Each morning, Bill Scher and Terrance Heath serve up what progressives need to affect change on the kitchen-table issues families face: jobs, health care, green energy, financial reform, affordable education and retirement security.
Action On Jobs Face Resistance This Week
Congress takes up $200B jobs, jobless aid, and tax legislation, with majority support uncertain. CQ: "The first obstacle comes from Senate moderates, such as Republicans Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine and Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska. They are pushing for more of the [cost] to be offset ... The second problem comes from business-friendly Democrats, such as Mark Warner of Virginia and John Kerry of Massachusetts, who have been skeptical of the largest offset in the bill, higher taxes on the 'carried interest' profit-sharing income of private equity fund managers, venture capitalists and real estate investors."
Pessimistic assessment for amendment to prevent mass teacher layoffs. W. Post: "Senior Democratic aides said finding votes for the tax and war bills will be tough enough without an additional $23 billion in deficit spending for teachers. Sen. Tom Harkin ... will offer the teacher money as an amendment during Senate debate, but Democratic aides said the provision has no chance of passing."
State fiscal crisis squeezes child care funding, pushing more to take welfare assistance. NYT: "The cuts to subsidized child care challenge the central tenet of the welfare overhaul adopted in 1996, which imposed a five-year lifetime limit on cash assistance. Under the change, low-income parents were forced to give up welfare checks and instead seek paychecks, while being promised support — not least, subsidized child care — that would enable them to work. Now, in this moment of painful budget cuts, with Arizona and more than a dozen other states placing children eligible for subsidized child care on waiting lists, only two kinds of families are reliably securing aid: those under the supervision of child protective services — which looks after abuse and neglect cases — and those receiving cash assistance. Ms. Wallace abhors the thought of going on cash assistance, a station she associates with lazy people who con the system. Yet this has become the only practical route toward child care."
HuffPost's Robert Kuttner warns the US not to follow Europe's austerity plan: "With the exception of a few smaller nations, the large deficits in the OECD countries are not the result of fiscal profligacy, but of revenue losses caused by the downturn. And in the case of Greece, supposedly the poster child for profligacy, the new Socialist Papandreou government is having to clean up after the fiscal finagling of its conservative predecessor. Greece certainly needs tax reform to make sure that so many of its very wealthy do not hide their assets. It does not need general austerity."
Geithner, Clinton in China this week, will push for currency reforms. McClatchy: "Unlike Democrats in Congress who are calling for retaliatory tariffs on Chinese products, Geithner maintains a low-key approach to China, noting he feels that public pressure will not get China to change."
China says it will gradually adjust currency. Bloomberg: "[President] Hu is 'sending a signal' that China is working on the currency issue even if the nation isn’t yet ready to announce a policy shift, Frank Lavin, a former U.S. undersecretary of commerce, said ... 'They are trying to say we know this is high on your agenda.'"
Yes, we can still blame Bush. Paul Krugman says so: "... the return of job growth we've already seen is ahead of schedule compared with the historical average. And one thing is clear: the financial crisis occurred on Bush's watch. To demand that everyone let Bush off the hook for where we are now because 16 months have passed under his successor is to defy the overwhelming evidence of history."
Will The Conference Be Televised?
Congress prepares for House-Senate conference on Wall St. reform, which Rep. Barney Frank wants on TV. Politico: "...Frank (D-Mass.) even wants C-SPAN there, he said, to capture their decision making — and expose members who vote with Wall Street ... negotiations will continue to take place in private, with squadrons of lobbyists for financial firms trying to grab their last chance to shape the legislation ... The Chamber of Commerce has identified two provisions as its top priorities — eliminating the Senate bill’s requirement that banks spin off their derivatives operations and blunting the independence of a new consumer financial protection agency ... The White House will fight any further carve-outs for specific industries from CFPA oversight and will press hard to undo an exemption written into the House bill for auto dealers. On derivatives, the White House is concerned about more firms and industries seeking exemptions from a requirement that all derivatives are cleared by a third party..."
Bankers nervous they can't strip derivatives firewall in conference. Politico: "Wall Street officials have been told that conference committee members who will begin trying to meld the Senate and House versions of financial reform this week will finally administer last rites, probably just after Lincoln’s June 8 runoff. But given the track record thus far, bank officials are not so sure."
NYT reports Wall St. execs relieved they didn't take too big a hit:" "'If you talk to anyone privately, there’s a sigh of relief,' said one veteran investment banker who insisted on anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue. 'It’ll crimp the profit pool initially by 15 or 20 percent and increase oversight and compliance costs, but there’s no breakup of any institution or onerous new taxes.'"
But NY Magazine reports on a huge rift between President and Wall Street: "Today, it’s hard to find anyone on Wall Street who doesn’t speak of Obama as if he were an unholy hybrid of Bernie Sanders and Eldridge Cleaver."
NYT explores the strategic choice to pursue more regulation and not limits on bank size: "Prominent liberals outside Congress, including Joseph E. Stiglitz, the Nobel-winning economist, warned that it made more sense to limit what companies could do than to keep building taller fences ... Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard Law professor whose proposal for the agency was embraced by the president and included in the bill, said that the essence of her idea was the creation of a more nimble form of government."
Robert Reich raises two cheers for the Senate finance bill, in FT op-ed: "... it sets up a council of regulators to monitor 'systemic risks', creates a consumer protection division within the Federal Reserve charged with coming up with rules to protect consumers from abusive lending practices, allows the government to seize and liquidate failing financial companies and gives regulators new powers to oversee the giant derivatives market, forcing most trading on to open exchange ... [But both House and Senate] bills exempt 'customised' derivatives from the exchanges ... Yet many of the derivatives that caused the most trouble (read Goldman Sachs and other banks' deals with AIG) might well be thought of as customised."
Will Feds Takeover Spill Response?
HuffPost's Peter Daou asks why isn't our outrage equal to the Gulf oil spill: "President Obama can launch as many fact-finding commissions as he sees fit. But we shouldn't be impressed that they are doing what we elected them to do — it's their job to deal with emergencies promptly and effectively. Far more is called for in this uniquely cataclysmic circumstance: a level of outrage, alarm, intensity and focus worthy of the size and scope of the spill ... Offense, not defense."
Gov. Bobby Jindal and other LA officials ramp up pressure on feds. McClatchy: "At question is an emergency permit applied for by Louisiana to protect its coastline, a request that includes dredging sediment to create barrier islands between oil and wetlands. Louisiana's emergency proposal was denied on Saturday by the Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps is unsure of the environmental impact of emergency barriers ... While Jindal attempted to remain diplomatic on Sunday, his political boat-mate, [Plaquemines Parish President Billy] Nungesser, was not. Nungesser told reporters that his parish has had a plan in place for several weeks to protect its ecology but homegrown methods of protection have been denied. 'They are bureaucrats made to stand in the way and question things to death,' Nungesser said. 'That's how they justify their jobs. Fire all those guys and let's just do the right thing.'"
Interior Sec. raises prospect of federal takeover of spill response. The Hill: "'If we find that they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, we'll push them out of the way appropriately ...' Salazar added. Salazar said that BP is 'throwing everything they can' at the problem. 'Do I have confidence that they know exactly what they're doing? No, not completely,' Salazar said, adding that’s why the Energy Department, NASA and other officials are involved in the effort to contain the pollution and block the gushing well 5,000 feet under the ocean surface."
But Coast Guard says only BP has the expertise. McClatchy: "The comments by Adm. Thad Allen, the commandant of the Coast Guard, signaled that the U.S. government wouldn't take a larger role in stopping the five-week-old spill even as frustration in the Gulf coast grows over the Obama administration's policy of letting BP run the cleanup."
More coastal drilling projects approved, despite on new wells. NYT: "...since the April 20 explosion on the rig, federal regulators have granted at least 19 environmental waivers for gulf drilling projects and at least 17 drilling permits ... Department of the Interior officials said [the moratorium] t was not meant to stop permits for new work on existing drilling projects like the Deepwater Horizon. But critics say the moratorium has been violated or too narrowly defined to prevent another disaster ... However, Newfield Exploration Company has confirmed that it began drilling a deep-water well in 2,095 feet of water after April 20."
President to visit solar panel manufacturer Wednesday. W. Post: "While the government races to stop the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico and clean up the dirty, dangerous spill, Obama will be touring an ultra-modern company that aims to reduce the nation's dependence on crude ... White House officials are betting that people will look favorably on the president's drive to invest in alternative sources of energy even more in the wake of the spill."
