Obama To Act On Student Loans
President Obama to take executive action to reduce student loan debt. NYT: "Mr. Obama’s main action will be to expand on a 2010 law that capped borrowers’ repayments at 10 percent of their monthly income. The intent is to extend such relief to an estimated five million people with older loans who are currently ineligible — those who got loans before October 2007 or stopped borrowing by October 2011. But the relief would not be available until December 2015, officials said, given the time needed for the Education Department to propose and put new regulations into effect. Also, Mr. Obama will announce that the department will renegotiate contracts with companies that service federal loans to give them additional financial incentives to help borrowers avoid delinquency or default."
Senate may take up student loan reform this week. The Hill: "...the Senate may consider a bill that would allow the nearly 40 million people with more than $1 trillion in student loans to refinance to current lower interest rates. The student loans bill is part of Senate Democrats' "fair shot" 2014 agenda that included an unemployment insurance extension, minimum wage increase and pay equity for women. But it is unlikely that enough Republicans will join Democrats to advance the bill, which is paid for by raising taxes on millionaires."
Virginia Shows How Far GOP Will Go To Block Medicaid
Virginia Republicans block Medicaid expansion by effectively bribing Democratic legislator. W. Post: "Republicans appear to have outmaneuvered Gov. Terry McAuliffe in a state budget standoff by persuading a Democratic senator to resign his seat, at least temporarily giving the GOP control of the chamber and possibly dooming the governor’s push to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Sen. Phillip P. Puckett (D-Russell) will announce his resignation Monday, effective immediately, paving the way to appoint his daughter to a judgeship and Puckett to the job of deputy director of the state tobacco commission..."
Texarkana crystallizes battle to expand Medicaid. NYT: "Arkansas accepted the Medicaid expansion in the Affordable Care Act. Texas did not.Continue reading the main story. That makes Texarkana perhaps the starkest example of how President Obama’s health care law is altering the economic geography of the country. The poor living in the Arkansas half of town won access to a government benefit worth thousands of dollars annually, yet nothing changed for those on the Texas side of the state line ... none of the low-income Texarkana residents interviewed realized that moving to the other side of town might mean a Medicaid card. In fact, health researchers and those who work with the poor expect very few Americans to move between states to take advantage of the law".
The War On Coal Is Over
The war on coal is over says NYT's Paul Krugman: "At the end of the 1970s there were more than 250,000 coal miners in America. Since then, however, coal employment has fallen by two-thirds, not because output is down — it’s up, substantially — but because most coal now comes from strip mines that require very few workers. At this point, coal mining accounts for only one-sixteenth of 1 percent of overall U.S. employment; shutting down the whole industry would eliminate fewer jobs than America lost in an average week during the Great Recession of 2007-9 ... The real war on coal, or at least on coal workers, took place a generation ago, waged not by liberal environmentalists but by the coal industry itself. And coal workers lost."
KY already cutting back on coal. NYT: "Representative John Yarmuth, a Democrat from Louisville, said Kentucky had already been moving toward a future less reliant on coal because of competition from cheaper, cleaner natural gas. 'If you add all the numbers up, we can probably comply with the terms of the rule with very little impact, if any, because everybody’s heading in that direction to begin with,' he said."
Embattled Sen. Mary Landrieu to campaign at coal plant. Roll Call: "Landrieu’s opposition isn’t likely to make much of a difference in the White House’s eyes, but it gives the endangered incumbent a chance to separate herself from a president who isn’t particularly popular in Louisiana. She joins other Democrats running in red states, particularly Alison Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky, to vigorously oppose the president’s latest push on climate."
Climate regs expected to face legal challenges. The Hill: "Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA has the power to mandate states apply 'the best system of emissions reductions,' to existing power plants. Critics say the EPA is now using a definition of 'best system' that is too broad. Traditionally, the agency used “best system” to refer to specific technologies or practices to reduce pollution from plants. Now the EPA is defining 'best system' to include other flexible options states can use, including cleaner, renewable energy sources to meet the agency’s reduction targets .. [An] official said EPA wouldn’t have issued the rule if they didn’t think it would be upheld."
