February 23, 2013

Senator Sanders

Banks Bailed Out by Taxpayers Dodge Taxes On Moyers & Company on PBS this weekend, economist Richard Wolff says he learned a few days ago – “and I got it actually from senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont – that during the very years 2009, '10, '11, when the federal government was basically bailing out the biggest banks in the United States, they were busily establishing or operating subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands, in the Caribbean, in order to evade taxes.” LINK, VIDEO

Climate Change Senate environment committee Chairman Barbara Boxer is pushing climate change legislation with Sen. Sanders. “She declines to admit the obvious: That the measure is dead on arrival in the GOP-controlled House and even faces grim prospects of seeing the light of day on the Democratic-controlled Senate floor. She insists the legislation serves a purpose nonetheless. ‘You want to have a bill out there that people can rally around,’” Boxer told National Journal. LINK

Global Warming Legislation by Sens. Sanders and Boxer amounts to “an environmentalist’s wish list,” Alex Seitz-Wald wrote for Salon. Their proposal would put a price on carbon, regulate fracking, invest in green energy technology “and thus is probably little more than a sacrificial lamb so that Obama can move on to phase two: executive action.” Farron Cousins blogged for Ring of Fire about a boast by the oil industry’s top lobbyist that the bill is doomed. “The American Petroleum Institute wields a lot of power in Washington, and if Jack Gerard says that a bill won’t see the light of day, he means it.” LINK

Sequester Across-the-board spending cuts set to take effect on March 1 would affect the Department of Defense, The Examiner reported. Sen. Sanders, the article added, has tweeted in the past that “The US has tripled its defense spending since 1997 and spends more on defense than the rest of the world combined.”  LINK

American Legion Sen. Sanders, chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, will speak at the American Legion’s 53^rd conference in Washington on Tuesday. Conversations are expected to center around sequestration and its impact on defense, Business Wire reported. LINK

National

Lengthy Impasse Looms Lawmakers in both parties anticipate that a looming set of spending cuts will take effect next week and won't be quickly reversed. It had been thought that the cuts, some $85 billion through the rest of the fiscal year, could be averted or quickly replaced with a longer-term deficit-reduction plan. Those expectations have now dissipated. No significant negotiations are known to be under way between the two parties, which are at an impasse over Obama's demand that any plan to replace the cuts include more tax revenue, according to The Wall Street Journal. LINK

Obama Eager to Break Promise Not to Cut Social Security Aides point to Obama’s continued willingness to swallow, over the intensifying objections of most of the left side of his party, a new way of calculating inflation adjustments for Social Security benefits that would reduce the growth of payments – in effect, a benefit cut, The New York Times reported. LINK

Sequester Showdown President Obama called Saturday for Congress to compromise and turn off automatic, across-the-board budget cuts set to kick in a week from now. In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama says the so-called sequester will slow the economy and hurt the middle class. He wants a plan to deal with the deficit that mixes spending cuts with more tax revenue, The Associated Press reported. LINK

Bankrolling Obama President Obama’s political team is fanning out across the country in pursuit of an ambitious goal: raising $50 million to convert his re-election campaign into a powerhouse national advocacy network, Obama aides have made clear that the new organization will rely heavily on a small number of deep-pocketed donors, not unlike the “super PACs” whose influence on political campaigns Obama once deplored, according to The New York Times. LINK

Bank Pays CEO $11.5 Million; Cuts 11,000 Jobs Citigroup awarded Chief Executive Officer Michael Corbat $11.5 million after making plans to cut 11,000 jobs, The Wall Street Journal reported. The United States’ third largest bank also outlined a new pay plan that ties executive compensation to stock performance. LINK

Minimum Wage Economist Richard Wolff told Bill Moyers that 15 million Americans would benefit from raising the minimum wage to $9 per hour, The Raw Story reported. A 2012 study reported that higher retail wages would benefit hundreds of thousands of Americans and enable them to lift themselves out of poverty. LINK

F-35s Grounded The Pentagon on Friday suspended the flights of all 51 F-35 fighter planes after a routine inspection revealed a crack on a turbine blade in the jet engine of an F-35 test aircraft in California.It was the second grounding of the warplane in two months and marked another setback for the $396 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, the Pentagon's biggest weapons program, Reuters reported. LINK

Vermont

Shumlin on Sequester The nation's governors are becoming prominent voices in the fight to cut the federal deficit, warning that Capitol Hill's latest budget stalemate is radiating fresh waves of uncertainty that threatens economic progress in their states. Gov. Peter Shumlin said the nation "cannot afford to put at risk jobs and the recovery,” AP reported. “The only thing that's standing in the way of prosperity right now is the games being played by the Republicans in Congress," he said following a meeting Friday between Democratic governors and President Barack Obama.

Cap-and-Trade in New England Ten states, including Vermont, have been experimenting with the cap-and-trade system of limiting carbon pollution through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, The Washington Post reported. While carbon emissions and electricity bills are lower, Wonkblog argued that the recession may be a large factor.  LINK

Soda Tax Fizzles A House committee defeated legislation that would have levied a tax on soft drinks to pay for public health education and the ongoing state health care overhaul, AP reported.  LINK