House Minority Leader John Boehner spent last week rolling out the Republican Party's economic platform, which as near as anyone can tell, would consist mainly of fervent complaining about President Obama.
As Newsweek found, though, beneath the gruff, orange-ish exterior of Boehner and the Republican policy agenda is an inconvenient truth.
There's only one problem with Boehner's message: so far, the things that Republicans have said they want to do won't actually boost employment or reduce deficits. In fact, much the opposite.
By combing through a variety of studies and projections from nonpartisan economic sources, we here at Gaggle headquarters have found that if Republicans were in charge from January 2009 onward-and if they were now given carte blanche to enact the proposals they want to-the projected 2010-2020 deficits would be larger than they are under Obama, and fewer people would probably be employed.
The math is pretty straightforward.
I recommend checking out the whole thing, but the short version is that you can't pay down the national debt with fiery rhetoric and tax cuts for the wealthiest one-percent.
I worked on Capitol Hill for a long time, and I do not consider myself naive about the inner workings of Washington. But even I was surprised by two revelations this week exposing the amount of money the oil industry is spending to buy political influence.
The first eye-opener came from recently released lobbying numbers. The OpenSecrets blog reported that the oil and gas industry poured $174 million into the political system in 2009. That's eight times more than the green groups.
What did the oil and gas industry get for its money? A handful of Senators who blocked all attempts by the Senate to pass a comprehensive clean energy and climate bill that would have made fossil fuel industries start cleaning up their global warming pollution.
This week's second revelation made that difference abundantly clear. Jane Mayer wrote an investigative piece in the New Yorker about the brothers David and Charles Koch who run Koch Industries -- the biggest corporation you've never heard of -- and who have spent more than $100 million on anti-government causes.
Koch Industries owns oil refineries and 4,000 miles of pipeline, and was named one of the top 10 air polluters in the nation in a 2010 UMass-Amherst report. The Kochs' political donations are often aimed at promoting their libertarian views, but they also directly benefit their own profit margins. They have donated millions of dollars to nonprofit groups that fight environmental regulation and seed doubt about climate science. In fact, a Greenpeace report called them a "kingpin of climate science denial." And though green groups tend to paint ExxonMobil as the worst of the worst when it comes to lobbying against climate legislation, Koch outspent even ExxonMobil.
One of David Koch's pet projects is the group Americans for Prosperity, a group he founded and funds but positions as a grassroots movement. An ad for one of its training sessions for Tea Party activists says, "The voices of average Americans are being drowned out by lobbyists and special interests. But you can do something about it."
But when Americans for Prosperity hosts at least 80 events protesting climate legislation, is it really acting in the interest of average Americans or the interest of oil industry donors?
When it funds an attack ad against Representative Betsey Markey from Colorado because she supported climate legislation last summer that would have brought 30,000 jobs to her state, who is it benefiting?
And when the group pledges to spend an additional $45 million before the midterm elections, is that money really coming from grassroots activists, or from deep corporate pockets? These fat cats pretend to fraternize with the ordinary folks who dangle tea bags from their tri-cornered hats, but, in fact, they are just using activists to put a populist face on their industry agenda.
Manipulating other people's fears about the economy when you are a billionaire -- I would call that the depth of cynicism. But considering those billionaires are getting in the way of climate solutions, clean energy and green jobs in America; I have to instead call it dangerous.
Oh, Theodore. All of those Hamilton County Republican Party meetings appear to have muddled your head.
To recap, Ninth-District-by-way-of-the-Fifth-District Republican challenger Todd Young has been in hot water as of late over his (complete lack of a) stance on Social Security. And after weeks of bad press, he's had enough -- enter Obama bashing, stage far-right.
In a telephone interview from his New Albany campaign office at 3122 Blackiston Mill Road, Young said Hill needed to explain his [federal stimulus funding] vote with the jobless rate in Indiana still hovering around 10 percent.
"I predict this is the last thing [Hill] is going to want to talk about, but it's the big issue that voters care about," Young said.
The issue with this line of attack, of course, is that Baron Hill is more than willing to talk about the jobs that federal funds have created in the Ninth District. He even has -- gasp! -- facts.
Daniel Altman, communications director for the Hill campaign, responded to Young's remarks by saying cities and towns across the 9th District including Georgetown, Seymour, Jeffersonville and Marengo are benefiting from the stimulus.
The new wastewater treatment facility being constructed for Georgetown was spurred by stimulus dollars.
"Todd Young needs to check his facts," Altman wrote in an e-mail.
Young's problem is simple: he's running a national narrative campaign in a local narrative race. He has air-dropped press releases from Washington, consultants from Virginia, and a stale message that sounds like it was written for GENERIC REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE X, not a Southern Indiana campaign.
For the same reason that the Ninth District cares about what Social Security means for them, they care about the job situation at home first and foremost. Maybe if Young had a few more years under his belt actually living in Southern Indiana, he'd know that by now.
(An excellent, excellent post. - promoted by Thomas)
I was disappointed to see the usually-sharp Ed Kilgore fall into the trap of buying Mitch Daniels' spin - in a recent piece on Mitch Daniels' presidential prospects, Kilgore wrote that "his state's positive fiscal record stands out sharply against a national landscape of state fiscal disaster." Ed, if you believe that, I think Mitch has a bargain-priced $50 billion invasion of Iraq to sell you.
Far from being the "island of growth" that Mitch Daniels likes to pretend we are, Indiana is struggling just as much as the rest of the region. And it's not just Daniels' phony jobs announcements that are the problem - Indiana has a real problem with unemployment. And I don't see any hope of fixing that when the party that controls the state executive branch and the state Senate won't acknowledge that there's a problem.
A cursory glance at Indiana's unemployment rate gives you the outlines - 10% unemployment, using the standard U-3 measure. When you look at the bigger picture, it gets even worse. Using the broadest measure - U-6, which includes "marginally attached" workers and those working part-time who would rather be working full-time - more than 18% of Hoosiers can't find a real job. That means Indiana is worse off than our neighbors in Illinois, Ohio, and Kentucky.
Just yesterday, the Indianapolis Star ran a piece on how Indiana's job picture is worse than our neighbors. A recent study by the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project shows that Indiana ranks 6th-worst in the nation when they measure declines in employment from November 2007 to May 2010. It's simply unacceptable for the Governor of the state that ranks 44th in employment growth to be celebrating our nonexistent jobs. The objective reality is that Indiana's employment growth trails Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, and Kentucky (and almost every other state in the US).
It's easy for Mitch to spin Indiana's unemployment when our neighbors to the north in Michigan are facing the worst unemployment rate in the nation. But he shouldn't get a free pass just because Hoosiers are marginally better off than the hardest-hit state.
But what about Indiana's budget? It's often asserted that Indiana has a "positive" budget and that we have a surplus. And that's true - if you choose to selectively leave out a large chunk of Indiana's finances.
Indiana is one of 26 states who are in debt to the federal government because they can't afford to pay out their unemployment insurance benefits, according to ProPublica. Indiana's Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund has been insolvent since at least 2008, and we currently owe almost $2 billion to the federal government for the state's share of UI benefits. Just a couple of months ago, at Mitch Daniels' urging, the state postponed a law that would raise UI rates to start paying off that debt.
Sales tax collections, though higher than April 2009, are lower than FY 2008, FY 2007 and even FY 2006 levels. Year to date sales tax collections are 5% below prior year. If the -5% trend continues for the full fiscal year it will be the worst performance in state history, exceeding FY 2009's record of -4.7%. The budget as passed projected sales tax collections equal to prior year. April individual income tax collections are the lowest in five years. Year to date income tax collections are 11% below prior year-on top of an 11% decline for FY 2009. The budget as passed projected a 1% decline in individual income tax collections for FY 2010. (Source: Indiana State Budget Agency)
May's monthly revenue report showed that "revenue collections through eleven months of the current state fiscal year are now $1.032 billion or 9% below the budget passed by the General Assembly."
If Governor Mitch Daniels and Indiana Economic Development Corporation lackey Mitch Roob thought that the fallout from WTHR's scathing investigative pieces had finally settled, they are sorely mistaken. This morning's Courier & Press covers the continuing aftershocks emanating from Democratic leaders.
Bauer, D-South Bend, sent Indiana Secretary of Commerce Mitch Roob, who is also the head of the Indiana Economic Development Corp., a formal request under the state's open records laws for more information on the number of jobs created in Indiana and the financial incentives the state has traded for those jobs in recent years.
Bauer acknowledged the Indiana Economic Development Corp.'s authority to keep details of its negotiations with companies secret, but he said Hoosiers should be able to scrutinize how state dollars are being spent in a year the state has slashed K-12 education spending by $300 million.
He cited the Indiana Economic Development Corp.'s obligation under a provision of a law passed this year to provide details on how many jobs companies promised, how many they actually created and what incentives they received.
For his part, Roob has abandoned his earlier strategy of "I don't have to tell you anything" to a more flexible "I'll tell you something when I get around to it." Daniels continues to assert -- surprise, surprise -- that he thinks this whole thing is just a bit overblown.
Keep an eye out for even more pressure in the coming weeks, especially from two of our top-notch statewide candidates: Pete Buttigieg and Sam Locke.
As WTHRhas been reporting for what seems like months now, Governor Mitch Daniels and his failed FSSA chief head economic development officer Mitch Roob have been -- ahem -- less than forthcoming with what most would call "the truth" about Indiana's job creation statistics.
Put another way, they've just been making crap up for quite a while now.
Bauer said he is concerned that Indiana is spending scarce state resources to lure companies to Indiana with incentives and tax breaks and then not getting all of the jobs promised by those companies.
"As you may know, K-12 education has been cut by $300 million. Some estimate that as many as 7,000 teachers will lost their jobs," Bauer said in his letter. "I would urge the IEDC to exercise its discretion in favor of sharing vital information with Hoosier taxpayers about Indiana's true level of job creation success."
Under a new state law, the IEDC is required to provide job promise, creation and incentive data, upon request. The economic development agency has been reluctant to release that information to avoid jeopardizing future business deals.
Yesterday I posted a video from the recent WTHR investigative report that revealed Governor Mitch Daniels and his minions -- namely Mitch Roob, of FSSA privatization infamy -- have been a bit generous in their job creation numbers.
As in, roughly 40% of the jobs they're citing don't exist.
Daniels wasn't featured in the first report, but yesterday's follow-up brought out Bad Mitch. You know, the spiteful, snarling Mitch that can't stand it when people question his judgment.
(See also then-OMB director Mitch Daniels dismissing critics of the Iraq War by calling their $200 billion price tag "very, very high" -- the current tab has pushed past $1 trillion.)
Regardless, it appears that the Mitch's got their signals crossed:
To help clarify how many job commitments have resulted in actual jobs, WTHR asked the governor if the state would release specific information to show which job commitments have been fulfilled and which ones have not, along with the number of jobs each company has created in Indiana.
"The IEDC board meetings are public, and plenty of enterprising reporters choose to attend them and those numbers are available there," Gov. Daniels replied.
His statement contradicts what Roob told 13 Investigates a week ago when WTHR asked for the same information.
"Most of what IEDC has is sheltered from public disclosure for competitive reasons," Roob explained. "That is a competitive weapon that companies believe can be used against them by their competitors... the confidentiality we promise to companies that do business in Indiana is very important to us. That is confidential information."
In the four stages of crisis recovery that Mitch Daniels has used, we're almost to step four. For those of you keeping track, we've gone through (1) Ignore, (2) Dismiss, (3) Irrationaly Defend, and are almost back to...(4) Ignore.
Now there's a headline that Governor Mitch "We don't need no stinkin' jobs" Daniels probably didn't want to see just days after asserting that the federal stimulus funding his own administration says is creating jobs isn't, uh, creating jobs. Confused? So is Mitch, apparently:
But as the two-year, $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act continues forward, a higher percentage of money will be distributed through competitive grants.
"These grants are the next phase of the stimulus program," said Cris Johnston, who as Indiana's executive director of government efficiency and financial planning has tracked much of the state's stimulus spending.
"The federal government spent most of the summer putting together the guidelines for these programs, so this is really starting to take off now."
Governor Mitch Daniels, yesterday on Fox News, talking about federal stimulus spending in Indiana:
"I don't think you can point to much effect so far. Government spending doesn't create jobs...We have to improve the conditions for people to create wealth," Daniels said. "I'm very concerned that a lot of policy in Washington is headed in the wrong direction."
Governor Mitch Daniels, today and for the last six months, talking about federal stimulus spending in Indiana:
Governor Daniels has already taken action to utilize stimulus funds in the smartest and fastest ways possible. Before the federal package was signed into law, Indiana had identified 'shovel ready' highway and clean water projects throughout the state. These projects will put more Hoosiers to work. Indiana was among the first states to certify its participation with the U.S. Department of Labor to provide an additional $25 weekly to Hoosiers eligible for unemployment insurance.
Talk about being left out in the cold -- after years of experience in the home and business weatherization industry, it appears that numerous local contractors across the state were denied stimulus dollars for that purpose. The (purported) reason may (not) surprise you.
While many are happy the money's finally been approved, critics have questioned how the state has allocated its portion of the $52.7 million to weatherize 19,700 Indiana homes.
Every Indiana county is served by a not-for-profit community action agency with years, if not decades, of experience doing weatherizations. But four of the 24 agencies did not get any stimulus money.
Instead, that funding went to private companies. Most notably, $20.7 million, nearly 40 percent of the total funding, went to the Indiana Builders Association, which has given $185,000 to Gov. Mitch Daniels' political campaigns since 2004. The association also hosted a reception for Daniels' re-election bid in August 2008.
The association has never administered a home energy conservation or weatherization program. Yet, it will be weatherizing 3,285 homes, serving 38 counties including LaPorte.
I have no doubt that the IBA is fully capable of doing the work they have been charged with completing. One does have to wonder why existing, locally-managed weatherization entities would be passed over, especially with the oft-cited goal of state officials being to maximize efficiency with stimulus programs.
The headline of a story in this morning's South Bend Tribunereads simply: "Foes say climate legislation threatens RV industry comeback."
The argument, so these foes say, is that any attempt to curb carbon emissions will cripple the just-now-recovering recreational vehicle industry that has suffered so much under the current economic downturn.
[Vice President of public policy at the Greater Elkhart Chamber of Commerce Kyle] Hannon believes, perhaps, no area in the country would be affected more by cap and trade.
"The biggest draw to businesses now is we have reliable and affordable energy here," Hannon said. "I'm worried about the whole country, but for local businesses this will be a real problem. We will not have affordable energy if this passes. It could create a 40 to 60 percent hike, and it will hurt job creation and effect the RV business here."
First things first: there are certainly valid arguments on both sides of this issue, especially in terms of the disproportionate impact this legislation could have on Indiana.
That being said, I can't help but wonder if Hannon is missing a more critical point -- namely, the fact that the RV industry of yesteryear will almost certainly need to evolve if it is to survive. The movement toward "green" vehicles and energy efficiency has begun, and will undoubtedly continue its march forward in the decades to come. Argue all you want about cap-and-trade, but there can be no denying that innovation will need to come to the RV industry if it is to survive in the long-term.
That revolution can begin right here at home, and regardless of what happens with this current legislation, our state's industrial backbone will be strengthened by a decided movement forward, rather than back.
Last night saw Governor Mitch Daniels take to the boob tube in order to unveil his budget proposal to the world, a mere four or five weeks after it would have been constructive for him to, you know, unveil this budget proposal.
In a live TV address Monday night, Gov. Mitch Daniels revealed the broad strokes of a new two-year budget plan that includes increases for public education and spends about $300 million of the state's surplus.
The use of reserves is a major departure for the governor, who has prided himself on spending no more than state coffers take in. This change would clear the way for an unbalanced budget for the first time under Daniels.
But he said overall state spending will be reduced by almost 3 percent.
First of all, while it is nice to see Daniels join the discussion a six months after it started, you kind of have to wonder what the hell happened in the last few weeks to make the guy change his mind on so many key gripes he had with the budget proposal he helped kill at the end of the legislative session.
Just a short while ago, dipping into the state's reserves was a deal-breaker. Now it's the centerpiece of Daniels' much-ballyhooed plan.
Oh, and education spending is going up. Or is it? Word on the street is that the pledge to not cut any school's funding extends only to the per pupil figure, something that could find urban and rural districts losing cash next year while Mitch's friends in the suburbs enjoy double-digit increases.
A lot of potentially fuzzy math, and not a lot of details at this point.
So I guess if anything, we should give the guy full credit for at least being open and up-front about his latest plan to blatantly disregard the rule of law in the name of political expediency.
A new $3.1 billion price tag for the extension of Interstate 69 between Indianapolis and Evansville can be reduced by ignoring some federal rules, Gov. Mitch Daniels said.
Speaking Monday to a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce of Southwest Indiana in Evansville, Daniels said the Indiana Department of Transportation estimate released last week could be trimmed by bypassing some federal highway construction standards.
``Throw away the rule book to the extent the feds will let you do it,'' Daniels said he told INDOT officials.
Daniels discussed ignoring the mandated width of the interstate median or simply making the road top much thinner than, you know, the law allows.
Indiana under Mitch Daniels: Leading the pack in the race to the bottom.
(Oh, and stay tuned for next week, when Governor Daniels will announce how much money Hoosier businesses could save by just ignoring those pesky federal minimum wage regulations!)
Governor Mitch Daniels has to be on cloud nine. His legislative agenda derailed, and the world crumbling around him, all it took was 48-hours of vague veto threats to send the General Assembly toward a special session. And with that special session comes a great opportunity for the Mitch to try and re-market himself as the great steadying force of our state government. Mike Smith of the AP looks at where we stand:
The Senate passed a two-year budget bill on the final day of the regular session, but it was defeated in the narrowly divided House.
Daniels said he would have vetoed it anyway, mostly because he said it would have chewed through the state's reserves and left a $1 billion shortfall at the end of the biennium. He noted that tax collections in April were $255 million below the target set in the fiscal forecast released earlier that month, and he thinks revenue in May and June won't meet the forecast either.
So, he essentially said to lawmakers, go back to the drawing board and pass a budget plan that spends about $1 billion less than the one voted on April 29.
Lawmakers, for their part, appear less than enthusiastic at the prospect of slashing funding on, well, everything. Even the Republican leadership is having a hard time finding their bearings.
[State Sen. Luke] Kenley said that having another revenue forecast conducted was fine, but, "We are never going to crystal ball this enough to give him a comfort level."
Kenley also alluded to the possibility that if a budget can't be concocted to meet Daniels' exacting, inexact standards, a veto-override could be in the cards. With Rep. Brian Bosma leading his House Republicans down the path of "lapdog," though, it would probably take a lot of trauma to present that as an opportunity.
Lest you think the disastrous end to the legislative session was a purely partisan affair, both the Senate Republicans and House Democrats have made it abundantly clear that they have serious problems with the way Governor Mitch Daniels handled himself in the final negotiations. Now, both caucuses are calling for the man downstairs to stop his vague grandstanding and start providing the details needed to find a workable solution.
"I've invited the governor to tell us what his solution is because obviously we haven't met his standards," said Senate Appropriations Chairman Luke Kenley, R-Noblesville. "We need to hear more from him."
House Speaker Pat Bauer, D-South Bend, agrees, saying "he needs to come out with a budget - not just vague references. Numbers, numbers, numbers. Then we can work on it from there."
Daniels, meanwhile, has made no decisions on when the special session will happen or the course it will take.
Of course, this was likely Daniels' plan all along -- he had a much better political interest in a special session, anyway, and we can expect to see him continue his tsk-tsking for at least a few more weeks.
For those of you who have already watched President Obama's weekly radio address, you know that Indiana's own Baron Hill was on the receiving end of a PAYGO love-fest courtesy of the leader of the free world. Here's where we're at:
In his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday, Obama called on Congress to pass a pay-as-you-go legislation, known as PAYGO, that would require new federal spending to be offset by budgetary cuts or tax hikes.
"We need to adhere to the basic principle that new tax or entitlement policies should be paid for," he said, asserting that PAYGO "helped transform large deficits into surpluses in the 1990s. Now we must restore that sense of fiscal discipline."
Fiscally conservative Democratic lawmakers, known as Blue Dogs, told Obama on Friday that they're working on a PAYGO plan and that they prefer to offset new spending with spending cuts elsewhere. Rep. Baron Hill of Indiana will introduce legislation next week, a Democratic aide told FOXNews.com
And they said the Blue Dogs and Obama couldn't get along...
And so it went, up and down the street, in between tents and tables, squeezing past pedestrians to inspect the offerings in one booth after another, we milled around this marketplace in downtown Baghdad for more than an hour. I told reporters afterward that it was just like any open-air market in Indiana in the summertime.
"I think, rightly understood, the cap and trade legislation represents an economic declaration of war on the Midwest by liberals in Washington, D.C.," Pence said in a telephone interview.
Real War = Peace. Energy Independence = War.
Any questions?
And by that, I mean any questions as to why the Republican Party was summarily rejected by the American people last year?
With all of the tea party nonsense going on around the statehouse last week, it was easy to miss the sense of urgency beginning to develop as the General Assembly gets down to crunch time. With just a few dwindling days remaining to pass legislation, at least one problematic fix is raising the possibility that Gov. Daniels could call a special session.
Indiana's unemployment trust fund has been running a deficit since 2001, meaning it has been paying out more in benefits than it takes in from business taxes.
The economic crisis exacerbated the problem, and the fund ran out of money last year. The state has already borrowed $725 million from the federal government to cover unemployment claims, and that amount is likely to surpass $1 billion by the end of the year.
The task for lawmakers is threefold - restructure the system so it is solvent on a long-term basis; raise enough money to pay back the federal government; and build a comfortable reserve for the future.
The proposed solutions also have been threefold - raise taxes on employers, cut benefits and limit eligibility, all during a painful national recession.
Among the many reasons that it would be a very bad idea for legislators to push this debate into a special session were those protesters last Wednesday. Taxpayers are hurting, and they likely won't have much sympathy should lawmakers be forced to make the costly decision to push the debate past the due date.
For his part, Gov. Daniels is characteristically helpful:
Gov. Mitch Daniels was unavailable for comment, but his press secretary said he "considers this issue one that must have a resolution."
The Indiana Department of Workforce Development released unemployment figures this morning for March that show Indiana has a 10% unemployment rate, the highest that number has been since November 1983. According to the Indianapolis Business Journal, the state now ranks eighth in the nation in unemployment. In March 2008, Indiana's unemployment rate was 5.3 percent.
During last year's gubernatorial campaign, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels referred to Indiana as being on a "hot streak" economically and in several speeches called Indiana an "island of prosperity" in the contest with Democrat Jill Long Thompson and Libertarian Andrew Horning. We now see that as those speeches were given, Indiana was really on the hot seat and an island of propaganda when it comes to the Govfather's economic policies.
The IBJ article cited figures showing the Indianapolis metropolitan area's non-seasonally adjusted rate jumped a half-percentage point, to 8.7 percent, according to the report. The number of unemployed in the area leapt from 73,088 in February to 77,462 in March - a jump of 4,374, the report said.
"Uncertainty in the manufacturing sector, particularly automotive, is causing a ripple effect in Indiana," Teresa Voors, commissioner of the Indiana Department of Workforce Development, said in a prepared statement. "We saw employment declines in auto manufacturing, transportation and logistics as Indiana plants produce, assemble, transport and warehouse fewer products."
Indiana's unemployment rate continues to exceed the national jobless rate, which was 8.5 percent in March, up from 8.1 in February.
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The Indiana Department of Workforce Development released unemployment figures this morning for March that show Indiana has a 10% unemployment rate, the highest that number has been since November 1983. 
