Obama Backs Privatizing Mortgage Guarantees
President Obama sides with ending Fannie Mae (AP): "President Barack Obama, seeking to buffer taxpayers from future housing market downturns, will urge Congress this week to back bipartisan efforts to shutter Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage-giants bailed out by the government in 2008. ... Senior administration officials said Obama would focus in Phoenix on shifting more of the burden for supporting the nation's massive mortgage market to the private sector. ... The White House has already lauded efforts to achieve that goal spearheaded by Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee and Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia."
Is private sector ready to pick up the slack? Financial Times samples reaction: "Private lenders ... were willing to extend credit but lending markets were still tight, indicating that the banking system was 'not quite ready to take on the lion’s share of mortgage credit,' said [Michael] Gapen, [a senior U.S. economist at Barclays]."
Defending Obamacare
Republican scare stories about higher Obamacare premiums false, says HHS (McClatchy). "Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Monday that some state reports blaming Obamacare for sharply higher health insurance premiums next year were “factually incorrect.” Sebelius didn’t say which states she was referring to, but her push-back comes after GOP-led states such as Ohio, Georgia and Indiana recently warned of large premium rate hikes next year due to the Affordable Care Act. ... State insurance officials in Ohio originally said the average individual premium proposed for 2014 was $420, up 88 percent from the 2013 average price as reported by the Society of Actuaries. Then earlier this week, they announced that the same coverage was actually about $332 a month.
As right spreads misinformation about Obamacare, hucksters prepare to take advantage: "cammers and peddlers of health insurance-like products that sometimes dupe unsuspecting consumers are also in heavy preparation mode, eager to capitalize on the confusion policy experts say will accompany the Oct. 1 launch of the new insurance marketplaces that are a core feature of the Affordable Care Act. ... In addition to illegal schemes to defraud consumers, “There are companies and [insurance] brokers that might take advantage of consumer confusion and some of the misinformation out there about new coverage options under the Affordable Care Act,” [says Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute.]
Obamacare may be headed back to the Supreme Court (Bloomberg Businessweek). "Scores of lawsuits around the country are targeting parts of Obamacare, making another high court showdown all but inevitable and raising the possibility that some provisions in the health-care overhaul could be dismantled. The next clash may be over the requirement that employer-provided insurance plans include contraceptive coverage; a case involving that issue could reach the high court this year. The core legal question is whether companies can assert the same rights as people—the very issue that drove an ideological wedge through the court in the 2010 Citizens United case ..."
Breakfast Sides
K Street gears up tax reform coalitions: “Don’t tell K Street tax reform is in jeopardy,” Lauren French writes on Pro today. “Lobbying coalitions — backed by companies like Xerox, Wal-Mart and Cisco — are forming at a rapid pace to push for everything from a lower corporate tax rate to a territorial system and the protection of interest deductibility. There are at least seven major groups lobbying on tax reform — four of them forming this year despite an increasingly sour outlook for an overhaul.”
"About half of the outstanding $1 trillion in federal student loan debt in the U.S. isn’t being repaid," reports Politico: "And 1 out of 8 borrowers are defaulting on their loans despite unprecedented federal attempts to help. An analysis released Monday by the CFPB shows borrowers are struggling to repay their loans and are seemingly unaware of options that could them help avoid default or forbearance."
S&P screwed up when it downgraded U.S. credit 2 years ago. Here’s proof (The Washington Post): "Yes, the U.S. government might be dysfunctional. But over the past two years, prices in bond markets look like a wholesale rejection of the S&P thesis."
As labor relations board gets back to work, pizza-making strikers win small slice of justice in Milwaukee (In These Times): "The 14-month-long strike at Palermo’s Pizza in Milwaukee produced a small slice of justice this week ... Palermo’s finally agreed to comply with a finding by the National Labor Relations Board and re-hire eight workers with back pay, which will cost the pizza chain tens of thousands of dollars. The eight had been illegally fired for trying to unionize, the NLRB ruled."
This Is Who They Are, Tan Edition. From Roll Call: "Freshman Rep. Ted Yoho told constituents at a town hall event that a provision in Obamacare imposing a 10 percent tax on tanning bed use was a “racist tax” that discriminates “because of the color of my skin.""
