from wages and salaries. Almost all this income faces paycheck withholding. The result: Only 1 percent of the taxes due on wages and salary, the new IRS study reports, goes uncollected. Rich Americans, by contrast, collect huge chunks of their annual income from capital gains, business ownership, and other sources of income that face neither rigorous reporting mandates or withholding."
GOPers Continue Chasing Right-Wing At SC Debate
Romney stresses harsh immigration policies. LAT: "Romney has taken the most conservative stance on illegal immigration among the Republican field, leading moderator Juan Williams to question whether he was harming the party’s chances among Latino voters in the general election. Romney responded with a vigorous defense of his belief that those in the country illegally must go home if they would like to seek citizenship."
GOP candidates complain about unemployment insurance. HuffPost: "[Santorum said,] 'what we've seen in the past under this administration is extending benefits up to 99 weeks. I don't support that. I think if you have people who are out of work that long a period of time, it's without question, it makes it harder to find work when you come back.' ... [Gingrich said,] 'All unemployment compensation should be tied to a job training requirement ... the help we ought to give them is to get them connected to a business-run training program to acquire the skills to be employable. Now the fact is, 99 weeks is an associate degree.' According to the Congressional Research Service, people with advanced degrees are no less likely than high school dropouts to join the ranks of the 99ers."
Romney not telling straight number about jobs created at Bain. NYT: "Mitt Romney said tonight that companies he had invested in while at Bain 'ended up today having some 120,000 jobs.' That number is slightly higher than the usual figure Mr. Romney cites ... that number only addresses a small group of companies that Mr. Romney was successful in starting or turning around, and does not take into account the less successful companies that Bain Capital invested in, some of which went bankrupt or were forced to layoff workers. It is also worth noting that Bain Capital was not a major investor in any of the four companies that Mr. Romney cites."
Robert Reich argues Romney doesn't understand free enterprise: "What Romney and the cheerleaders of risk-taking free enterprise don’t want you to know is the risks of the economy have been shifting steadily away from CEOs and Wall Street – and on to average working people. It’s not just income and wealth that are surging to the top. Economic security is moving there as well, leaving the rest of us stranded. To the extent free enterprise is on trial, the real question is whether the system is rigged in favor of those at the top who get rewarded no matter how badly they screw up, while the rest of us get screwed no matter how hard we work."
Countdown To SOTU
President prepares to tout accomplishments, preview more, in next week's State of the Union address. W. Post: "Gone is Obama’s lofty 2011 State of the Union call to “win the future” through long-term infrastructure investments, replaced by the more tangible set of 'we can’t wait' executive actions to jump-start the economy that he has taken without congressional approval. The president’s two-tiered strategy — demonstrating progress while assuring audiences that there is much more to come — aims to neutralize his biggest vulnerabilities: the sluggish economy and stubbornly high unemployment rate of 8.5 percent ... the White House has tried to employ the congressional pushback in its favor, using it to buttress a narrative in which Obama is fighting against an entrenched Washington establishment as he promised four years ago."
WH sets low expectations for progressives about upcoming budget proposal. The Hill: "In his first three years, Obama had a free hand to suggest spending levels for government programs in his annual budget blueprint. But that is not the case this year because the administration is constrained by the budget deal reached in August to raise the debt limit."
House GOP to propose controversial transportation bill. Politico: " A rough timeline puts House Republicans’ introduction of a surface transportation bill sometime in February, a large component to improving the country’s employment rolls ... But that proposal — which shores up the beleaguered Highway Trust Fund with drilling revenues — is already under heavy fire from Senate and House Democrats. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has repeatedly said drilling leases won’t raise nearly enough money.
Austerity Pushes Europe To Brink
Fears of Greek default rise. NYT: "Representatives of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund resume negotiations with the Greek government Wednesday over the next step in a planned 130 billion euro bailout, even as they try to force hedge funds and other private holders of Greek bonds to accept large losses to make the country’s debt burden more manageable. If Athens cannot secure concessions from the bondholders or the bailout money it needs from the so-called troika in the coming weeks, Greece could default by March 20..."
Austerity isn't working, says Tim Duy: "Lacking currency devaluation as a tool to resolve imbalances, European policymakers turned to fiscal austerity. That plan has failed, pushing nation after nation into ever deepening recession. With Greece going on its fifth year of recession, I imagine by now that Portugal, Spain, and even Italy now see the writing on the wall for themselves. Sadly, however, the alternative is exiting the Euro, which almost certainly means financial chaos for the Continent as a whole. The Eurozone is like a roach motel. You can get in, but you can't get out."
...and Martin Feldstein: "The most frightening recent development is a formal complaint by the European Central Bank that the proposed rules are not tough enough. Jorg Asmussen, a key member of the ECB’s executive board, wrote to the negotiators that countries should be allowed to exceed the 0.5%-of-GDP limit for deficits only in times of 'natural catastrophes and serious emergency situations' outside the control of governments. If this language were adopted, it would eliminate automatic cyclical fiscal adjustments, which could easily lead to a downward spiral of demand and a serious depression."
Breakfast Sides
NYT's Joe Nocera worries that Dodd-Frank is too complicated: "Why does complexity risk matter? One reason is that the more complex the rules are, the greater the likelihood that smart bankers will find ways to game them. Another is that contradictory regulations, however well meaning, simply don’t make the system safer. But the most important reason is that complexity risk is having an effect on business — and that’s not helping the still-fragile economy."
Dean Baker argues the complexity came from Wall Street: "... the financial industry wanted to preserve the option to trade some derivatives over-the-counter. Therefore they included a series of exemptions in the legislation. These exemptions are quite complicated, in contrast a blanket requirement that derivatives had to be traded through a third party would be relatively simple. However it was the industry that added the complexity. There are many other areas where a similar story could be told."
WI Dems prepare to turn in signatures today calling for gubernatorial recall election reports TPM.
WH will require drug companies disclose payments to doctors. NYT: "Many researchers have found evidence that such payments can influence doctors’ treatment decisions and contribute to higher costs by encouraging the use of more expensive drugs and medical devices ... The Times has found that doctors who take money from drug makers often practice medicine differently from those who do not and that they are more willing to prescribe drugs in risky and unapproved ways, such as prescribing powerful antipsychotic medicines for children.
