The May jobs numbers – with a net growth of 175,000 jobs – shows an economy that is treading water. There is no change in the unemployment rate or number of unemployed, no change in number of long-term unemployed. Worse, there is no change in the employment-population ratio, which “has shown little movement” over the [...]
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The U.S. Congress votes readily to subsidize the big banks to our peril. The Congress lavishes subsidies to Big Oil to our shame. Congress allows Big Pharma to help health care costs bankrupt us. But Republican senators Lamar Alexander, Tom Coburn and Richard Burr say it is “playing politics” to subsidize student loans that help [...]
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Democrats now delight in watching Republicans flounder as they try to free themselves from the failures of President George W. Bush and the extremes of the Tea Party. But the GOP’s tribulations should not blind Democrats to their own challenge. The party must free itself from the legacy of former President Bill Clinton and the [...]
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On Tuesday, a “sinkhole” suddenly sank in Washington D.C. three blocks from the White House. Not a metaphor, but a massive hole in the road as “long as a Ford Explorer,” double the width of a train car and 17 feet deep. The asphalt eroded around a metal plate covering potholes in the street and [...]
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Thursday on Bloomberg Television, Robert Borosage made the case for Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Bank On Student Loan Fairness Act, which would set student loan interest rates at the same rate banks get from the Federal Reserve discount window: “There is a universal consensus that we have to educate the next generation. And now college is [...]
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On July 1, interest rates on student loans will double, jumping to 6.8%, according to current law. While the Big Banks are now enjoying interest rates of almost zero. Enter Elizabeth Warren with her first bill as a Senator: It solves the problem by giving students the same rock-bottom interest rates as the big banks. [...]
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College students today graduate with the terrible burden of an average of $25,000 in student-loan debt. That total increases with the rising costs of tuition, even at public colleges and universities, and by the actions of our own government in letting the rates for student loans rise. If nothing is done by July 1, the [...]
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The Senate campaign in Massachusetts will be close and hard fought. Ed Markey, the winner of the Democratic primary, knows he has to run a bare-knuckled, knock down, full bore campaign to win. So it is notable that one of the first appeals to his supporters is to enlist them in telling the president that [...]
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This week, President Obama will travel to Austin, Texas to call for action on jobs. The proposals the president put forth in his State of the Union address – investing in infrastructure, expanding preschool, bolstering manufacturing assistance centers, raising the minimum wage – have been blocked in the Congress, and disappeared from the public debate. [...]
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Democrats are enjoying the spectacle of Republican disarray. All of Washington is sinking in popularity, but Republicans rank lowest in public esteem. The old right-wing wedge issues – guns, gays, racial division, the war on women – now bolster Democrats rather than weaken them. Republicans in Congress are so divided, they can barely unite around [...]
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