Economy
From NBC's Wendy Jones
Four members of the House GOP Conference, engaged in a little Democrat-bashing this morning, criticizing
President Obama's antiterrorism strategy and
"Speaker Pelosi's" health care plan.
Minority Leader John Boehner (OH) criticized the Obama administration for not detailing an over-arching strategy to "fight terrorists and keep America safe." Said Boehner, "I spent last week travelling...and if there's one thing I heard out there it's that the Democrats in Washington are totally out of step" with America. He went on to criticize the Administration for its plan to bring Kahlid Sheik Mohammed to New York: "To come to the US is one issue...to be given the rights of US citizens is just awful."
He urged collegues to bring Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI)'s "Keep Terrorists out of America" legislation to the floor. The bill urges Congress to oppose transferring or releasing prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility to the United States.
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From NBC's Chuck Todd
The Obama administration, via a statement from the Treasury Department, is officially asking Congress to extend the tax credit for first-time homebuyers.
From the release:
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan called on Congress to approve three important measures to improve housing and the housing market for Americans: extension of the First Time Homebuyers Tax Credit for a limited period, extension of higher loan limits for home mortgages, and secure funding for the Housing Trust Fund. "We welcome efforts taken by Congress to extend the First Time Homebuyers Tax Credit for a limited period. This credit has brought new families into the housing market and contributed to three consecutive months of rising home prices nationwide," said Secretaries Geithner and Donovan.
From NBC's Ali Weinberg
Our latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll surveyed more than 1,000 adults across the country. We followed up with a handful of these respondents, to get their thoughts on President Obama, Afghanistan, health care, and more. Below are some excerpts from these interviews, and here's a
Web video with their comments.
On Obama the PresidentAndrew Maxwell, California: If I have one criticsm of the Obama administration it's that they're too tepid. Ultimately they're worried about political atmospherics too much.
Rosalind Godin, Maryland: I know he inherited a lot of problems from the previous administration and I know it's going to take a lot of time to correct some of those problems.
Brian Gross, Maryland: We are seeing some of the same old tried and unproven solutions to things, so I dont think the last ten months have been incredibly productive... I was very excited at the prospect of someone who could be a bridge builder. I haven't seen a lot of bridges being built right now.
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From NBC's Athena Jones
Per an administration official, President Obama tomorrow will visit a small business in Maryland, where he will announce a package of initiatives that will increase credit to small businesses.
The proposal will increase the caps for existing Small Business Administration loans and give smaller banks better access to TARP funding to encourage more lending to small business.
Video:
Jared Bernstein, chief economist and economic policy adviser to Vice President Biden discusses President Obama's plan to announce an increase in credit and lending to small businesses.
New data shows that the economic stimulus plan created -- get ready for it -- just over 30,000 jobs and has Republicans criticizing the stimulus as a failure. "The White House defended the partial data, which included jobs saved or created from contracts that made up just 5 percent of the $339 billion in stimulus funds spent through September.
Though White House economists stressed that the data was incomplete, they still used it to argue that 1.2 million jobs had been either saved or created by the stimulus through September."
In a speech yesterday, Tim Geithner warned that the government should be careful not to withdraw stimulus support too soon and that growth will be slower than expected.
The Washington Post examines yesterday's big financial news -- that banks are raking in big profits. "The results have undercut conventional wisdom that the prosperity of banks depends on the prosperity of their customers. Generally, bank profits lag behind economic recoveries as banks wait for people and businesses to start borrowing again. But the federal government has reversed that relationship by investing more than $1 trillion in its efforts to prop up financial markets, seeking to revive the banks as a means of reviving the economy."
from NBC's Kelly Paice
The House Financial Services Committee passed a bill today putting stricter regulations on financial derivatives–a multitrillion-dollar market–in an effort to bring transparency to the system. Derivatives are the complex financial securities that are widely blamed as a major contributor to the recent economic crisis.
"The bill is the first in a series of measures the Obama administration and congressional allies are pushing to remake the financial system," The Hill writes. The committee passed the bill on a vote of 43-26, with lone Republican Rep. Walter Jon (R-N.C.) voting in favor alongside all Democrats. Leaders in the House are hoping for votes in November, however it will likely take the Senate longer to take up the legislation.
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the Financial Services Committee, will now turn his focus to the creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which Frank said he hoped to complete the markup of the legislation by Wednesday. However, this measure has been "much more contentious," The Hill writes. Republicans and those in the financial sector have shown strong opposition to the creation of a new agency.
There might not be a BIGGER problem for the Obama administration and the Congressional Democrats to
deal with going into an election year than the fact that Social Security recipients are NOT receiving a COLA increase. Will the one-time $250 payment be enough?
"How quickly the $250 proposal could be enacted is uncertain. Partisan wrangling in Congress has been intense, holding up even relatively uncontroversial bills, such as the proposal to extend jobless benefits for three more months.
The stopgap measure passed the House more than three weeks ago, and Senate Democrats last week offered a version that would extend benefits another 14 weeks for the long-term unemployed in every state, plus six more weeks for those in the hardest-hit states. But legislative aides said Senate Republicans, concerned about adding to the deficit with short-term borrowing to fund the measure, were still working on amendments to the bill."
BTW, the
AP notes the $250 comes up to about a 2% increase for Social Security recipients.
Administration officials said Obama
wants to “generally” pay for the bill, but did not specify how he will fund it.
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White House senior economic adviser Larry Summers decided to engage House GOP leader John Boehner on the issue of the economy.
"In a letter to House Republican leader John Boehner, White House chief economic adviser Lawrence Summers said President Barack Obama "is committed to not repeating the fiscal mistakes of the last eight years."
Summers' letter was in response to correspondence Obama received last week from Boehner and other top House Republicans, who complained that the administration was having no impact on unemployment and recommended a series of tax breaks to invigorate the economy.
Summers replied that the $787 billion stimulus package that Congress passed at Obama's urging contained a mix of spending and tax relief that helped avert a worse economic downturn. He said that while unemployment now stands at 9.8 percent, the pace of job losses is decreasing from an average of 691,000 jobs per month in the first quarter of this year to a 256,000 monthly average in the third quarter."
More: "Summers promised to review the Republican suggestions, which included small business tax exemptions and lowering the 15 and 10 percent tax rates for all taxpayers.
Speaking at an economic conference Monday in St. Louis, Summers said growing unemployment was the most important economic problem facing the Obama administration."
More: "The second half of Summers's letter was devoted to arguing that Republican presidents are to blame for deepening the nation's deficits with "fiscal irresponsibility." In the 1980s, the nation's debt as a share of the overall economy nearly doubled, he wrote. Under President Bill Clinton, who appointed Summers to high-ranking Treasury posts, that trend reversed itself, he said.
Summers added that three major initiatives under Bush -- tax cuts, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a Medicare prescription drug bill -- are projected to add $6 trillion to the nation's deficits."
Citing the "national mood" of anxiety about unemployment,
Atlantic Media Group political director Ron Brownstein said on “Meet The Press” that a job stimulus package is on the White House's horizon. "There is discussion about a job creating--a, a tax credit for people who create jobs. The problem is it's expensive to do that in a meaningful way. And the next area of the debate will be if we go down the road of trying to create a jobs incentive tax credit, do you take the money away from already allocated dollars for the stimulus or do you simply make the deficit larger?" Brownstein added that while a decision is not imminent, "they're beginning to discuss this."
by NBC's Bobby Cervantes
President Obama today urged Americans to support the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, a new federal entity intended to shield consumers from predatory lending and establish and enforce regulations on banks and mortgage brokers.
The new agency “will have just one mission: to look out for the financial interests of ordinary Americans,” the president said in an East Room address this afternoon. “It will be charged with setting clear rules of the road for consumers and banks, and it will be able to enforce these rules across the board.”
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA), who introduced the bill over the summer, has said the Office of Thrift Supervision and Comptroller of Currency would merge to create the new agency--a move which those offices have criticized. According to the Wall Street Journal, the bill would also strip goverment funding allocated to the Federal Reserve, another critic of the plan, for its consumer-oversight responsibilities, including mortgage regulation. Frank said the Financial Services Committee would vote on the CFPA's creation some time next week.
The president targeted critics of the plan in his speech: "It has never been more important to have a watchdog function like the one we've proposed. And yet, predictably, a lot of the banks and big financial firms don't like the idea of a consumer agency very much," Obama said, singling out the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which, he said "is spending millions on an ad campaign to kill it."
Referring to the proposed consolidation, Obama said, "With seven different federal agencies each having a role, there is too little accountability, too many loopholes, and no single agency whose sole job it is to stand up for people...Under the reforms we've proposed, that will change. The new Consumer Financial Protection Agency that I have asked Congress to create will have just one mission: to look out for the financial interests of ordinary Americans."
