Texas Healthcare System Withering Under Gov. Perry

LA Times: When Texas went to court last year to block President Obama's healthcare overhaul, Gov. Rick Perry pledged to do everything in his power to "protect our families, taxpayers and medical providers." Texas, he said, could manage its own healthcare.

But in the 11 years the Republican presidential hopeful has been in office, working Texans increasingly have been priced out of private healthcare while the state's safety net has withered, leaving millions of state residents without medical care.

Interactive Map: People without health coverage, by state - LA Times

On June 28, 2011 Gov. Perry signed a $172 billion budget passed by the super Republican majority Texas House and Senate. The budget signed by Gov. Perry cuts $15 billion from the level of spending last authorized in the 2009-11 state budget. The largest individual cut was to public education, which lost over $4 billion over the biennium.

While public education received the deepest cuts, other agencies that saw their budgets reduced, too. Other agencies cut included public universities and community colleges (with the two largest universities in the state losing $100 million in funding) and state health and welfare programs, which saw Medicaid and food stamp funds slashed by up to $2 billion.

Even after cutting billions of dollars from state education, Medicaid and other state agencies Republican legislative leaders in Texas acknowledge the 2011-13 budget signed into law by Perry under-funds the state’s projected Medicaid costs by about $5 billion.

A summary portion of the budget says that’s the amount the state expects the program to need in supplemental state aid in 2013. Also, the 2011-13 budget defers $2.3 billion state payment to K-12 public school districts to fiscal 2014.

[Full story on Texas debt growth and budget cuts]

"Texas just hasn't proven it can run a health system," said Dr. C. Bruce Malone III, an orthopedic surgeon and president of the historically conservative Texas Medical Assn.

More than a quarter of Texans lack health insurance, the highest rate in the nation, placing a crushing burden on hospitals and doctors who treat patients unable to pay.

Those costs are passed to the insured. Insurance premiums have risen more quickly in Texas than they have nationally over the last seven years. And when compared with incomes, insurance in Texas is less affordable than in every state but Mississippi, according to the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund.

That has taken a toll, as nearly a third of the state's children did not receive an annual physical and a teeth cleaning in 2007, placing Texas 40th in a state ranking by the fund. Over the last decade, infant mortality rates have risen in Texas while declining nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Seniors, despite guaranteed Medicare coverage, also are suffering, as nearly 1 in 5 ends up back in the hospital within a month of being released, one of the highest readmission rates in the country and a leading indicator of system wide problems.

Read the full story @ The LA Times

Republicans Stall Disaster Relief For Millions Hit By Tornadoes, Hurricanes, Drought, Wildfires And Floods

Sept. 4th Wildfire Near Bastrop, Texas 2011 -- The Inquisitr

Sparks from electric power lines likely started the blaze that became the most destructive wildfire in Texas history, fire officials said Tuesday. One fire began when winds toppled a dead pine tree onto power lines, showering the dry vegetation below with sparks. The other fire ignited when fallen tree branches became tangled with power lines, showering dry grass and branches with sparks. The fire near Bastrop, about 25 miles east of Austin, destroyed more than 1,500 homes and killed two people.

Republicans again threaten a government shutdown over funding of disaster aid.

Both the Senate and House must approve a continuing resolution to keep the government running past September 30, but Republicans are refusingd to replenish the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) fund to help areas in the mid west, south and northeast recover from drought, wildfires, tornadoes, hurricanes and floods. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) insists the GOP approve $3.65 billion for FEMA.

With recent hurricane and tropical storm related flood damages measured in the billions for the northeast alone, questions are being raised about how to pay for this latest round of disaster aid. Beyond the northeast, wildfires are raging in Texas, parts of the mid west and south remain in splinters from April's intense tornado outbreaks, while other parts of the mid west are devastated by spring flooding along the Missouri River.

If it seems like 2011 has been remarkable in terms of widespread meteorological chaos, that's because it has. According to a report from the National Climatic Data Center, 10 separate weather events this year have each inflicted more than $1 billion worth of damage. That beats a previous record of nine events in 2008, and it's only September.

In total, the 10 major events in 2011 has, so far, caused more than $35 billion of destruction, which is five times more costly than all of last year's disasters combined. Additionally, the Climatic Center finds the number of billion dollar disasters per year has been rising due to a more violent climate combined with population increases and economic development in disaster-prone areas. That $35 billion estimate is likely to increase given there's no end in sight to the Texas drought, hurricane season continues for another two months and 2011 still has three and half months to run.

Driving the urgency of legislation to replenish FEMA’s disaster fund is that it will likely run out before the end of this month. FEMA spokeswoman Rachel Racusen has said that the disaster fund has less than $400 million in it and could be depleted by Sept. 26 — or sooner if another disaster strikes.

If the fund runs out, FEMA would have to suspend aid to victims of Hurricanes Irene and Lee, which have hit the East with major flooding and other damage, much of it concentrated in states like Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, which tend to be hit less frequently by disasters than other states. And FEMA still has emergency costs in Joplin, Missouri and Tuscaloosa, Alabama, which were hit by devastating tornadoes this spring.

The FEMA account is so low that new rebuilding projects like rebuilding sewer systems and other public infrastructure have been put on hold to give emergency help like shelter and cash assistance to victims of Irene and Lee.

The White House requested $5.1 billion in additional disaster aid money only last Friday, which had been a source of frustration for lawmakers responsible for funding disaster accounts. The administration requested just $1.8 billion for FEMA’s disaster funding in February, well short of documented needs to respond to past disasters like hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Gustav and the massive Tennessee floods of last spring. The tornadoes in Joplin and across Alabama this spring only made the problem worse.

With the Northeast still reeling from the impacts of Hurricane Irene and the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee that stalled and sent plumes of additional precipitation to the Northeast. The area along the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania and New York was in the bulls-eye raising flood waters surpassing the previous record event set in 1972 when Hurricane Agnes dropped a torrential downpour on the area.

In Wilkes-Barre, PA, 75,000 people were evacuated as the Susquehanna River crested at a record 42.7 feet. Local authorities said that levees were under “extreme stress,” but they held up, saving much of the city. An estimated 5,400 homes and businesses suffered some form of flood damage during the event, and 124 sewerage treatment plants were affected by the flooding, with 14 of them spilling raw sewerage into waterways.

Traditionally, the federal government has filled much of the disaster aid gap, but FEMA’s disaster fund is now under $400 million and will be depleted by September 26, even if another disaster doesn’t strike in the meantime. Rebuilding projects have already been put on hold to secure short-term funding for shelters and other emergency help. If Congress does not act to replenish the fund, all forms of aid to the weather and wildfire disaster victims in Texas and around the nation will be cut off.

Unfortunately, the acrimonious Tea Party atmosphere on Capitol Hill over budget deficits suggests that relief may not be forthcoming for many hard hit areas. Senate Democrats overcame a Republican filibuster to pass a $7 billion emergency disaster aid package, but the measure is now blocked by House Republicans.

Weather disasters in 2010 and 2011 have put a strain on the FEMA budget that has yet to be resolved. With Federal Flood Insurance already billions in debt and the federal government struggling to provide disaster aid, climate change is only increasing the risk that these costs will continue to rise.

As climate change increases the risk of extreme weather, which science clearly shows will happen, it remains to be seen how future disasters will be paid for, or whether they will be at all as Republicans continue stall the legislative process.

Plano Sen. Florence Shapiro Announces Retirement

District 8 State Senator Florence Shapiro, a Plano Republican, announced this afternoon that she will not seek re-election next year. Shapiro has served in the state Senate since 1992, where she has chaired numerous committees including the Transportation Committee and most recently the Public Education Committee. Shapiro is also a member of the powerful senate Finance Committee which helps craft the state budget.

When first elected to the senate Shapiro represented a rural suburban district that stretched from Collin County north of Dallas to Smith County in East Texas. Since then, her district has been consolidated into the fast-growing suburbs of Collin and north Dallas counties. In the statement announcing her retirement Shapiro said,

“My parents came to the United States in search of the American dream, and I lived it. I entered public service as a Plano city council member, then mayor. I entered the Texas Senate, with a desire to promote opportunity and to make a difference in the lives of everyday people. It has been humbling to serve in the state Legislature with so many outstanding men and women from all across our great state. I am leaving public service, knowing that I have given my best to hopefully make Texas better.”

On June 28, 2011 Gov. Perry signed a $172 billion 2011-13 budget passed by the super Republican majority Texas House and Senate. The budget signed by Gov. Perry cut $15 billion from the level of spending last authorized in the 2009-11 state budget.

Serving as chair of the Education Committee and a member of the Finance Committee Shapiro helped shape the biennium budget, in which, the largest individual spending cut was to public education. Over $4 billion was cut from the public education budget for the current biennium, which started on September 1, 2011.

During the 2011 legislative session Shapiro argued that school districts should be allowed to give teachers unpaid furloughs and cut their salaries to help pay for the spending cuts.

Corporate Tax Cuts Don't Create Jobs.

If tax cuts are the most stimulative approach to rebooting the economy, as Republicans claim in rejecting Obama's jobs stimulus plan, then the economy should already be racing, given the trillions of dollars in tax cuts President Bush and Republicans already gave the nation over the past eight years. Right? Wrong!

Unfortunately, Reagan's "supply-side" mythology that "tax cut stimulus works best" is alive and well and still promoted by conservatives today, despite all evidence to the contrary. The outcome of Pres. Bush's 2001 tax cuts was "the weakest employment growth in decades." Republican tax cuts in 2004 didn't fare much better, with resulting job creation well below historical averages. When Bush's White House proposed more tax cuts in 2003, Republicans promised that it would add 5.5 million new jobs between June 2003 and the end of 2004. But "by the end of 2004, there were only 2.6 million more jobs than in June 2003." And, remember President Bush's February 2008 promise that his $168 billion tax cut/rebate economic stimulus plan would stave off economic recession and job losses? Wrong again! All these broken Republican promises stem from a broken understanding of how the world really works.

Corporate Tax Cuts vs. Corp. Job Creation
Source: U.S. Dept. of Commerce: Federal Reserve; U.S. Dept. of Labor; Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis; Wall Street Journal

American corporations are holding more cash on their balance sheets than at any time in nearly a half century, as they continue to save instead of investing or hiring workers, according to a Federal Reserve report released last Friday.

At the same time, Republican presidential candidates and corporate leaders continue to lobby for lower corporate tax rates and huge corporate tax giveaways under the guise that they will lead to higher rates of job creation.

According to the report, non-financial corporations held more than $2 trillion in cash at the end of June, a $88 billion jump since the end of March. Cash holdings made up 7.1 percent of all company assets, the highest level since 1963.

And the report doesn’t even include foreign cash holdings, though 11 companies — including Apple, Microsoft, and Cisco — have foreign cash holdings of at least $10 billion.

Republican Moderates Cower From ‘Alternative-Reality Right'

OpEd by Paul Fanlund, editor of The Capital Times of Madison Wisconsin

Like many 1970s-era college students who took part in anti-Vietnam War protests and wore George McGovern buttons, I watched with fascination as Richard Nixon's presidency unraveled during Watergate.

But now, I'm here to admit, I miss Richard Nixon.

Not the paranoid and crooked part, but I do miss Nixon's intelligence and, by 2011's standards, his squishy centrism.

Nixon opened relations with China and effectively negotiated arms limits with the Soviet Union. And Nixon's record on the economy, as well as on the environmental and regulatory front, would look intrusive and soft to the tea partiers of today. In fact, long after his defeat in the 1972 election, McGovern said Nixon, other than on Vietnam, would ultimately get high marks from historians.

Politicians like Rick Perry make me miss Nixon.

The governor of Texas has vaulted ahead in polls for the Republican presidential nomination in recent days by taking positions like these:

• Evolution is "just a theory that's out there."
• Scientific consensus on climate change is "all one contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight."
• All top jobs in his administration would be filled by abortion foes.
• It's time to "turn America over to God" for Him to fix.
• Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme" and it and Medicare are unconstitutional.
• Gay Americans are "part of Satan."
• Actions by the Bush-appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve are "treasonous."
• President Obama is not sufficiently American or does not necessarily love his country.

Who knows whether Perry actually believes this stuff. He was, after all, once a Democrat who worked for Al Gore.

David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, warns that Perry could actually become president. Brooks notes Perry does especially well with what he calls the "alternative-reality right," those who do not believe in evolution, global warning or that Obama was born in the United States.

But here's my question: Where is the "reality right?"

Drought Spawning La Niña Continues To Next Year - Could Pose Problems for Texas Power Plants

La Niña, which contributed to extreme weather around the globe during late 2010 and 2011, has re-emerged in the tropical Pacific Ocean and is forecast to gradually strengthen and continue into winter and next spring.

Forecasters with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center have now upgraded last month’s La Niña Watch to a La Niña Advisory indicating there will be a continuation of warmer and drier than normal conditions across the southern tier of the United States and wetter than normal conditions in the Pacific Northwest and Ohio Valley from now through at least late spring 2012.

“This means drought is likely to continue in the drought-stricken states of Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico,” according to Mike Halpert, deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center. “La Niña also often brings colder winters to the Pacific Northwest and the northern Plains, and warmer temperatures to the southern states.”

The strong 2010-11 La Niña contributed to record winter snowfall, spring flooding, the record shattering heat wave and extreme drought across the United States during late 2010 and 2011 to date, as well as other extreme weather events throughout the world, such as heavy rain in Australia and an extremely dry equatorial eastern Africa.

La Niña is a naturally occurring climate phenomenon located over the tropical Pacific Ocean and results from interactions between the ocean surface and the atmosphere. During La Niña, cooler-than-average Pacific Ocean temperatures influence global weather patterns. La Niña typically occurs every three-to-five years, and back-to-back episodes occur about 50 percent of the time. Current conditions reflect a re-development of the June 2010-May 2011 La Niña episode. While La Niña is a naturally occurring climate phenomenon climatologists believe global warm has enhanced weather extremes associated with this climate cycle.

If the La Niña drought in Texas continues well into next spring and summer, some power plants could be forced to stop operating according to a statement from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state's electric grid operator.

Politics & Global Warming

Source: LiveScience

A survey report, “Politics & Global Warming”, by George Mason University and The Yale Project on Climate Change Communication details how Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and members of the Tea Party respond to the issue of global warming.

The Tea Party has become an important new player in American politics, so this report for the first time separates their views on global warming from the traditional political categories of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.

The wide accord on energy research, incentives for efficient vehicles and renewable electricity — and expanded domestic oil and gas production — identified by this survey is particularly noteworthy.

Here are some key findings of the survey:

Global Warming Beliefs

Majorities of Democrats (78%), Independents (71%) and Republicans (53%) believe that global warming is happening. By contrast, only 34 percent of Tea Party members believe global warming is happening, while 53 percent say it is not happening.

While 62 percent of Democrats say that global warming is caused mostly by human activities, most Tea Party members say it is either naturally caused (50%) or isn’t happening at all (21%).

The GOP's Genius Plan to Beat Obama in 2012

If Pennsylvania Republicans and their buddies in other states execute a plan to change election rules, Obama has a one-way ticket to Losertown — Nick Baumann

Global Warming Amplifying Texas Drought, Wildfires, Scientists Say

Reprinted from Climate Central

This year has been the state's hottest and driest summer in recorded history, with many parts of the state smashing all-time records by wide margins. Texas state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon announced this was the hottest summer on record for Texas — and the hottest summer ever for any U.S. state, based on preliminary numbers — and last month he declared Texas is in the midst of its worst one-year drought on record.

The blend of hot weather and parched land has made for perfect fire conditions, and this has been the worst year for Texas wildfires in over a decade. Nearly 3.6 million acres of the "Lone Star State" have burned so far this year, an area roughly the size of Connecticut.

The heat and drought are record-breaking, but how unusual are they? According to Nielsen-Gammon’s own blog, it’s in a category unto itself:

"The year 2011 continues the recent trend of being much warmer than the historical precipitation-temperature relationship would indicate, although with no previous points so dry it’s hard to say exactly what history would say about a summer such as this one. Except that this summer is way beyond the previous envelope of summer temperature and precipitation," Nielson-Gammon wrote.

Crunch Time for U.S. Science Funding

This op-ed appears in Nature magazine.

September 2011
By Jay Gulledge

The current U.S. debt crisis sets the stage for a potential tipping point in federal science spending. The ideology that government-sponsored science is crucial to the well-being of society has eroded along with the cold-war security agenda, which embraced and fortified science for decades. Meanwhile, science has been pulled repeatedly into political clashes on cultural issues. Against this backdrop, the global economic crisis portends a decade-long reduction in federal budgets. To avoid a permanent retraction of government support for research, the science community must be more strategic and aggressive in conveying the value of its work to society and in gaining robust support from politicians.

US federal science spending has long been rooted in the national security agenda. The National Science Foundation (NSF) was established shortly after the Second World War “to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense”. NASA was established less than 10 months after the Soviets launched Sputnik 1 in 1957, in a frenzied response to the Soviets’ early lead in developing ballistic missiles. Through the decades of the cold war, support for science straddled party lines.

But, after the fall of the Berlin wall, the United States stood as the sole great power and shifted its strategic emphasis from establishing scientific superiority to cultivating democratic movements in the developing world.

Hot Summer of 2011 Rewrites Record Books

Dallas Texas set another weather record today, according to the National Weather Service (NWS), with an unprecedented number of 100-degree-or-above days. The temperature hit at least 100 degrees Fahrenheit 70 times this year, a new record for most 100 F days in a year for the city. The city tied its 1980 record of 69 days at 100°F yesterday.

Dallas-Fort Worth became the 15th metropolitan area among 19 around Texas to break a record for triple-digit days this year with several Texas cities nearly doubling their records. The high temperature at Dallas today was 107°, smashing the old daily record by 7°.

Pres. Obama To Congress: Pass The American Jobs Act Now!

Photo: White House/Chuck Kennedy

President Barack Obama addresses a joint session of Congress on jobs and the economy - video & fact sheet

Open Questions: The American Jobs Act - Join senior White House officials as they field your questions on the American Jobs Act on Thursday, September 15th at 4:00p.m. EDT.

by Beverly Bandler

“We do know how to generate growth and create jobs. As a large and growing body of research shows, we just have to spend money...The economy needs additional stimulus to get back to normal rates of unemployment. The Republicans may block this path, but at least then the public might understand that people are unemployed or underemployed because of a political decision, not an act of God.”
- Economist Dean Baker

“The answer from economics is: There is plenty we can do to create jobs and promote growth.”
- Economist Joseph E. Stiglitz

“The time-honored principle, backed by economists right and left, is that temporary bursts of spending — which usually arise when there’s a war to fight, but can also arise from other causes, including financial crises and natural disasters — are a good reason to run temporary budget deficits. Rather than imposing sharp cuts in other spending or sharply raising taxes, governments can and should spread the burden over time, borrowing now and repaying gradually via a combination of lower spending and higher taxes.”
- Economist Paul Krugman.

“Playing it safe is not going to cut it. Not proposing anything bold and not trying to do something to definitively deal with our problems would mean that we’re going to have another year and a half like the last year and a half...”
- Economist Christina Romer

GOP Candidates Opposed To The Idea Of Public Sector Medicare and Medicaid

Former Florida Rep. Alan Grayson delivering his famously charged 2009 House floor speech saying, "The Republicans want you to die quickly if you get sick."

Near the end of the GOP Presidential debate last night CNN's Wolf Blitzer, the event's moderator, posed the hypothetical question to Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas):

What do you tell a guy who is sick, goes into a coma and doesn't have health insurance? Who pays for his coverage? "Are you saying society should just let him die?"

In immediate response to Blitzer's question several people in the Tea Party audience shouted an enthusiastic "Yeah!" cheering the death of that hypothetical uninsured man.

Al Gore's 24-Hour Broadcast To Convert Climate Skeptics

Gore promotes his “Climate Reality Project” in this video.

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore plans to hit the climate crisis hard with a day of organized global action on Sept. 14.

The day of action aims to broadcast 24 straight hours of climate activism, encouraging others to get up and undertake climate mitigation efforts as well.

The campaign also asks people to hand over control of their social networking accounts on Facebook and Twitter to it for 24 hours to deliver Gore's message.

The presentations will look at politically motivated climate skeptics and explore who funds the development and distribution of media content that denies the findings of thousands of climate scientists worldwide is real and accurate.

Learn more about Al Gore's 24-hour program at Climate Reality.

Paul Krugman 9/11 Blog Post Stokes Controversy

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman drew conservative outrage on Sunday when he wrote that the anniversary of 9/11 had become a marker of "shame" for the U.S.

Huffingtonpost: The New York Times columnist wrote a blog post called "The Years of Shame," in which he said that "what happened after 9/11" was "deeply shameful." Krugman castigated people like Rudy Giuliani and President Bush as "fake heroes" who exploited the attacks for their own personal, political or military gain. He also said that many in the media had "[lent] their support to the hijacking of the atrocity.

Krugman concluded, "the memory of 9/11 has been irrevocably poisoned; it has become an occasion for shame. And, in its heart, the nation knows it." He said he had turned off the comments on the post "for obvious reasons."

Conservative commentators quickly seized on Krugman's post. Blogger Michelle Malkin called him a "smug coward." Writer Glenn Reynolds called the post "an admission of impotence from a sad and irrelevant little man." A writer at the Big Journalism site called Krugman "vile."

However, some progressives defended Krugman. Blogger Glenn Greenwald vociferously backed the post on Twitter.

"Michael Moore & The Dixie Chicks were just as right back then as Krugman is today - but today the taboos (& their enforcers) are much weaker," he wrote.

And, on Crooks & Liars, Nicole Belle said that Krugman was simply telling the truth. "That day was the impetus for us to attack and invade Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the attacks and posed no threat to us," she wrote. "To date, we've lost 4,752 allied service members in Iraq and over 100,000 Iraqi civilians. How is this not a black mark of shame on the legacy of 9/11?"

Our Blogger friend Ted McLaughlin also wrote a thought provoking post at Jobsanger, "A Macabre American Holiday:"

The Courage Of United Flight 93 Passengers And Crew

by Michael Handley

The 40 passengers and crew who fought back against their hijackers aboard United Flight 93 on September 11, 2001 performed a courageous act. The hijackers of Flight 93 intended to crash the plane in Washington DC, likely the Capitol Building or the White House, but never made it because of the determination and valor of the passengers and crew.

President Bill Clinton said at a ceremony dedicating the first phase of a memorial at the nation's newest national park near Shanksville, Pa., where Flight 93 crashed, "With almost no time to decide, they gave the entire country an incalculable gift. They saved the capitol from attack. They saved God knows how many lives. They saved the terrorists from claiming the symbolic victory of smashing the center of American government. And they did it as citizens."

Ed Felt, my colleague at the Internet infrastructure start up software company BEA Systems, was one of the passengers on Flight 93 that day. Ed was traveling on Flight 93 from BEA's east coast office to the company's headquarters office in San Jose, CA - a flight other BEA employees, and I, frequented.  Ed was one of the top five software engineers at our billion-dollar start up company having just received a U.S. patent in August 2001 for software he designed for BEA.

Flight 93 became an American profile in courage on that day that claimed almost 5,000 lives, toppled buildings that stood like a twin Colossus on the New York shore, took down one side of the Pentagon, and ushered in two wars.

What made Flight 93 different was a decision reached somewhere over the skies of Western Pennsylvania, after passengers learned on cell phones that their hijackers planned to crash their Boeing 757 plane into a building as the fourth in a quartet of suicide attacks. Here is the story of Ed and the other 39 passengers and crew members of United Flight 93.

U.S. Endures Hottest Summer Since Dust Bowl Era

Texas Gov. Rick Perry and other skeptics of climate change will have to explain away yet more evidence contrasting their disbelief.

The U.S. has experienced its hottest summer in 75 years, according to USA Today and the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. This latest summer season, with an average temperature of 74.5 degrees, has also been recorded as the second hottest ever. Only the Dust Bowl year of 1936, at 74.6 degrees, was warmer.

The middle south experienced the heat wave more than any other region, with Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico having their hottest year ever. Texas has also suffered through its driest summer since record keeping began in 1895, and the longest drought span, now by a slim margin, since the 1950s.

GOP Derides Obama Jobs Plan As ‘Second Stimulus,’ Ignoring Success Of The First

Last night, President Obama rolled out a $450 billion job creation package before a joint session of Congress, calling for a plan that includes a payroll tax reduction, money for infrastructure and school modernization, as well as help for homeowners and reforms of the unemployment insurance program. “This plan is the right thing to do right now. You should pass it,” Obama said.

By Pat Garofalo posted from ThinkProgress Economy

But while the GOP leadership has made some conciliatory comments — with Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) saying that “the proposals the President outlined tonight merit consideration” — many Republicans have derided the plan by calling it another stimulus, along the lines of the 2009 Recovery Act.

Of course, all of this criticism is based on the incorrect assumption that the 2009 Recovery Act didn’t work. But as the Congressional Budget Office has continually found, the Recovery Act created or supported millions of jobs, keeping the unemployment rate up to two points below where it otherwise would have been. At its height in the third quarter of 2010, Recovery Act funds were supporting up to 3.6 million jobs.

In June of this year, Recovery Act funding was still supporting up to 2.9 million jobs. This chart tracks the change in employment that occurred following the passage of the Recovery Act:

Thus far, economists have offered “mainly positive reviews” of Obama’s plan, with Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics estimating that “the plan would add 2 percentage points to GDP growth next year, add 1.9 million jobs, and cut the unemployment rate by a percentage point.” Analysts at Goldman Sachs estimate that the plan will boost growth by 1.5 percentage points, while the Economic Policy Institute said that the plan will create 2.6 million jobs and support another 1.6 million, boosting overall employment by almost 4.3 million.

The reason that unemployment is so high, even with the Recovery Act, is that it wasn’t big enough to deal with the scale of the problem. But to Republicans, the millions of jobs created by the Recovery Act signal abject failure, and therefore Obama’s new jobs plan doesn’t warrant consideration, even as the economy struggles to throw off the chains of the Great Recession.

Full article @ ThinkProgress