"Words that make actions speak louder."
Sens. Max Baucus and Chuck Grassley announced a bipartisan agreement for a “jobs” bill, tracking the earlier draft versions which Sen. Jon Kyl accurately described as not really a jobs bill but an exercise in “extending a bunch of tax policy and related items that we need to do.” It doesn’t necessarily have awful provisions. […]
The possibility exists for the Senate to pass a bipartisan jobs bill. It just won’t do much to create jobs. The Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl, typically a fountain of misinformation, gets this one right in Bloomberg: “Kyl … said Democrats shouldn’t advertise the package as jobs legislation because it’s just ‘extending a bunch of […]
Yesterday, following the NYT report that bank lobbies, led by private lender Sallie Mae, were succeeding in stalling student loan reform, Education Secretary Arne Duncan shot back. The Washington Post reported on Duncan’s blistering retort: “Working Americans pay while bankers get rich,” Duncan said in a prepared statement. “Sallie Mae executives have paid themselves hundreds […]
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. After the House passed President Obama’s proposal to end the subsidies, offer students direct […]
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 increase to help ramp up the clean energy economy. But […]
Yesterday I noted that we 402,000 new jobs a month, for three years if we are to simply return to the level of employment we had before the recession. The latest monthly employment report showed a slight dip in the unemployment rate and underemployment rate, but also another loss of 20,000 jobs. (As Paul Krugman […]
One thing I learned watching the climate debate last year is: don’t pick a fight with Joe Romm. For example, the Freakonomics boys had their reputation permanently sullied by the brilliant policy analysis and Climate Progress blogger after daring to play loose with the facts about climate science, leading to a devastating takedown in the […]
The Senate leadership appears to be on the verge of proposing a jobs package significantly smaller than the $154B bill that has cleared the House, even though everybody agrees even the House bill is not big enough to reverse the 7 million jobs already lost in the recession. It is urgent that your Senators hear […]
A discussion with Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio shows in stark relief how Republicans are trying, and failing, to be seen as the party of the middle class.