“…on Friday, I signed into law a bill that will do two things for the American people. First, it will keep thousands of construction workers on the job rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure. Second, it will keep interest rates on federal student loans from doubling this year – which would have hit more than seven million students with about a thousand dollars more on their loan payments. Those steps will make a real difference in the lives of millions of Americans. But make no mistake: we’ve got more to do. The construction industry was hit brutally hard when the housing bubble burst. So it’s not enough to just keep construction workers on the job doing projects that were already underway. For months, I’ve been calling on Congress to take half the money we’re no longer spending on war and use it to do some nation-building here at home. There’s work to be done building roads and bridges and wireless networks. And there are hundreds of thousands of construction workers ready to do it…” — The President’s weekly address
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“Conservatives would have you believe that our disappointing economic performance has somehow been caused by excessive government spending, which crowds out private job creation. But the reality is that private-sector job growth has more or less matched the recoveries from the last two recessions; the big difference this time is an unprecedented fall in public employment, which is now about 1.4 million jobs less than it would be if it had grown as fast as it did under President George W. Bush. And, if we had those extra jobs, the unemployment rate would be much lower than it is — something like 7.3 percent instead of 8.2 percent. It sure looks as if cutting government when the economy is deeply depressed hurts rather than helps the American people.” – Paul Krugman
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MITT ROMNEY: “I’ll take a lot of credit” for auto industry recovery — Romney said his views helped save the industry. “I pushed the idea of a managed bankruptcy,” Romney said. “And finally, when that was done, and help was given, the companies got back on their feet. So I’ll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry’s come back.” [...] Romney’s stance on the bailouts and his infamous 2008 New York Times op-ed “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” have come up throughout the campaign, especially ahead of February’s primary in Michigan. In that editorial, Romney argued that a government bailout for ailing auto giants Chrysler and General Motors would do more harm than good. [...] Romney also spoke out on his opposition to the government loaning money to the industry in 2009, placing some of the blame on Bush. — 
PAUL RYAN now trying very hard to distance himself from his prior love for Ayn Rand – “This is kind of fun, because you know you’ve arrived in politics when you have your own urban legend about you,” Paul responded. “This one is mine. I get a really big kick out of this one.” Paul, a practicing Catholic, explained that although he was fond of some of Rand’s novels he did not embrace her philosophy. He acknowledged that it was Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged that got him interested in economics and politics. “Just because you like someone’s novels doesn’t mean you agree with their entire worldview philosophy and she has a worldview philosophy which is completely antithetical to mine,” he added. Ryan has said that his Catholic faith helped shape his budget plan. But Catholics have questioned his admiration for the atheist novelist. “I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are,” he said in 2005. “It’s inspired me so much that it’s required reading in my office for all my interns and my staff.” The Atlas Society previously told Raw Story that Ryan’s policies are “very much in line” with Rand’s philosophy. – 
REP. ALLEN WEST compared Afghanistan draw down of troops to Hitler appeasement — West, a tea party Republican from Florida, on Monday compared the draw down of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to the appeasement of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, according to Right Wing Watch. On May 1, President Barack Obama signed a ten-year security agreement with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Under the agreement, the majority of U.S. troops will be withdrawn by 2014 but the U.S. will continue to have a role in Afghanistan for a decade. – 
RON PAUL fanatics are probably not making many friends at state caucuses – Over the weekend, Ron Paul won Maine and Nevada, gaining 20 of 24 delegates in Maine, and 22 of 25 in Nevada. In addition to the chaos that Paul will cause at the national convention, consider how this makes the average Republican caucus-goer feel. You make a good faith effort to vote, you leave the caucus with the impression that you elected a delegate loyal to your candidate, and then you find out that your vote didn’t matter at all because some Paulist used a technicality to essentially unseat the person for whom you voted. – 
OBAMA’S TO-DO LIST for Congress – Obama’s action plan for Congress centers on a series of economic initiatives he has already been pushing for months, including eliminating tax incentives for companies that ship jobs overseas and promoting new tax credits for small businesses and for companies to develop clean energy. [...] Obama’s “to do’’ list for Congress also includes legislation creating a Veterans Job Corps to help service members returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan find work as police officers and firefighters. And to address the housing crisis, Obama pressed anew for a measure designed to help homeowners refinance their homes at lower interest rates. Obama planned to also make the housing pitch during a stop Friday in Reno, Nev., the state that has been the epicenter of the nation’s housing meltdown. – 
SENATE GOP BLOCKED DEMOCRATIC STUDENT LOAN BILL yesterday – Republicans on Tuesday blocked consideration of a Democratic bill to prevent the doubling of some student loan interest rates, leaving the legislation in limbo less than two months before rates on subsidized federal loans are set to shoot upward. [...] Republicans say they want to extend Democratic legislation passed in 2007 that temporarily reduced interest rates for low- and middle-income undergraduates who receive subsidized Stafford loans to 3.4 percent from 6.8 percent. But the Republicans would not accept the Senate Democrats’ proposal to pay for a one-year extension by changing a law that allows some wealthy taxpayers to avoid paying Social Security and Medicare taxes by classifying their pay as dividends, not cash income. – 
TEAMSTERS ENDORSE Obama, call Romney ‘vulture capitalist’ — Hoffa said that “Despite inheriting the worst economy since the Great Depression, President Obama has led the country down the long road back to prosperity, providing relief for the middle class and fighting for workers’ rights.” By comparison, the Teamsters endorsement statement describes Mitt Romney as a vulture capitalist; according to Hoffa, “He represents everything that is wrong with our financial system. He made his money as CEO of Bain Capital by destroying U.S. businesses, sending good-paying American jobs overseas and filling his pockets with millions while putting workers out on the street.” – 
THE LATEST REPUBLICAN PLAN to reconcile the budget and preserve defense spending extracts even deeper cuts from programs to help the poor and Americans still reeling from the recession. Although spending levels for the budget were set in the Budget Control Act passed last summer in the deal to raise the nation’s debt limit, Republicans are pushing ahead with another plan that cuts more while trying to prevent the beginning of $600 billion in cuts over 10 years to the growth of the defense budget. – 
BUT RAISING TAXES ON, SAY, THE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRIES or closing loopholes or subsidies would never be a Republican option to pay for anything – According to the 
MITT ROMNEY’S NEW “I’m rubber, you’re glue” campaign – “We will stop the unfairness of government workers getting better pay and benefits than the very taxpayers they serve,” the former Massachusetts governor said. “And we will stop the unfairness of one generation passing larger and larger debts on to the next.” I doubt this will convince anyone other than true believers, but that’s not the point; the idea is to muddy the waters when it comes to coverage of Romney’s message. By attacking Obama on “fairness,” Romney can force the press to bring a horse race dynamic to the opposing claims—“Mr. Obama says that it’s unfair for multi-millionaires to pay a lower tax rate than middle-class families, but Mr. Romney says that what’s really unfair is the burden of debt.” The issues aren’t actually sorted out, and Romney walks away with minimal scrutiny. As an aside, I will say that there is some truth to Romney’s claim. Tax cuts for the wealthy are a major driver of short-term debt, and if we keep rates low on high-income earners—as Romney proposes—we will pass a tremendous amount of debt to future taxpayers. Rather than use federal dollars for education, infrastructure, or research, we will give it to the wealthiest Americans, and leave the next generation to deal with the consequences of high debt and a deteriorating society. That’s unfair. — 
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA told a group of women on Friday that he has been their fiercest advocate and warned that Mitt Romney’s positions on women’s issues represent a step back in time. “The choice between going backward or moving forward has never been so clear,” Obama told several hundred women at the National Issues Conference, a big-ticket annual fundraiser that’s been hosted by the Democratic National Committee for nearly two decades. And as long as I’m president, we are going to keep moving forward. You can count on that. You don’t have to take my word on it – you’ve got my signature on it,” he said, referring to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, before adding a jab at the Romney campaign, which expressed uncertainty recently about whether the candidate supported the law. “Because something like standing up for the principle of equal pay for equal work isn’t something I’ve got to ‘get back to you on’ – it’s the first law I signed.” – 
YESTERDAY RUSH LIMBAUGH said Hillary Clinton is just a secretary who needs to wear Spanx. [He] said that Clinton “has reached a pinnacle and all she is is a secretary,” adding that the left has “the strangest definition of success.” Limbaugh then said he was being prodded to talk about Clinton’s need to wear “Spanx,” but suggested she had a greater need for “Spankles.” – 
MEDIA DARLING SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ) is blasting Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for spending too much time in front of the television cameras. [...] “I have never seen Sen. Schumer address any issue unless it was political in the United States Senate,” McCain told Van Susteren. “Bob Dole once said, the most dangerous place to be in Washington D.C. is between Sen. Schumer and a television camera.” “That holds true today,” he added. But very few, if any, senators in recent years have been given more airtime than McCain himself. [...] Between his loss in the November 2008 presidential election and January 2010, McCain had appeared on Sunday morning talk shows at least 19 times. By March 2012, he had broken former Sen. Bob Dole’s (R-KS) record by appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press 64 times. – 
PRESIDENT OBAMA ON FRIDAY SIGNED an executive order that will help protect veterans from the deceptive practices of some for-profit colleges that seek to take advantage of them. The news was greeted with praise from veterans groups, who have “long felt that student veterans need to have the tools to succeed when it comes to their education.” The American Legion called it “an important victory on behalf of our young servicemembers and veterans who, in seeking to better themselves educationally, have been wrongly and unconscionably victimized by some institutions who see America’s finest as nothing more than a vulnerable market.” — 
BUT REMEMBER THE 2008 CAMPAIGN AND JOHN MCCAIN’S ‘SUPER SECRET PLAN’ to capture bin Laden? John McCain says in almost every stump speech that he knows how to capture Osama bin Laden and that he’d follow the al Qaeda leader to the “Gates of Hell.” So Washington Wire was wondering, what does McCain know that President Bush and the Pentagon don’t about how to sweep up America’s most elusive enemy. If there are “certain policies and procedures” that could lead to OBL’s detention, and a president could implement those policies and procedures now, why wouldn’t McCain stop by the Oval Office for a chat with Bush about how best to proceed? By McCain’s own reasoning, it sounds like he’d rather let bin Laden remain free for another year, until McCain and his “own ideas” can get to work. – 
PLEASE BUY TEAM ROMNEY A MAP: ROMNEY AND HIS SURROGATES have revealed an ongoing Cold War fixation. Former Reagan Navy Secretary John Lehman and former Bush administration Ambassador Pierre Prosper, on Thursday derailed Romney messaging in a conference call with reporters by raising the specter of the “Soviet Union” and slamming Obama for not protecting Czechoslovakia — a country that was peacefully dissolved in 1993 and now exists as the Czech Republic and Slovakia. – 
HOUSE GOP THREATENS GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN to get steeper cuts to food assistance, financial regulation — After earlier indications that they would make substantial cuts to domestic programs to preserve defense spending, the House Appropriations Committee made it official yesterday, setting a spending level $27 billion below the level agreed to in the debt deal. The committee, bowing to the GOP’s more conservative wing, will make deep cuts to food assistance, financial regulations, and a host of other programs, setting up the potential for a government shutdown when the fiscal year ends in October. [...] After GOP leadership worked with Democrats to form the debt deal last year, the party’s conservatives have seemingly wrangled control back from Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). [...] Senate Republicans, despite McConnell’s stated position last week, are now making similar rumblings. – 
HALF-TERM QUITTER SARAH PALIN said on Wednesday that 
VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN criticized Romney’s “Cold War mindset” on national defense and slammed the presumptive Republican nominee for his “go it alone” foreign policy positions: “Here’s what he says. He says we need “crippling sanctions,” apparently unaware that through President Obama’s leadership we produced just that, crippling sanctions. He emphasizes the need for “a credible military option” and “a regular presence of aircraft carrier groups” in the region, apparently ignorant of the fact that’s exactly what our policy is and what we’re doing. [...] I think it’s fair to say the only step we could take that we aren’t already taking is to launch a war against Iran. If that’s what governor Romney means by a “very different policy” then he should tell the American people. He should say so. Otherwise the governor’s tough talk about military action is just that, talk. And I would add, counterproductive talk. Folks, loose talk about a war has incredible negative consequences in our efforts to end Iran’s nuclear quest. And let me tell you why, because it unsettles world oil markets. It drives up oil prices. When oil prices go up, Iran’s coffers fill up, undermining the effect of the sanctions that are already in place. This type of Romney Talk is just not smart.” – 
MARCO RUBIO
PRESIDENT OBAMA SAYS the amount of money poured into fighting the scientific consensus on climate change will push the issue into the presidential campaign. [...] “Part of the challenge over these past three years has been that people’s number-one priority is finding a job and paying the mortgage and dealing with high gas prices,” Obama said. “In that environment, it’s been easy for the other side to pour millions of dollars into a campaign to debunk climate-change science. “I suspect that over the next six months, this is going to be a debate that will become part of the campaign, and I will be very clear in voicing my belief that we’re going to have to take further steps to deal with climate change in a serious way,” he added. – 
ROMNEY SWEEPS GOP PRIMARIES (i.e. collects on his investments) – Mitt Romney laid claim to the fiercely contested Republican presidential nomination Tuesday night with a fistful of primary triumphs, then urged all who struggle in a shaky U.S. economy to “hold on a little longer, a better America begins tonight.” Eager to turn the political page to the general election, Romney accused President Barack Obama of “false promises and weak leadership.” He declared, “Everywhere I go, Americans are tired of being tired, and many of those who are fortunate enough to have a job are working harder for less.” The former Massachusetts governor spoke as he swept primaries in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, Pennsylvania and New York, the first since Rick Santorum conceded the nomination. — 
FROM A NEW 
THE 
MAKES YOU WONDER
IF BY ‘ENTREPRENEURSHIP’ YOU MEAN ‘LOWER TAXES FOR BILLIONAIRES’ 
MAYBE OBAMA SHOULD HAVE PROMISED
Rep. Virginia Foxx says ‘I Have Very Little Tolerance’ for people with student loans: Foxx (R-NC) took on a unique enemy during a radio interview yesterday: people with student loans. Though many politicians sympathize with those who are saddled with exorbitant student debt, Foxx, who 
Mystery donor gives 
The Buffett Rule is not raising a tax, it’s closing a loophole. It’s a quirk of the tax code that certain millionaires who enjoy private-equity riches pay a lower tax rate than middle-class families, and approving the Buffett Rule would not only mean establishing a degree of fairness, it would also mean scrapping this loophole. The point is not lost on President Obama, who made this observation on Wednesday: “I’d just point out that the Buffett Rule is something that will get us moving in the right direction towards fairness, towards economic growth. It will help us close our deficit and it’s a lot more specific than anything that the other side has proposed so far.” [emphasis added] In other words, where Paul Ryan is vague and evasive, Obama is being direct and specific. The president is identifying actual loopholes he wants to see closed (Buffett Rule, corporate-jet loophole, tax subsidies for oil companies), which would total tens of billions of dollars in the coming decade. Meanwhile Republican leaders talk about loopholes, but choose not to back this talk up with anything substantive. [
