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: Vote For The "Budget For All"
OurFuture.org's Robert Borosage: "The Budget for All is a common sense blueprint for America. Its first priority is to invest in putting Americans back to work and helping the economy recover. Then, over the course of 10 years, it brings the budget more into balance than either the House Republican budget or the administration’s budget. Finally, it does this with sensible priorities: calling on millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share, cutting bloated Pentagon budgets, while protecting Social Security and Medicare. The Budget for All upholds the basic promises that Americans make to one another. We urge its passage [in the House tomorrow.]"
Mixed Signals From Supreme Court
Potential Supreme Court swing votes ask critical questions of both sides. W. Post: "In the first hour of arguments, Kennedy gave the law’s opponents hope by asking skeptical questions. 'Do you not have a heavy burden of justification,' he asked Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., 'to show authorization under the Constitution?' But as the arguments went on, Kennedy asked other questions that encouraged the measure’s supporters. He seemed at one point to accept an argument key to the Obama administration’s case: that people who don’t buy health insurance are still in the health-care market, because they will need care at some point. 'They are in the market in the sense that they are creating a risk that the market must account for,' Kennedy said."
Partisan questioning from conservatives justices risk credibility of Court. Politico: "If the Affordable Care Act goes down — especially if it suffers the same schismatic 5-to-4 blow sustained by the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law in the Citizens United case — critics will accuse the Roberts Court of rigging the game and covering their power play with constitutional doublespeak ... the case is also a critical test of Roberts’s evolving role as the leader of his own court: In decades past, chief justices have labored mightily to secure something approaching consensus on major decisions."
USA Today edit board urges Court to uphold mandate: "In one particularly revealing exchange, mandate opponents conceded Tuesday that people need insurance to pay big medical bills, but they see no problem with requiring insurers to issue policies on demand, even if people wait until they get sick to buy insurance. Insurers compare that to waiting to buy homeowner's coverage until after your house is on fire. Seven states tried versions of that health care reform, only to see premiums explode. No problem, suggested mandate opponents: The government could tax everyone to keep premiums down. That, of course, is a political non-starter ... The mandate is cheaper and fairer."
Obama administration will argue today that mandate cannot be severed from other provisions in the law. W. Post: "... the government contends that if the mandate falls, these provisions should be struck as well. With no requirement that they buy insurance ahead of time, this argument goes, people could wait until they were sick to purchase a plan, skewing the insurance pool toward the ill, who are more costly to insure ... [But there] is a robust debate within health policy circles about alternative approaches that could achieve the same aims as the mandate through less controversial means."
House To Vote On Competing Budgets Tomorrow
Simpson-Bowles-style budget, with retirement security cuts and tax increases, to get House vote. W. Post: "... a bipartisan group of House members has submitted a budget plan built on the Simpson-Bowles ideas, a spending plan that would slash $4 trillion from deficits over the next 10 years ... it is expected to lose to Ryan’s plan ... The House members said they hope their efforts could demonstrate that there is a moderate middle willing to push ahead with such a proposal ... it proposes major changes to entitlement programs, including applying a new formula for calculating inflation in Social Security payments that many liberals decry for reducing benefits to retirees."
Ryan's severe cap on spending puts GOP in a "bind" argues Politico's David Rogers: "[The budget] breaks with the August debt accords and substitutes a vision of capping revenue at 19 percent of gross domestic product and scaling back government to fit into that suit .... But the strict revenue limits could postpone for a generation the conservative promise of a balanced budget. At the same time, deep cuts to health care and education most likely will make it harder for GOP front-runner Mitt Romney to appeal to independents and women voters in the presidential campaign."
1M students at least lose Pell Grants in GOP budget. HuffPost: "More than 1 million students would lose Pell grants entirely over the next 10 years under Rep. Paul Ryan's budget, according to an analysis that the national reform organization Education Trust provided to The Huffington Post."
Transportation Bill Gridlock May Cause Construction Shutdown
Construction shutdown looms next week as House still unable to pass transportation funding bill. CNN: "It was the second day in a row that House Republicans were forced to pull a temporary extension of the transportation program ... After the GOP banned members from stuffing special projects into legislation, it's been a tough sell for Boehner to persuade many conservatives who oppose the size of the transportation bill to support it."
Dems insisting on support for longer-term bill. Politico: "Republicans yanked a 60-day extension of highway programs late Tuesday, after it became clear that Democrats would withhold their support for a short-term bill until Republicans agree to also pass a longer-term bill that will serve as their negotiating position in a few weeks when they conference the bill with the Senate ... if Republicans do decide to go to conference committee negotiation with the Senate on what amounts to a 'shell' bill, it could seriously diminish the House GOP’s position. Beyond whatever energy provisions the House can add, the lower chamber would have virtually no stated position on the many and complicated issues typically dealt with in a surface transportation bill."
EPA Releases Greenhouse Gas Rules For New Power Plants
EPA announces greenhouse gas standards for new power plants. The Hill: "The regulations would require new power plants that burn fossil fuels to release no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt‐hour. The agency said new natural-gas plants will be able to meet the standard without adding any additional technology. But new coal plants would need to add new technology like carbon capture and storage (CCS), in which carbon dioxide emissions are collected and sequestered in the ground rather than released into the atmosphere. The rules give new coal-fired power plants flexibility to meet the standard. Instead of meeting the standard on an annual basis, new coal plants that use CCS can use a 30-year average of their carbon dioxide emissions ... Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune was more blunt. He told Bloomberg that the rules 'will make it nearly impossible to build a new coal plant,' and added that because the market has been moving that way, the rule 'captured the end of an era.'"
But doesn't touch existing power plants. Time's Bryan Walsh: "A braver EPA would have tackled the enormous problem of existing coal plants now, but understandably the Obama Administration has little stomach for that fight—especially in an election year ... if a Republican takes the White House, expect the momentum to halt all together ... Today’s rules are much better news for natural gas than for the climate."
"GOP running out of gas on Solyndra" reports Politico: "More than a year into a probe that's extended to the Energy Department loan guarantee portfolio, Republican investigators even acknowledge they've fallen short of substantiating their allegations that the administration helped political allies like Tulsa oilman George Kaiser secure hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies through a loan guarantee to Solyndra."
Breakfast Sides
Republicans retaliating after CFPB recess appointment with more obstruction. Politico: "Nominees for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Treasury Department have been stopped since Obama’s decision not to wait on putting Cordray in place ... For little-known agencies like the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, some Democrats and consumer groups fear the delay to confirm Thomas Curry — nominated in July — has undercut financial reforms ... In other cases, agencies like the Federal Reserve haven’t been able to run at full power."
"Foreclosure Deal Credits Banks for Routine Efforts" finds NYT: "The settlement promises that of the $25 billion, the banks will give $17 billion 'in assistance to borrowers who have the intent and ability to stay in their homes,' according to a summary of the settlement. But more than half of that money can be used in ways that will not stop foreclosures, including some activities that are already standard bank practices."
"JOBS Act" dereg bill clears Congress, heads to President's desk. NYT: "The 380-to-41 House vote added a final exclamation point for the JOBS Act ... Supporters see it as a breakthrough for entrepreneurs who hope to build an enterprise around sometimes offbeat ideas without having to sell them to larger companies. But a few detractors worry that the measure will bring back the 'boiler rooms' of the 1990s Internet stock bubble, where hucksters peddle stock tips to unwitting amateur investors."
States newly controlled by Republicans have the most public worker layoffs. HuffPost: "The 11 states that went red in the 2010 midterm election alone accounted for slightly more than 40 percent of the state-level public job losses last year, according to a new paper from progressive think tank The Roosevelt Institute."
