GOP Filibusters The Corporate Tax Breaks It Wants
Senate Republicans reach new heights of obstruction. Bloomberg: " ... they hit a roadblock yesterday on the Senate floor amid a broader partisan feud over whether Republicans could offer amendments to the bill. Now, with the Republican-led House taking a different approach on the tax breaks, the issue may not be resolved until a lame-duck session after the November election ... Republicans, who usually champion tax cuts, scuttled the $80 billion-plus proposal that many of them support, saying their constituents’ views were being stifled ... Republicans said they want the chance to offer amendments on any tax matter, starting with a proposal backed by some Democrats to repeal a 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices."
Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden seeks a deal. The Hill: "Wyden said he would quickly consult with Republicans on possible amendments to the legislation ... Still, Wyden also didn’t sound any more open to allowing votes on issues such as repealing ObamaCare’s medical device tax, which was the main amendment that Republicans were pushing. In a statement, he later said he was 'open to narrowly related amendments.'"
Fast-Food Strikes Spread Worldwide
Fast-food worker strikes go global. Bloomberg: "Actions were scheduled yesterday in 150 U.S. cities including New York, Chicagoand Los Angeles and in more than 30 countries including Germany, Japan and the U.K. as part of a campaign seeking wages of $15 an hour and the right to unionize ... 'Workers have sparked a conversation about income inequality and do we want to stand by these companies who employ mostly women with children and are pushing them into poverty,' Kendall Fells, organizing director at the New York chapter of Fast Food Forward ..."
CEOs yet to offer meaningful raises. Time: "A McDonald’s in Detroit gave all workers a 10¢ raise after a December walkout. A Dunkin’ Donuts in Hartford, Conn., offered 50¢ raises to some workers. A single worker at a Detroit Wendy’s got a $1 raise last May ... Still, there are signs that the pressure of the protests is beginning to resonate in both corporate headquarters and state and city legislatures. In its annual financial report earlier this year, McDonald’s acknowledged for the first time that a long-term trend toward higher wages 'may intensify with increasing public focus on matters of income inequality,' a clear nod to the strikes."
We need stakeholder capitalism, not shareholder capitalism, says W. Post's Harold Meyerson: "[The Wall Street Journal] noted that roughly 1,700 U.S.-based companies currently are holding $1.5 trillion offshore rather than bringing it home and paying taxes on it. 'But that,' the story said, 'has left the bulk of their funds for paying dividends or buying back shares effectively out of reach.' Actually, those funds locked away abroad could be put to more uses than buying back shares or paying dividends if those companies brought them home. They might fund more research and development, or start a new product line, or even give employees a raise. But ... American big business these days is in the business of rewarding shareholders (a group that very much includes chief executives), to the exclusion of any other activity that might help companies flourish."
Breakfast Sides
House finance reform limps out of the Senate committee. NYT: "The Democratic-controlled Senate Banking Committee approved the bill in a 13-to-9 vote, with only half of the panel’s 12 Democrats voting in favor. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, is unlikely to bring the measure to a vote on the Senate floor, according to Senate aides who said it needed wider support among Democrats ... Many liberal Democratic senators and housing advocates raised concern that the bill would drive up the cost of mortgages without giving enough attention to ensuring that all creditworthy borrowers had access to loans. Democrats and Republicans also voiced worries it would give big banks too much control of the lending business."
Senate public works committee approves transportation infrastructure bill, without deal on funding. The Hill: "This bill reauthorizes the federal gas tax, which collects $34 billion a year. That would provide $204 billion over the next six years, which is not enough to pay for the [$265B in] projects the panel wants to fund ... The Senate Finance Committee will have to look at other funding mechanisms to make up the difference ... The House, however, has yet to take significant action on a transportation bill, and some observers are skeptical a deal could be carved out."
GOP can't admit when it's wrong, says NYT's Paul Krugman: "...hard as it is to admit one’s own errors, it’s much harder to admit that your entire political movement got it badly wrong. Inflation phobia has always been closely bound up with right-wing politics; to admit that this phobia was misguided would have meant conceding that one whole side of the political divide was fundamentally off base about how the economy works. So most of the inflationistas have responded to the failure of their prediction by becoming more, not less, extreme in their dogma ... The same kind of thing is clearly happening on the issue of global warming ... As the evidence for a changing climate keeps accumulating, the Republican Party’s commitment to denial just gets stronger."
