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thehill.com — Speaker Nancy Pelosi threw lawmakers’ summer plans into chaos Wednesday, announcing the House will interrupt its six-week recess and return to Washington next week to act on Medicaid and education funding for states.

Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced the news via Twitter, saying, “I will be calling the House back into session early next week to save teachers’ jobs and help seniors & children.”

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politico.com — Surprising even themselves, Democrats broke through Republican lines in the Senate Wednesday and moved quickly to call the House back into session to complete passage of a long-sought fiscal aid bill intended to avert layoffs of state workers and public school teachers this fall.

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washingtonpost.com — Two Republicans crossed party lines to advance the $26 billion package, handing President Obama a victory in his campaign to bolster the shaky economy. With many governors struggling to close gaping budget deficits, administration officials feared a fresh round of state layoffs or tax increases could knock the nation's wobbly recovery off-course.

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blog.aflcio.org — The Senate today voted 61-38, to end a Republican filibuster of aid to state and local governments that would save or create nearly a million jobs for teachers, public employees, police officers, firefighters and others.

The bill provides $16 billion for a Medicaid funding assistance program known as FMAP and $10 billion for teachers’ jobs. Without such funding, the states facing huge budget shortfalls will be forced to begin massive layoffs that could cost nearly a million workers their jobs. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) put it this way:

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nytimes.com — In February 2009, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which among other things provided $2.4 billion to encourage development of a domestic industry to make lighter, more energy-dense lithium-ion batteries to power electric vehicles.

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grist.org — The anemic economic recovery may have hit the dog days of summer with consumer spending and factory orders slowing, but the new energy economy continues to surge, according to a report released Tuesday by Ernst & Young.

Venture capital (VC) investment in renewable energy, electric cars, energy efficiency, and other green technology jumped to $1.5 billion in the United States in the second quarter of 2010, a nearly 64 percent spike over the second quarter of last year. Green tech investment now has returned to the record levels of the third quarter of 2008, before the global economic collapse shut down the VC's ATM.

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online.wsj.com — James Currell is struggling to prevent his Minnesota home from being foreclosed. But his lender isn't a bank. It is the U.S. government.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is facing the prospect of foreclosing on a number of properties in the coming months, from homes to commercial buildings, a result of a souring mortgage portfolio it took over when it helped bail out Bear Stearns in 2008.

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nytimes.com — The furloughs that popped up during the recession are being replaced by a highly unusual tactic: actual cuts in pay. Local and state governments, as well as some companies, are squeezing their employees to work the same amount for less money in cost-saving measures that are often described as a last-ditch effort to avoid layoffs.

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bloomberg.com — U.S. consumer bankruptcies, after rising 9 percent last month from June, might exceed 1.6 million this year, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute.

The 137,698 bankruptcy filings in July also represent a 9 percent increase from a year earlier, the institute said yesterday in a statement posted on its website, citing data from the National Bankruptcy Research Center.

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online.wsj.com — In a letter to Senate leaders Monday, 22 firms including Bank of America Corp., General Electric Co. and Hewlett-Packard threw their support behind a recent proposal from Sen. Max Baucus (D., Mont.) that would end certain small tax breaks on overseas income, raising $11.5 billion over 10 years to pay for tax incentives the firms are eager to maintain, including the research tax credit.

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