Report

This morning’s release of the June 2011 Employment Situation report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed a labor market in retreat. Virtually every single measure was weak: only 18,000 payroll jobs were added, nominal wages fell, unemployment was up in almost all age groups, more than 250,000 workers dropped out of the labor force altogether, and the public sector continued to bleed jobs. Furthermore, a downward revision to last month’s data means that this is the second month in a row with job growth at 25,000 or less. This is a remarkable, across-the-board backslide. more »

A new Democracy Corps/Campaign for America's Future survey on House Republican budget proposal shows Americans are skeptical of Republicans in Congress and the Tea Party movement, and cautious about the deficit reduction plan.

Our data shows that proposals to dismantle Medicare in the 2012 House Republican budget could sink the political futures of those who for it. When the budget is described, using the language of its chief author, support collapses to 36 percent. The proposed cuts to Medicare raise concerns for nearly two-thirds of respondents. more »

Democracy Corps surveyed 1,000 likely 2012 voters from Feb. 7-9, testing voters’ responses to the Republican proposal to cut $32 billion from the federal budget. more »

Politicians will face major voter backlash if they advocate cuts in Social Security benefits or choose deficit reduction over job creation, according to a poll by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner commissioned by the Campaign for America’s Future and Democracy Corps. This poll is based on interviews with 1,000 voters and is an in-depth look at how both conservative and progressive approaches toward federal spending resonate with likely voters. more »

by James K. Galbraith, Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr. Chair in Government/Business Relations, Lyndon
B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin, and Vice President, Americans for Democratic Action. June 30, 2010.

Mr. Chairmen, members of the commission, thank you for inviting this statement. more »

A majority of Americans are highly concerned about the state of manufacturing in America and would support a new, government-led manufacturing policy, according to a poll conducted during the spring of 2010 for the Alliance for American Manufacturing .

Key findings of the poll:

• Voters are anxious about the economy—specifically China debt, spending and loss of manufacturing. more »

Throughout the financial reform debate, the finance industry has waged an unprecedented assault on the democratic process, spending an estimated $1.4 million per day to influence Congress and hiring 70 members of Congress and 940 former federal employees to lobby on their behalf. Many of the current big-bank lobbyists were architects of the too-big-to-fail banking regime while they were employed in Congress or elsewhere in the federal government. They are now drawing lucrative salaries from the banking behemoths they helped create and are scoring victories that assure the continued existence of Wall Street’s casinos, despite the threat they pose to the American economy. more »

With billions in profits on the line, banks have waged an intensive, multimillion-dollar political and lobbying campaign against changes in the federal student loan program that would end billions in subsidies for the banks. They have enlisted six Democratic senators to raise concerns about the reform effort with Senate leadership. This report documents the extensive ties between the six senators—Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark.; Mark Warner, D-Va.; Tom Carper, D-Del.; Ben Nelson, D-Neb.; Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and Jim Webb, D-Va.—and major players in the student loan industry. more »