The GOP-sponsored “Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act,” which extends payroll tax cuts and extends but reduces unemployment benefits through 2012, passed in the U.S. House Tuesday night, but it will not pass in the Senate.

The bill — filed by Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., and cosponsored by five other Republicans, including Rep. Ilena Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami — also cuts “$8 billion from the Harkin Prevention Fund“ and reduces “Medicaid spending by more than $4 billion.”

CBS News reports today that the “measure would keep 160 million workers from seeing their payroll tax jump on Jan. 1 from this year’s 4.2 percent back to its normal level of 6.2 percent,” and would “also renew expiring extra benefits for long-term jobless people.”

The National Employment Law Project said Tuesday the House vote, which includes cuts to unemployment insurance, “will hurt millions of unemployed workers and their families and will further damage the economy.”

The Employment Law Project adds that the House GOP bill would:

• Cut federal unemployment benefits by more than half in 2012, eliminating 40 weeks of payments.
• “Allow the last leg of the federal unemployment insurance extension – the 13 to 20 weeks of Extended Benefits (EB) that are available in the hardest-hit states – to expire, mostly over the course of the first half of 2012.”
• Cut extended benefits in states with unemployment rates higher than the national average, which stands at 8.6 percent.

The Law Project report indicates that under the GOP bill approved Tuesday night, Florida’s unemployed workers would see their unemployment benefits cut by 40 weeks.

Politico reports that the bill, which also “calls for construction of the controversial Keystone KL oil pipeline,” “is dead on arrival in the Democratic Senate and faced a veto threat anyway.”

According to The New York Times, “members of both parties said the payroll tax cut would put money in the pockets of consumers, increasing the demand for goods and services and shoring up a weak economy,” adding that the House bill “would extend jobless benefits for some of the unemployed, while reducing the maximum number of weeks of benefits that a worker could receive.”

The Research Institute on Social and Economic Policy at Florida International University said Tuesday that “if congress does not renew the Extended Benefits (EB) and Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) programs by January 1, 2012, tens of thousands of Floridians currently receiving unemployment benefits funded by the federal government will be cut off.”

The Research Institute, known as RISEP, adds that in Florida, “unemployment has been consistently decreasing since the end of 2010, but labor force participation rates have been decreasing as well. At the end of 2010, the labor force participation rate was 62.7%, but by October 2011, the percentage of working-age population in Florida looking for jobs decreased to 61.8%.”

The RISEP report (.pdf) also argues that whatever Congress decides to do, a law signed by Gov. Rick Scott in June, “will further reduce the number of weeks of federally funded benefits that unemployed workers will be eligible for”:

Last spring the Florida legislature reduced the maximum number of weeks of unemployment from 26 weeks to 23 weeks, depending on how high the unemployment rate is. Starting January 1, the approximately 15,000 people per week who file initial claims for unemployment benefits will be eligible for only 23 weeks of benefits. The state estimates this change will save the Unemployment Compensation Trust Fund $103 million annually, representing a savings to employers but a loss to families and businesses which depend on UC benefits.

CBS News reports today:

The GOP-run House was expected to approve the roughly $180 billion legislation Tuesday in a battle that each party thinks gives it a chance to win over voters as the 2012 election year approaches. [...]

“The American people want jobs,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said. “This is as close to a shovel-ready project as you’re ever going to see.”

According to CBS, Democrats “complain that the bill does not do enough for unemployed people coping with one of the worst U.S. economies in decades. The bill prevents extra benefits for the long-term unemployed from expiring on Jan. 1, but would gradually wind down maximum coverage to 59 weeks, well below the current 99-week ceiling.”

According to CNN, “lawmakers could vote as soon as Tuesday on a controversial plan by House Republicans to link the payroll tax cut to government approval of a proposed oil pipeline.”

In early November, House Ways and Means Committee Democrats introduced the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act, legislation to extend federal unemployment insurance programs through 2012.

The National Employment Law Project, which supports the proposed Democratic legislation, writes that “the leadership of the House of Representatives has proposed [a bill] to slash the federal [Unemployment Insurance] programs and also do substantial harm to the basic state UI system.”

The Employment Law Project adds (PDF) that the new GOP bill, filed by Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., would:

• Cut the federal program by more than half in 2012, eliminating 40 weeks of benefits.
• “Allow the last leg of the federal unemployment insurance extension – the 13 to 20 weeks of Extended Benefits (EB) that are available in the hardest-hit states – to expire, mostly over the course 2of the first half of 2012.”
• Cut extended benefits in states with unemployment rates higher than the national average, which stands at 8.6 percent.

Florida, with an unemployment rate slightly higher than 10 percent, will “feel the impact of the full 40-week cut in benefits” by July 2012.

Camp’s bill also includes tax, Medicare and welfare provisions and “repeals provisions in the Democrat’s Health Care Law.”

According to the Employment Law Project, “over the past three years, federal unemployment insurance has helped more than 17 million Americans,” during the Great Recession’s tough job market.

Kasich elaborated, suggesting his displeasure with the news stems partly from its paucity of emotional edification. “Reading newspapers does not give you an uplifting experience — because it never really makes it clear that you won the Irish Sweepstakes,” he continued, referencing the now-defunct hospital benefit lottery that some now suggest was a scam.

“I have found that my life’s a lot better if I don’t get aggravated by what I read in the newspaper,” Kasich said, noting that others occasionally send him important articles and “things I need to know about.”

Kasich’s speech addressed so-called “look-backs,” the process by which the government tracks down Social Security and welfare overpayments (what he called the “ultimate government screw-up”). But his adverse attitude toward newspapers, which often contain public-opinion polls and other useful information, could explain his seemingly near-total inability to champion legislation and other measures that people in Ohio actually like. Kasich is currently competing with Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie for the un-coveted “least popular governor” prize. As many as three of Kasich’s signature agenda items – the state’s census-mandated congressional reapportionment; an elections-reform bill now branded the “voter suppression law”; and his towering failure of a union-reform law, the infamous Senate Bill 5 –will all end up before voters for them to summarily dismiss.

This is not the first time the freshman governor has expressed a disdain for the press and even the very idea of open government, which he seems to find inconvenient at best.

In a somewhat-incoherent diatribe last December, Kasich blamed reporters and “transparency” for the government’s inability to hire “quality” workers:

“I find myself tripping over the anthills on the way to the pyramids. We have so many stupid rules and regulations that prevent us from getting the best people to come in here. You just can’t believe it. And I blame it on all of you [reporters at the press conference] — all this transparency, and NATO conflicts, and all this other stuff. … Our problems in the government are bigger [than those of the private sector], and the quality of people who want to come in is less. Today if you get sick, under the governmental rules and all the political correctness and all the open – sunshine –and all this other stuff, you get a worse doctor.”

Reading between the lines, Kasich wants to run the government like a business. But the government isn’t a business, and anyway, Kasich is not a businessman. A career politician, Kasich worked for a few years at Lehman Brothers as a managing director of its investment-banking arm before it declared bankruptcy during the height of the economic collapse. His anti-union attitude and neutering of the state’s Department of Development in favor of the operationally opaque nonprofit Jobs Ohio demonstrate further his desire to run the state like a business. In his draconian biennial budget, the governor slashed funds for struggling local governments, schools, and even nursing homes, as though he were middle management trying to skimp on office coffee creamers.

Maybe the governor would find newspapers more edifying were he occasionally to humor those voters that do read them.

Watch Kasich’s anti-newspaper rant:

Image via {link url="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonypeters/5401906036/"}Flickr/Tony Peters{/link}

Charles Evans, president of the Chicago Fed, shared the new page on Facebook this morning with the comment: “I’ve spoken a number of times this year on the Fed’s Dual Mandate — a congressional requirement to promote both maximum employment and price stability. We’ve just launched a Dual Mandate site with background information and links to my speeches on the topic.”

The page features graphs of the unemployment rate and changes in consumer inflation since 1999, together with the current projection from the FOMC, the Fed’s policy committee, of what the unemployment rate and inflation rate will be in the next five years. The Fed’s most recent projections, from the start of November, say that the unemployment rate will remain above 7.5 percent through 2013, and the inflation rate will remain below 2 percent during that same time period.

That’s an unacceptably high level of unemployment for Evans, who has said that it’s worth tolerating a higher rate of inflation, up to 3 percent, in order to accelerate a return to full employment.

Evans has been the loudest voice on the FOMC in favor of using monetary policy to stimulate the economy further. In the FOMC’s most recent policy statement, which announced that it would continue to maintain its current level of monetary stimulus, Evans was the lone dissenting vote. He voted against the majority because he favored “additional policy accommodation.”

In a conversation with reporters at the Council on Foreign Relations today, Evans reaffirmed that he is calling for “increasing amounts of policy accommodation” in order to reduce the unemployment rate, which is currently 9 percent. “We ought to be behaving as if there’s a very big problem out there.”

Evans’s vote was the first dissent for further stimulus since December 2007. Since then, all dissenting votes have come from inflation hawks who have opposed the FOMC’s efforts to further stimulate the economy in the wake of the recession. That the vote for further stimulus comes from Evans is particularly noteworthy because all of the dissenting votes against stimulus in the past three years have come from his fellow Federal Reserve Bank presidents on the FOMC.

Seven seats on the FOMC are appointed by the president and confirmed by Congress, but five seats are reserved for presidents of the regional Federal Reserve Banks. As the American Independent has previously reported, these presidents aren’t selected by democratic representatives but rather by the Federal Reserve Banks’ boards of directors, which are predominantly made up of senior business and financial executives.

Some of Evans’s fellow Federal Reserve Bank presidents have made statements indicating they don’t believe that unemployment should be reduced by government at all. In a speech on the same day as the most recent Fed statement, Dallas Federal Reserve Bank president Richard Fisher criticized government efforts at reducing unemployment. ”Pliant fiscal authorities,” Fisher said, “have run out of enabling money.”

Fisher added that were the Federal Reserve to support Congress’ spending by “monetizing their debts”, it would end “in the most ruinous of scenarios, the onset of hyperinflation.” The government must not, Fisher said, “hide under the skirts of the Federal Reserve.”

This is not only a rejection of Evans’ belief that the Federal Reserve should directly undertake more stimulus, it is also a rejection of Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke’s statements at his most recent official press conference that Congress should engage in short-term fiscal stimulus in order to reduce unemployment.

But as the Chicago Fed’s new dual mandate page explains, the Federal Reserve does have a legal obligation to reach maximum employment. The Chicago Fed page quotes exactly where in the Federal Reserve Act the mandate is written:

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Open Market Committee shall maintain long run growth of the monetary and credit aggregrates commensurate with the economy’s long run potential to increase production, so as to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates. [emphasis added]

The most recent FOMC statement is at odds with this mandate, as it currently states in its own projections that unemployment remains unacceptably high, but is simultaneously committed to maintaining policy constant. Moreover, under current policy, inflation is projected to remain under 2 percent, below what it has been in past decades, and talk of “hyperinflation”, or extremely rapid or out of control inflation, is considered by most economists to be a red herring in the debate over whether to stimulate the present day American economy.

Here are the Chicago Federal Reserve’s charts showing unemployment and inflation over the next five years:

“[M]aybe they tried to get too much and as a result it failed,” he told the Journal Sentinel.

Cain added that he believed public employees had the right to collective bargaining but not “collective hijacking.”

“… If [public-employee unions] have gotten so much for so many years and it’s going to bankrupt the state,” he told the newspaper’s editorial board.  “I don’t think that’s good. It appears that in some instances, they really don’t care.”

Wisconsin passed its own collective-bargaining reform law, drawing tens of thousands of protesters to the state’s Capitol and sparking a movement to recall Governor Scott Walker and several state legislators.  Unlike Ohio’s law, however, Wisconsin’s excluded public safety unions, such as firefighters and police, from the measures; Ohio’s law, spearheaded by Governor John Kasich, did not.

Cain told the Journal Sentinel Ohio lawmakers “may have tried to get too much in one bill.”

Cain, formerly the CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, Inc., also fielded questions about President Obama’s handling of the Libyan civil war; he said he would have handled it differently at the planning level, but didn’t provide details of how.

Occupy Detroit spokesperson Lee Gaddis said the group plans to pack up the Grand Circus Park encampment and move into donated space where it will be able to focus on political work.

“The weather is really crummy … and going to get crummier,” Gaddis said. “Our primary concern is the safety of the occupiers. Not everybody is prepared to do winter camping.”

The groups permit for camping in the park expires today, and occupiers are ready to move one, though they will stick around long enough to fulfill their promise to clean up the park completely, Gadis said.

Unlike the occupations in Oakland, and elsewhere, Occupy Detroit has enjoyed consistently positive relations with law enforcement.

“We have good relationships with the Detroit police and the Dept. of Homeland Security, nobody from Occupy Detroit has been brutalized or harassed by police,” Gaddis said. “Police here have more important things to do than harassing people for exercising their constitutional rights.”

Top stories image via Flickr/Joseph Stevenson.

Year-to-year data show the number of services provided by IWD has increased by about 10,000 per month due to the new “virtual access points.” Those workstations, about 1,100 of them, are now available in 370 locations across the state.

The stand-alone computers allow services to be available 12 to 15 hours a day – including on Saturdays – through phone calls and Internet chat. They’re located primarily at libraries, places that provide veteran services, community colleges and state government buildings.

“Iowa Workforce Development has succeeded in developing a delivery system that serves Iowans locally and more efficiently while still providing professional workforce staff connections through the use of technology,” Branstad said.

Teresa Wahlert, head of IWD, said the goal is 500 computers by the end of the year. The remaining 19 physical offices – down from 55 at the beginning of the year – will remain open for the time being.

“I think that will be a constant for many months and then we’ll see what new technology happens or what happens on the federal side,” Wahlert said. “Because the federal side really dictates a lot of the offices and their locations.”

In August, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack explained that a cooperative agreement between the U.S. departments of agriculture and labor will provide some opportunities for rural workers, but the effort wouldn’t serve as a replacement for shuttered IWD offices.

Wahlert said she’s not concerned about less face-to-face interaction between IWD employees and job searchers, and the success of the program will be judged on usage and how much it costs IWD to get a person to a job.

Plans are for 75 people to be laid off from the state agency as the move from physical offices to virtual access points is completed.

“We’re going into a generation of folks who are a lot more comfortable either on the phone or texting or using technology, and I think that’s pretty evident with the results we’ve had so far,” Wahlert said.

A lawsuit challenging Branstad’s veto of funding for the workforce offices is working its way through the court system, but Branstad is confident he’ll beat that.

“In the meantime, instead of fighting the battles of the past, we want to look to the future and make sure we’ve got a delivery system that meets the needs of Iowans in the best and most efficient and economical way possible,” he said.

Democratic lawmakers have pledged to fight for the now closed offices in the 2012 General Assembly.

Starting Tuesday, Wisconsin Democrats and labor groups will start an effort to gather more than 550,000 signatures by mid-January on a petition to recall Gov. Scott Walker.

Gov. Scott Walker; Source: Gateway Technical College, Flickr

Walker earned the ire of unions when he pushed a law eliminating collective bargaining rights for public workers earlier this year. Democrats are also planning to recall Republican state legislators, although they haven’t announced their targets, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

The fight is increasingly contentious, with some Democrats fearing that Republicans might gather signatures on Walker petitions only to destroy them, and the Republican Party setting up an online “integrity center,” according to the Journal-Sentinel.

“The site allows Walker backers to submit photos, videos and complaints to the Republican Party. The purpose of the site is to protect voters who “suspect foul play by Wisconsin Democrats or big government union bosses,” said a statement from Stephan Thompson, the party’s executive director.”

The recent labor union defeat of a similar anti-collective bargaining law in Ohio energized labor forces, Bloomberg reports. A number of large rallies are planned across the state in coming weeks.

Recent polls have shown the state split on the recall effort. Walker has been rocked by a corruption investigation involving top staff members.

No Democrat candidates have yet entered the race, although the Daily Mail reports that a number of politicians are jockeying for the slot behind the scenes—possible candidates include former Sen. David Obey and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.

“Iowans believe strong local schools are key to our state’s economic future,” Sen. Brian Schoenjahn (D-Arlington) said in a statement. “Teachers, parents and students have lots of ideas on improving our schools. At the same time, they are wary of a one-size-fits-all approach imposed from above and about a lack of state support.”

Schoenjahn, chairman of the Senate Education Appropriations Subcommittee, and his fellow Democrats have held more than 25 evening meetings throughout the state. The Branstad administration has also been holding meetings, and Democrats are quick to note that of the 21 executive branch meetings since Sept. 1, only two began after 5 p.m.

“To achieve real education reform, you need to get everyone on board,” Schoenjahn said. “For example, when we made high quality preschool available to every Iowa four-year-old, we did it by involving parents, teachers, employers as well as public and private preschool providers and funders. By holding meetings this fall when everyone can attend, we will be better able to represent the voices of working parents and Iowa teachers when the education debate begins at the statehouse next spring.”

Here’s is the chart of forums offered by legislative Democrats:

Here is the chart of forums offered by the Branstad administration:

In October, the Branstad administration rolled out its proposed state education reforms, One Unshakable Vision: World-Class Schools for Iowa. The administration has signaled that it wants the proposal considered as one comprehensive package instead of as individual ideas to be voted on separately by the legislature. An exact cost of the package, however, has not yet been disclosed and is not expected until after the 2012 General Assembly convenes in January.

“By resoundingly rejecting the Republican-backed push to rewrite labor rules for public employees, Buckeye State voters helped set the table for the 2012 presidential election,” wrote Henry Gomez, politics writer for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “Without question the results will be viewed as a momentum-builder for Democrats nationwide and should encourage President Barack Obama.”

In the same column, he quoted John Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. “Unions and their allies have done a lot of things transferable to next year,” said Green.  “In some respects, the campaign was a trial run for the presidential.”

Both parties are making dangerous long guesses on Ohio’s political will, however.

After Ohio’s independent voters, reacting to high unemployment and limited recovery from the recession, helped Republican candidates sweep most Democrats from the statewide positions in 2010, freshly elected Governor John Kasich introduced some sweeping changes for the state, from so-called reforms in the biennial budget, to the establishment of an opaque non-profit — JobsOhio — to take the helm for the state’s economic development and keep behind the scenes machinations away from pesky media scrutiny. Finally, Kasich and the state GOP attempted to end public unions’ rights to bargain, eliminating third-party arbitration and public employees’ right to strike.

But the Governor was elected in 2010, when Democrats were purged nationwide, the result of a massive effort by the Republican Party to place blame on the Obama administration and cast every Democrat as guilty by association.  Even so, Kasich was only elected by a 2-percent margin, or roughly 77,000 votes, over incumbent Ted Strickland, who was elected by nearly 50 percent more votes than his Republican challenger J. Kenneth Blackwell in 2006.

Kasich, however, seemed to think he was bestowed with a popular mandate to fulfill a conservative agenda, and sought extremely aggressive reforms that proved to be far from what Ohioans actually wanted. The referendum on SB5, Issue 2, was one of three laws of which the public took umbrage. The other two are on the ballot for 2012: Republicans’ redistricting plan for Congress, passed in an emergency appropriations bill to insulate it against a referendum effort. Ohio’s Supreme Court disagreed, ruling the reapportionment part of the bill was indeed subject to citizen’s veto referendum.

The other law, H.B. 194, is an election-reform law that liberal opponents freely refer to as the “Voter Suppression Bill,” a law the would make permanent Secretary of State Jon Husted’s decision this year to prohibit county boards of elections from mailing out unsolicited absentee ballot applications to voters. Ohio residents will decide its fate next November, as well.

Even the union-sympathetic message sent by voters last Tuesday hasn’t stalled Ohio conservatives from announcing a petition to amend the state’s constitution to prohibit unions from forcing employees to join against their will. If passed, Ohio would join 22 other “Right to Work” states, cutting in on labor’s ability to raise funds. SB5 was voted down by 792,676 votes -– more than ten times the number of votes by which Kasich beat Strickland.

Does this mean Ohioans will now embrace Democratic initiatives? Not necessarily. While SB5 was widely perceived as unfair and over-broad, many elements within the bill were consistently embraced by voters.

And on Tuesday, Ohio voters easily approved Issue 3, a tea party-led effort to “block” the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Healthcare Act.

In fact, it passed at almost the exact same margin as Issue 2 failed, according to unofficial election results. While Issue 3 was campaigned much less aggressively, both for and against, the tea party’s referendum on “Obamacare” and, in effect, President Obama himself, shows that Ohioans don’t completely align with him or his party.

In fact, they don’t seem to have any allegiances to anyone.