Budget: The White House strategy on the budget is coming into sharper focus. Obama administrator Jack Lew met with Senate Democrats yesterday and tried to sell them on the “debt trigger” that Obama proposed in April deficit-reduction speech. Such a trigger would require tax hikes if certain deficit targets are not met.
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House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) has come out against a draft Executive Order that would that would make many provisions of the failed DISCLOSE Act law by fiat. The order would require all companies that sign contracts with the federal government to report on the personal political activities of their officers and directors. The AP reports:
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The Hill has a headline out now reading “Republican rift widens on Medicare.” Their only source for this claim? The fact that Sen. Pat Toomey’s (R-Pa.) budget does not cut Medicare like Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) does:
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The Corner‘s Stanley Kurtz is tired of conservative bellyaching over the existing GOP field. Under the header “This is Your Pawlenty Wake-Up Call” he writes:
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Yesterday, NBC’s First Read described Obama’s “last seven days” as “his best week — politically — since his inauguration.” Later that day, NBC released their latest poll and the the results can only be interpreted as discouraging for the White House.
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Boehner: Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) took a hard line on debt limit negotiations with the White House last night, telling the Economic Club of New York, “It’s true that allowing America to default would be irresponsible. But it would be more irresponsible to raise the debt ceiling without simultaneously taking dramatic steps to reduce spending and reform the budget process.” “We’re not talking about billions here.
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Just as quick as it came, Obama’s Osama bounce as fading fast. First, last Friday, Gallup found that Obama 6-point bounce to 52% had already fallen back to 51%. That number held steady today.
Pew had found a 9-point Osama bounce (47% to 56%) last week. Today, Pew reports, two-thirds of that bounce is already gone. Obama’s approval rating is already down to just 50%.
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Senate Democrats want to do something about about high gas prices. They also want to do something about the deficit. So now they are trying to kill two birds with one stone: they are going to raise taxes on oil companies and use the proceeds to pay down the debt.
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Paul Krugman is right about one thing in his column today: “What we are experiencing right now is a top-down disaster.” Unfortunately, Krugman does intend this sentence to mean that our economy is suffering from too much top-down central planning in Washington.
No, Krugman just wishes that he was the central planner. If he had been, Krugman claims, we wouldn’t have the deficits we have today. Here is how Krugman assigns blame for our current deficits:
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National Review‘s Robert Costa has a nice piece up today on Sen. Mike Lee’s (R-Utah) campaign to tie passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment to the debt ceiling vote:
Lee’s dogged pursuit of a balanced-budget amendment, however, faces hurdles inside the Senate GOP conference, where all senators support the proposal, but many are wary of using it as a bargaining chip.
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The wages of Walker’s win: According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, public employee unions in Wisconsin may just choose to decertify instead of facing the yearly recertification votes required by Gov. Scott Walker’s budget bill. The Journal-Sentinel reports: “Under Walker’s legislation, public employers could no longer collect membership dues on behalf of unions and workers would no longer have to pay dues to unions if they decline to do so.
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According to Republican sources on the Hill, President Obama may be days away from signing an Executive Order that would make many provisions of the failed DISCLOSE Act law by fiat. As we reported last month, the order would require all companies that sign contracts with the federal government to report on the personal political activities of their officers and directors.
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From today’s Department of Labor Employment Situation Summary:
Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 244,000 in April, and the unemployment rate edged up to 9.0 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.
Today’s report again demonstrates how weak the Obama Recovery is compared to the Reagan Recovery. 22 months into President Reagan’s economic recovery, unemployment had fallen 3.5 points from a high of 10.8% in December 1982 to 7.3% in September 1984.
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Jobs: The approval rating numbers for Obama are already in. His Osama bump is small (about 6 points) and very narrowly limited to terror related issues (Afghanistan/foreign policy). But at 8:30 am today we will get an indication of how long that bump may last.
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