Jobless Aid Advances
Extended unemployment insurance clears first Senate hurdle, but more hurdles remain. AP: "...six Republicans sided with Democrats on a 60-37 Senate vote to keep the measure alive ... [Sen. Dan] Coats, for one, immediately made clear that his vote came with conditions attached. He said he opposes the measure as drafted ... [He] believes any extension in benefits should be offset by cuts elsewhere in the budget to prevent deficits from rising ..."
Sen. Maj. Leader Reid open to offsetting cost to win bipartisan support. The Hill: "Republicans hailed Reid’s remarks as a significant development in the battle over unemployment assistance that has dominated the start of the year, but Reid suggested it will be difficult to find an offset that both parties can agree upon ... 'right now they should understand the low-hanging fruit is gone. We’ve scavenged every place we can go,' ... 'I understand the majority leader said he was open to discussing the issue of paying for an extension of unemployment insurance. I hear the administration is open to discussing paying for it, as well. There may be a way forward here,' said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell..."
Republicans struggle to find acceptable offsets, reports Bloomberg: "Options may include restrictions on collecting disability and unemployment benefits at the same time, or reallocating money from funds that federal agencies didn’t spend before the end of the year. South Dakota Senator John Thune said he would back a payroll tax break for businesses that hire long-term unemployed workers. Thune’s proposal would include low-interest loans to long-term unemployed workers who would have to relocate to take a new job. None of those proposals have gained much support so far, and neither have ideas from Democrats. New York Senator Charles Schumer, the chamber’s third-ranking Democrat, has floated paying for the benefits by ending a tax break that lets U.S. companies deduct expenses when they move operations overseas. Republicans have opposed that idea."
Any offsets should be delayed to avoid undercutting stimulative effects, argues TNR's Jonathan Cohn: "Unemployment insurance is a terrific form of economic stimulus, because, according to most research, the people who get it spend it right away. But to get the maximum effect, you’d want the offsetting cuts or revenue to take place in the future. Is that what the Republicans have in mind? Already there’s talk of paying for the benefits extension by taking money away from the Affordable Care Act, which would mean helping unemployed workers at the expense of people who need help paying for their health insurance. That’s obviously a non-starter."
Dems Emboldened On 50th Anniversary of the War on Poverty...
Watch LBJ declare War on Poverty in his 1964 address to Congress.
After long retreat, Dems reengage. US News: " In recent decades, they have spent a considerable amount of time talking about the middle class, but conversations about the poor, have fallen by the wayside. Even during the Clinton administration, welfare reform, which reduced benefits for the poor, was hailed as a signature achievement for the party ... But with the 2014 election on the horizon, all of that is about to change. After decades of pressure to move to the middle, Democrats are rolling out a political agenda smaller in scale than Johnson's 'War on Poverty,' but equally as ambitious in today's partisan landscape."
"Three Lessons for Liberals Today" from TNR's Mike Konczal: "Focus on citizens' rights, not needs ... Giving people money works ... Plan for times when work alone won't cut it..."
White House poverty report embraces government action. WSJ: "The White House’s report reiterated many of the Obama administration’s recent statements on income disparities, saying that federal programs are necessary to help families. The White House report said that programs like Social Security and the Earned Income Tax Credit helped many Americans either deal with poverty or avoid it ... 'The most important lesson from the War on Poverty is that government programs and policies can lift people from poverty,' the White House report says. 'Indeed, they have for the past 50 years.'"
Paul Krugman pinpoints why the war has not yet been won: "There’s more sheer misery in America than there should be, but less than there was. Even so, progress against poverty has obviously been disappointing. But why? Here’s where it’s important to realize that conservatives are stuck with a fossil narrative ... The narrative in the 1970s was that the war on poverty had failed because of social disintegration ... But that was a long time ago. These days crime is way down, so is teenage pregnancy, and so on; society did not collapse. What collapsed instead is economic opportunity."
Poverty stats often lack context, notes Dean Baker: "Polls consistently show the public hugely exaggerates the share of the bugdet that goes to programs like Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) or food stamps. They believe that these anti-poverty programs are responsible for a large share of the budget when in reality their impact is marginal. (TANF accounts for about 0.4 percent of federal spending and food stamps account for 2.1 percent.) This is partly due to the fact that these items are always reported as millions or billions of dollars, which are very large numbers that few people can conceptualize. They are rarely reported as shares of the total budget."
...While Republicans Scramble
The Republican anti-poverty agenda doesn't exist, argues Business Insider's Josh Barro: "On the cyclical side, Republicans favor a variety of policies that would make the unemployed and marginally employed worse off. They want to cut government benefits to the poor: they oppose extension of emergency Unemployment Insurance benefits, they want modest cuts to food stamps, they want to repeal the Medicaid expansion. Of course, Republicans don't want the poor to live off government benefits; they want them to get jobs. Unfortunately, Republicans also oppose macroeconomic policies to promote full employment, such as deficit spending, infrastructure investment, and monetary stimulus."
Boehner is worried about the "compassion gap" argues NYT's Thomas Edsall: "...one of the ironies of political economy that support for the liberal agenda declines just when the needs of the needy are strongest. Conversely, when the economy begins to expand and the spending cuts sought by conservatives would be least painful, support for conservative belt-tightening drops ... President Obama knows he has Boehner and the Republican House on the defensive ... John Boehner can read tea leaves as well as anyone, and he knows that in order to protect his members who are running in battleground districts, he cannot afford to let the compassion gap get too wide. The Tea Party is the loser in this calculus and the long-term unemployed are likely to be the winners."
Sen. Rubio plans poverty speech today. McClatchy: "Rubio, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, is one of several high-profile Republicans who are pushing their party to re-engage in the debate over income inequality, an issue largely ceded to Democrats over the years, as it’s shaping into a populist issue for the 2014 congressional elections."
House Maj. Leader Cantor pushes school choice as anti-poverty measure. WSJ: "Mr. Cantor’s proposals, to be made in a speech at the Brookings Institution, will focus on access to charter schools and school vouchers ... 'School choice is the surest way to break this vicious cycle of poverty and we must act fast before it is too late for too many.'"
