Communications

VP Biden drops into Minnesota later today to raise some money for the DNC.

Minnesotans who pay the price of admission ($15,200 per couple) should take the opportunity to ask the VP about the Democrats’ tax on medical innovation that threatens tens of thousands of jobs.

Today’s Minnesota Star Tribune notes an RNC Research piece detailing the proposal, $38 billion in new taxes on an industry which employs 60,000 Minnesotans. See RNC Research here.

Remember when Harry Reid ran for office under the slogan "Harry Reid, Independent like Nevada"?

Well those days exist no longer, if they ever did…

As a new RNC radio spot points out, Harry Reid is a leading champion of the White House's failed economic policies. Listen here.

The result in Nevada is a 13.2% unemployment rate.

And now Senator Reid is bringing in VP Biden to brag about it.

In the words of Chairman Steele, "The people of Nevada deserve an explanation from Senator Reid – not Vice President Biden’s rose colored projections, on when this so-called stimulus experiment will actually start putting Nevadans back to work.” 

Asked by the White House press corps about the probability that Thursday’s report of jobs “saved/created” will not square with White House predictions, Robert Gibbs said, “We’re not worried about whatever discrepancy it is you’re trying to make into a much bigger story.”

This isn’t the first time the White House has disregarded simple math in their quest to justify bad economic policy.

In February, the president promised, “Over the next two years, this plan will save or create 3.5 million jobs.  More than 90% of these jobs will be in the private sector.”  Watch here.

But government data reported that the economy was actually losing jobs rather than adding them. 

So, Jared Bernstein, chief economic advisor to Vice President Joe Biden, explained that the White House was projecting what the level of employment would have been if the stimulus had not passed in February.

However, the government’s official job counters could not lend support to this new math.

When asked whether the ... more

Democrats are feeling inclined to step in and give Democratic gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds some advice… or, in the words of a Politico headline, “Dems beg Deeds for positive message.”

Speaking at Harvard's Institute of Politics, former DNC Chairman and primary opponent Terry McAuliffe told audience members Deeds should, “tell people what you’re for.” Helpful Terry even listed some ideas, just in case. Watch here:

CBO score of the Baucus health care bill comes to this conclusion: Slash $500 billion from Medicare, levy $400 billion in new taxes and viola, “deficit-neutral”.

The States should love this. Expand Medicaid coverage, it’s “cheaper.”

According to CQ Politics “House Democrats Consider Medicaid Twist”

“The irony is, what CBO is telling us is if you expand the number of people getting Medicaid, you reduce the cost of the bill,” said Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y.

CQ piece continues:

State governors and legislators also are likely to bristle at the approach; Medicaid is a joint state-federal program, and with the economic recession, states are already being forced to cut their budgets deeply in other areas to maintain their Medicaid obligations.

Republican and Democratic governors alike have panned the idea of expanding the unfunded Medicaid burden.

Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, a member of the National Governors Association’s health-care task force, was less than enthusiastic, "I can't think of a worse time for this bill to be coming. I'd love to see it happen. But nobody's going to put their state into bankruptcy or their education system in the ... more

Speaker Pelosi says a value added tax is on the table and that any new taxes …may come as part of a larger overhaul to the tax code.

But, Speaker Pelosi adds, any reworking of the tax code would not result in an increase in taxes on middle-class Americans.

See: “Pelosi says new tax is 'on the table'”

Maybe it’s a coincidence that WH transition team leader John Podesta, whose group, Center for American Progress, put out a study last week advocating tax hikes, likes the idea of a VAT too.

Raising taxes on the middle class, would of course, violate an Obama campaign promise though. 

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds confirmed what we all know; the Democratic agenda in Washington is making people, in his words, “uncomfortable.”

What constituents might find confusing is that he went on to admit “he and Obama agreed on a majority of issues.” Which begs the question, which issues? Does he agree with the $787 billion stimulus bill, or the multi-billion dollar auto bailout or the trillion dollar government-run health care plan? 

The Atlantic’s Chris Good reports that Obama’s energy czar “floated the possibility today of the EPA implementing cap-and-trade energy policies.”

Recall steps EPA has taken earlier this week to begin the process of cap and trade: EPA aims to cut emissions at factories, power plants and EPA finalizes emissions reporting program.

None of this should surprise as EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson testified during her confirmation hearing in January that the “new administration’s environmental priorities would be curbing global warming, reducing air pollution” according to The New York Times.

On the legislative side of things a new bill introduced using “new language.”

E&E Daily reports: (Senator) “Kerry made attempts to reframe the verbiage surrounding the bill and sell its concepts more broadly, insisting it is not a "cap and trade" proposal but a "pollution reduction" bill.