• Republicans Put Conditions On Attending Health Care Summit
• Spotlight Turned On Half-Baked Conservative Health Care Ideas
• Jobs Bill Talks Slog Through Second DC Snowstorm
• Sen. Ben Nelson Backs Becker Filibuster, As WH Amps Up Filibuster Attack
• Will Republicans Back Tax Increase To Fund Transportation?
• Elizabeth Warren Takes On Wall Street In Wall Street Journal
• Is Obama Failing or Succeeding?
• Rep. John Murtha Remembered

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Much of the public believes that tax cuts "create jobs." A recent Rasmussen poll found that 59% of voters believe cutting taxes is better than increasing government spending as a job-creation tool. This proves that repeating a slogan over and over can effect what people believe.

But here is some news: Corporate taxes are on profits. So a tax cut means that the more profitable companies -- the Wal-Marts, Exxons, and other giants -- benefit. They pay back less to the government for their use of the roads, schools, courts, police, fire & military protection and all the other services that helped them get so big and powerful. So the giant monopolistic corporations that are chewing up small businesses, destroying local and regional retailers, take those tax cuts and use them to turn themselves into even better small-business-destroying machines.

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This is something people should know about. Every effort to reform financial regulations is blocked by Senate filibusters. Maybe now we know why.

From last week: Republicans Chase Wall Street Donors

Last week, House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio made a pitch to Democratic contributor James Dimon, the chairman and chief executive of J.P. Morgan, over drinks at a Capitol Hill restaurant, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Boehner told Mr. Dimon congressional Republicans had stood up to Mr. Obama's efforts to curb pay and impose new regulations.

Isaiah Poole wrote this morning,.

The bipartisan courtship rituals between big politics and big money in Washington are bad enough, but Republican leaders in Congress are in the process of taking the process to a new low by openly declaring, "Give us your money and we will do your bidding."

They do so in spite of the grassroots anger against the banking industry and polls that indicate majority support for the financial reforms that the banking industry vigorously opposes.

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The White House is trying to show it can still invest in its top priorities while also instituting a freeze on the overall level of non-defense discretionary spending. For example, the Energy Department budget for the next fiscal year is still getting a seven percent increase to help ramp up the clean energy economy.

But are such budget increases sufficient for us to real bring about such a dramatic transformation in how we power our economy?

In other words, is it even possible to move to a clean energy economy with a spending freeze in effect, no matter how flexible?

Consider that the Apollo Alliance previously concluded we need to invest $50 billion a year for 10 years in clean energy and energy-efficiency to be able to achieve sustainable energy independence.

The two-year Recovery Act investments were in the ballpark of that goal: $34 billion for energy efficiency, $8 billion for renewable energy, $11 billion for a smart electric grid, $8 billion for high-speed rail, $4.5 billion for clean energy research and development and $1 for green job training.

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I don't like to use the term "whore" lightly. But what else, in our current economic environment, would you call this?

Republicans are rushing to capitalize on what they call Wall Street’s “buyer’s remorse” with the Democrats. And industry executives and lobbyists are warning Democrats that if Mr. Obama keeps attacking Wall Street “fat cats,” they may fight back by withholding their cash.

... Senator John Cornyn of Texas, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said he visited New York about twice a month to try to tap into Wall Street’s “buyers’ remorse.”

“I just don’t know how long you can expect people to contribute money to a political party whose main plank of their platform is to punish you,” Mr. Cornyn said.

Or this?

In discussions with Wall Street executives, Republicans are striving to make the case that they are banks' best hope of preventing President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats from cracking down on Wall Street.

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• New Rules Needed So Senate Can Govern
• Bipartisan Health Care Meet. Calling Their Bluff?
• Snowstorm Buys Dems Time On Jobs Bill
• Wall Street Shifting Money To Republicans
• President Walking Fine Line On Trade
• Social Security Hysteria Redux
• Climate Roundup
• Palin Cheats To Pass Tea Party Test

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Dave Johnson wrote earlier about the Republican origins of our current deficits, but the next wave of deficits will probably come from the next wave of option ARM mortgage defaults. (via Atrios) That'll mean decreased local government revenues, more job losses, more unemployment expenditures.

More families will have a harder time paying for college, so fewer young people will get to go. More construction jobs will be lost, so those people who didn't get to go to college will have fewer living wage jobs to apply for.

The affected families will have less money to spend on goods and services, whether through increased debt or reduced income. They'll have fewer options and, because they're poorer, their economic activity will support fewer job opportunities for other Americans.

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If you've ever wondered where conservative economic policies like permanent tax cuts for the wealthy, slashed social services and government spending are supposed to lead us, look no further than Colorado Springs.

David Sirota's description of what's happening to that conservative stronghold should serve as a cautionary tale.

When the so-called tea party movement’s anti-tax activists refer to the abstract concept of conservative purity, we can turn to a microcosm like The Springs (as we Coloradoans call it) for a good example of what such purity looks like in practice—and the view isn’t pretty.

Thanks to the city’s rejection of tax increases—and, thus, depleted municipal revenues—The Denver Post reports that “more than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark; the city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops; water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead ... recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools [and] museums will close for good; buses no longer run on evenings and weekends; [and] the city won’t pay for any street paving.”

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Senator Shelby is placing "holds" (filibusters) on ALL OF the President's nominees, all by himself

Richard Shelby puts hold on President Obama's nominees

Shelby is frustrated over the Pentagon’s bidding process for air-to-air refueling tankers, which could lead to the creation of jobs in Mobile, Ala.

Over at firedoglake, emptywheel writes,

The key issue is that Shelby wants the Air Force to tweak an RFP for refueling tankers so that Airbus (partnered with Northrup Grumman) would win the bid again over Boeing. ... Airbus calculated that it would not win the new bid, and started complaining.

Essentially, then, Shelby’s threat is primarily about gaming this bidding process to make sure Airbus–and not Boeing–wins the contract (... this is the truly huge potential bounty for his state).

. . . But underlying the refueling contract is the question of whether the US military ought to spend what may amount to $100 billion over the life of the contract with a foreign company, Airbus. Particularly a company that the WTO found preliminarily to be illegally benefiting from subsidies from European governments.

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I have very little fellow feeling for the banksters, but there was a tinge of empathy the other day when I read this quote Susie Madrak picked up on from a New York Times article about Wall Street's reaction to the proposed banking tax: "The big banks, the lobbyists say, have become increasingly alarmed that the legislative process may move in unexpected directions outside their control."

Funny, that. I'm often alarmed that the legislative process might move in unexpected directions beyond my control, and I'm guessing that the many Americans who've watched their companies ship jobs overseas and close down entire departments or factories have felt the same way. As Paul Krugman estimated this week, Chinese trade mercantilism, alone, has cost around 1.5 million US jobs. However, in an effort to reverse this trend, which accelerated rapidly this past decade, the Obama administration is going to try and actively help US businesses sell products made in the US to other countries.

Shocking, I know.

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• Senate Shoots For Bipartisan Jobs Bill
• Frustration Over Health Care Strategy
• Budget Backlash
• Dodd Tries To Move Financial Reform, But In What Direction?
• Support Still Big For Climate Protection, Clean Energy Investment
• Flurry Of Campaign Finance Proposals
• China May Concede On Currency

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New unemployment data has a little good news, but doesn't show the way forward.

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Buy, Buy American Pie by The Capital Steps

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Lest we forget where the huge deficits and debt came from...

On August 25, 2001, just seven months after taking office, George W. Bush learned that his budgets had already erased the previous administration's huge surplus -- that was paying off our country's debt at a rapid rate -- and had instead forced the country to start borrowing again. Bush said it was "Incredibly Positive News''

President Bush said today that there was a benefit to the government's fast-dwindling surplus, declaring that it will create "a fiscal straitjacket for Congress." He said that was "incredibly positive news" because it would halt the growth of the federal government.

Bush certainly wasn't the first conservative to think deficits and debt were a good thing. Conservatives had for years advocated a strategy to "starve the beast" by intentionally plunging the country into debt, forcing cutbacks in government oversight of corporate behavior such as regulatory oversight, safety inspections and consumer protections.

In the 1980 campaign for President, Reagan explained his tax cut strategy, after candidate John Anderson called for spending cuts,

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