Archive
A College Test for Washington: Help Young People in Need, or Kowtow to Bank Lobbyists?
It should be, as the President once called it, a "no-brainer": Overhaul our broken system for distributing federal student loans. Stop giving banks undeserved profits for administering these loans (an estimated $80 billion over ten years), since they take no risk and...
Doubling Exports
In the State of the Union speech President Obama set a goal of doubling American exports by 2015. The Commerce Department is launching a National Export Initiative to work on getting this done. The National Export Initiative is focused on three key areas: 1. A more...
My Big Fat Greek Bailout
While Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was on the talk shows reassuring America that the economy is healing, developments in Europe threatened to cut the legs out from under a U.S. recovery. The short story is that Greece and a number of other European Union (EU)...
Not As They Do: Conservatives and the Deficit, Pt. 2
Sarah Palin's keynote speech was quite a hit at this weekend's Tea Party convention. She even took a shot at pinning responsibility for the deficit on the Obama administration. "The Obama-Pelosi-Reid agenda will leave us less secure, more in debt and under the thumb...
Tell The Senate: Stand With Students. Not Sarah Palin's Big Bank Buddies.
Right now, we taxpayers give big banks billions to subsidize their student loans. Giving big banks money is decidedly unpopular after the TARP bailout, among liberals and conservatives. So you'd think there would be consensus to end the subsidies. Apparently not....
Right-Wing Line That "Uncertainty" In D.C. Is Killing Jobs Doesn't Hold Up
On Friday, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics released its report that another 20,000 Americans had lost their jobs in January, the right-wing spin machine immediately unleashed one of their tried-and-true talking points: that the reason the economy is not creating...
Progressive Breakfast - 2/9/2010
Republicans Put Conditions On Attending Health Care Summit Republican leaders tell Obama they may not show up for health care summit. W. Post: "Leading House Republicans raised the prospect Monday night that they may decline to participate in President Obama's...
Tax Cuts HURT Small and Medium Businesses
Much of the public believes that tax cuts "create jobs." A recent Rasmussen poll found that 59% of voters believe cutting taxes is better than increasing government spending as a job-creation tool. This proves that repeating a slogan over and over can effect what...
Quid Pro Quo: Collecting Wall Street Money For Blocking Financial Reform
This is something people should know about. Every effort to reform financial regulations is blocked by Senate filibusters. Maybe now we know why. From last week: Republicans Chase Wall Street Donors Last week, House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio made a pitch to...
Spending Freeze Threatens Goal Of Clean Energy Economy
The White House is trying to show it can still invest in its top priorities while also instituting a freeze on the overall level of non-defense discretionary spending. For example, the Energy Department budget for the next fiscal year is still getting a seven percent...
