Progressive Breakfast

House Passes GOP Budget

House GOP passes budget that 'should not be allowed in a humane society'. Common Dreams: "By a vote of 219 to 206, the House on Friday approved a GOP-crafted budget resolution that proposes more than five trillion dollars in cuts to key safety net programs like Medicare and Medicaid to pave the way for massive tax cuts for the wealthy and massive corporations. No Democrats voted for the budget, and 18 Republicans voted against it... Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF), denounced the GOP budget resolution in a statement following Thursday's vote, arguing it is 'the first step toward an immoral tax scheme that will hand trillions of dollars to millionaires and corporations at the expense of America's working families, many of whom will actually see a tax increase.'"

Treasury Deletes Internal Report on Negative Impact of Corporate Tax Cuts

Treasury buries own findings on tax cut consequences. WaPo: "In 2012, in the George W. Bush administration, the nonpolitical career people in Treasury’s Office of Tax Analysis, a sort of internal think tank, released a paper explaining their latest findings: that 82 percent of corporate taxes were borne by capital owners, and 18 percent were borne by labor. Workers don’t literally write the check, of course, but corporate taxes may discourage investment and therefore lead to lower wages... The Treasury paper was published in an elite academic journal. Outside of tax wonk circles, the numbers were generally ignored. Until now. That’s because Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has been lately claiming that nearly all the corporate tax burden is passed on to workers. It’s an argument that he has to make if he hopes to sell the administration’s tax cuts — which even a large share of Republicans opposes — as a helping hand for the Forgotten Man... Tax watchers and interviewers began pointing out that Mnuchin’s claims were at odds not only with most credible estimates but also with those of his own staff. Which clearly annoyed Mnuchin. So Treasury took the unusual — unprecedented? — step of quietly deleting the inconvenient findings from its website."

Trump Scraps Clean Power Plan

Trump takes a first step toward scrapping Obama’s global warming policy. NYT: "The Trump administration will repeal the Clean Power Plan, the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s effort to fight climate change, and will ask the public to recommend ways it could be replaced, according to an internal Environmental Protection Agency document. The draft proposal represents the administration’s first substantive step toward rolling back the plan, which was designed to curb greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector, after months of presidential tweets and condemnations of Mr. Obama’s efforts to reduce climate-warming pollution."

EPA Nominee Refuses to Recuse Over Conflicts

Trump EPA nominee refuses to recuse himself from cases involving chemical companies he worked for. ThinkProgress: "Trump’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency’s chemical and pesticides office refused Wednesday to pledge that he would recuse himself from decisions connected to the companies for whom he worked during his long career as a toxicologist for the chemical industry. At a contentious confirmation hearing, Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee repeatedly asked Michael Dourson, nominated to serve as assistant administrator of the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, whether he would recuse himself from decision-making where he saw a conflict with his past work. Dourson balked, saying he would rely on EPA ethics officials to make any decision on recusal."

Progressives Mount Grassroots Voter Challenge in Ohio

Ohio progressives seek to upend Democratic establishment in upcoming elections. The Intercept: "Voters in Columbus — Ohio’s largest city — will head to the polls this November to choose between a group of Democratic Party-endorsed incumbents for city council and the school board and a slate of progressive challengers backed by the Working Families Party. The challengers, running under the banner of “Yes We Can,” were inspired by the Bernie Sanders campaign and seek to unsettle a narrative that claims 'Columbus Is Already Great.'"

Scandal Over Private Plane Use Grows

So did Trump just Tell Everyone They Could Use Private Planes? Jezebel: "The day before Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price resigned over his colossal overuse of private planes, Energy Secretary Rick Perry—who has never been the most graceful of public officials—reportedly took a chartered jet to visit a uranium facility in Ohio. This is just the latest in a cascade of stories about Trump administration officials flying private like they are members of a red-hot boy band, which really begs the question: did someone—say, an orange-headed guy who doesn’t know how anything works—tell them they could do that?"