Students to feel pinch in debt deal

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) -- Some students will start owing more on their loans while they're in school under a last-minute debt ceiling deal to keep the country out of default and reduce deficits by at least $2.1 trillion over a decade.

As part of the savings to trim the deficits, Congress would scrap a special kind of federal loan for graduate students. So-called subsidized student loans don't charge students any interest on the principal of student loans until six months after students graduated.

Congress would also nix a special credit for all students who make 12 months of on-time loan payments.

Doug Lamborn, Colorado Congressman, Refers To Obama Dealings As Being Stuck To A ‘Tar Baby'

Congressman Doug Lamborn, U.S. Representative for Colorado, was recently on the 630 KHOW Capils and Silverman radio show discussing President Obama, the President’s economic policies, and the debt ceiling deals being debated. Lamborn used a controversial phrase to describe working with the President:

Even if some people say, ‘Well the Republicans should have done this or they should have done that,’ they will hold the President responsible. Now, I don’t even want to have to be associated with him. It’s like touching a tar baby and you get it, you’re stuck, and you’re a part of the problem now and you can’t get away. I don’t want that to happen to us, but if it does or not, he’ll still get, properly so, the blame because his policies for four years will have failed the American people.

Debt Ceiling Deal Paves Way For Medicare, Medicaid Budget Fight

WASHINGTON -- When it comes to Medicare and Medicaid, the debt deal raises more questions than it answers.

The giant health care programs serving some 100 million elderly, low-income and disabled Americans were spared from the first round of cuts in the agreement between President Barack Obama and congressional leaders. But everything's on the chopping block for a powerful new congressional committee that will be created under the deal to scour the budget for savings.

And if that hunt leads to a dead end, the agreement decrees an automatic 2 percent cut to Medicare providers such as hospitals. That's on top of a 6 percent cut already enacted to finance Obama's health care law, which is just being phased in.

National People's Action Protesters Jeer Boehner, Debt Ceiling Deal, Get Arrested In House

WASHINGTON -- Twenty-two protesters were arrested Monday after disrupting the opening of the House debate on a bill to resolve the debt limit crisis, Capitol Police said.

Police quickly removed the protesters from the House spectators' gallery after they interrupted the floor debate by unfurling a banner and chanting. They could be heard shouting "Boehner, get off it. It's time to tax corporate profits."

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, was not on the House floor at the time. He has opposed any tax increases to help balance the federal budget.

The group National People's Action later issued a statement saying the protesters had come to Washington to demand that Boehner and Republicans stop protecting the wealthy and Wall Street and look for solutions that create jobs and raise revenue to help Americans in need.

Origin
Source: Huffington 

Liberty And Justice For Some: State Budget Cuts Imperil Americans' Access To Courts

WASHINGTON -- Brian and Patty Baxter's daughter wasn't even two years old yet when they moved into their place in New Hampshire in 1996. The landlord had recently sanded and repainted the apartment, making it seem fresh and new.

That good deed would punish the Baxers. The old paint was contaminated with lead and by sanding it off, the landlord had turned the entire place into a waste pit for lead paint dust -- an especially toxic environment for a baby.

The Baxters filed suit in 2001, when the effects of the lead poisoning became more apparent in their daughter. Ten years later, their case still hasn't been heard.

"My clients are besides themselves," said attorney Chris Seufert of Seufert Law Offices, who is representing the Baxters. "Their child is ready to graduate from high school. She was poisoned when she was 18 months, and now she's going to be a high school graduate! I mean, come on!"

Unemployed Ignored In Debt Ceiling Deal

WASHINGTON -- The long-term unemployed have been left out of a deal between congressional negotiators and the White House to enact massive spending cuts and raise the nation's debt ceiling before its borrowing limit is reached on Tuesday.

Under the so-called grand bargain President Obama tried to strike with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), federal unemployment benefits would have been extended beyond January 2012, when they are set to expire.

But those negotiations collapsed in July. On Sunday, congressional leaders and the administration crafted a not-so-grand bargain that will cut spending without raising taxes or preserving stimulus programs like federal unemployment insurance.

Labor's Discontent With Obama Surfaces Yet Again

WASHINGTON -- The debt ceiling bill set to be voted upon Monday evening has left labor advocates in yet another precarious -- and deeply frustrated -- position. A president who began his term with the promise to not only stem the tide of job loss but also reconfigure the wealth disparity in the country has been bitten by the austerity bug. Moreover, there seem to be fewer and fewer legislative or political outlets for unions to explore.

In the immediate aftermath of the announcement Sunday evening that a deal had been struck, the nation's major labor unions bit their tongues, choosing to either carefully craft press statements or remain silent altogether. In private, however, the discontent was palpable. And it wasn't just driven by fear that massive spending cuts –- $26 billion in 2012 and $2.4 trillion over ten years –- would adversely affect workers or the unemployed. It was a touch more personal than that.

Welcome to the United States of Austerity

The debt ceiling deal hammered out by President Barack Obama and congressional leaders and passed in the House on Monday afternoon makes deep, painful, and lasting cuts throughout the federal government's budget. What's on the chopping block? The numbers tell the tale.

The Obama-GOP plan cuts $917 billion in government spending over the next decade. Nearly $570 billion of that would come from what's called "non-defense discretionary spending." That's budget-speak for the pile of money the government invests in the nation's safety and future—education and job training, air traffic control, health research, border security, physical infrastructure, environmental and consumer protection, child care, nutrition, law enforcement, and more.

Obama’s Hope-a-Dope Strategy

You may remember the moment when Barack Obama declared war on the Republican game plan—or so it seemed. Five days after negotiating a budget-cutting deal that averted a government shutdown in April, Obama gave a speech at George Washington University, slamming the GOP over the slash-and-burn budget proposal of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.). Republicans, he declared, were pushing a "deeply pessimistic" vision of America's future: "This is a vision that says even though Americans can't afford to invest in education at current levels or clean energy, even though we can't afford to maintain our commitment on Medicare and Medicaid, we can somehow afford more than $1 trillion in new tax breaks for the wealthy." Such a vision, Obama vowed, would not prevail "as long as I'm president."

Fighting words—and liberals were elated. Jonathan Chait of The New Republic cheered, "He beat Ryan and the Republicans to a bloody pulp.…He expressed moral outrage in a way I've never heard him do before, and in a way I didn't think he was capable of."

Then came…nothing. Or not much. And this week, Obama cut a controversial deal with hostage-taking tea party Republicans, who insisted on severe spending cuts before they would consent to the previously routine action of raising the debt ceiling.

Boehner's Handicap

Sometime in the '50s, the story goes, a small plane ran into engine trouble over Bethesda, Maryland, and was forced to crash-land near the 18th hole of a bucolic golf club. Employees rushed to the scene, and—upon discovering that the pilot was a woman—had her "very gingerly and gallantly" removed from the grounds.

Three decades later, when a visiting head of state showed up at the same golf club with a complement of Secret Service agents, the lone woman among them couldn't set foot on the property. In 1981, a new Supreme Court appointee with a love of golf and a 12 handicap—Sandra Day O'Connor—became the first justice not to be offered a membership. That same chivalry has since been extended to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.