G8 Summit Shuts Out Israel; OCCUPY Protesters Oppose Protecting RICH; Iran To Nuke Israel; NO PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST!

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WHY VOTE?

JOBS, PROTECTING THE RICH, GLOBAL ECONOMICS, HUMAN RIGHTS (VOTING), REAL SYSTEMIC REFORM & PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST!

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 2012 G8 SUMMIT MEETING:

Due to Occupy Protesters & other Organizations rallying against Global Leaders attending the 2012 G8 Summit, the Meeting was moved to Camp David for Pres. Obama's Safety.

Occupy Protesters are protesting the 2012 G8 SUMMIT because they are tired of Global Leaders doing what THEY want versus what's Best for THE PEOPLE.

The Middle Class & Poor are Fighting Back against the G8 because the Global Financial System Is FOREVER Rigged To ONLY PROTECT The Rich & Very Rich!

At the Annual G8 Summit Meetings Our Global Leaders come together to Gamble Away more of Our Freedom on Risky Financial Plans & Ideas with the use of Taxpayers' MONEY!

In other words it does NOT matter what the People Want or Need, Global Leaders are going to FORCE their Bitter Pill Financial Decisions down our throats anyway.

Even in America its all about PROTECTING THE RICH, But Make the Poor Suffer, while continuing to PROTECT THE RICH!

Now Please Don't Get It Twisted!

I have absolutely NOTHING at all against people who are Financially Successful.

Every Human Being on Planet Earth Should Have Equal Opportunities To Achieve Some Level Of Financial Success As Mark Zuckerberg Did!

If NOT Billionaires, Then Millionaires Or Just Extremely Comfortable.

In fact I Admire & Applaud ALL People who became Financially Successful via Innovation & Hard Work.

Please Understand that I am NOT one of those American Citizens who Opposes Wealth because I am NOT one of those Individuals.

I LIKE MONEY OK!

I'm just saying that our World's Financial System, including the United States, is Currently NOT Set up to allow Middle Class & Low Income People to Achieve the Same Level of Upward Mobility & Success as that of Most Wealthy People.

Thus the Annual G8 Summit Meeting is NOT about Global Economics, Human Rights, Voting Rights, JOBS, REAL Financial Reform, REAL Systemic Reform or PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST.

Its actually just more of the SAME Status Quo Stuff.

CONTINUING TO PROTECT THE RICH WHILE MAKING THE POOR PAY MORE!

Let’s be REAL for just a moment shall we?

The Global Financial System Is FOREVER Rigged To ONLY Protect The Rich & Very Rich!

More than likely that's the way it will ALWAYS be until Jesus returns!

So much for the Good of Common, Everyday People.

So Why VOTE?

Why do we even continue to VOTE if what WE Need is Never Considered in Local & Global Political Decisions which Affect us?

My VOTE may NOT make a significant mathematical difference in the outcome of an Election or Primary but I will continue to VOTE anyway.

And…..

Parents must instill in their Youth the Importance Of Expressing Our Individual Voices Via The Democratic Process Of VOTING.

i.e., THE DEMOCRACY PROJECT!

Isn't that why the Process of Political Democracy was established?

Why VOTE?

Because as an African-American citizen living in America, I recognize the Blood & Sacrifice My Ancestors & BLACK Leaders of yesterday made so that I could walk into a 21st Century Exit Poll Booth and LEGALLY Cast my Ballot to Elect Politicians. Even Politicians who LIE to ME!

Nevertheless We Must Continue To VOTE & Elect Leaders, even if only for Symbolic Reasons.

Because Voting is the ONLY Way Our Voices will be Heard right?

Wait a minute!

Were any of YOU who Voted in the 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 Elections & Primaries Invited to Attend the 2012 G8 Summit World Meeting?

I Wasn't!

And why wasn't Israel invited to the 2012 G8 Summit?

I thought NATO has an Alliance with Israel.

Am I wrong?

So why wasn't Israel invited to attend this year's G8 Summit Meeting where Global Financial Plans & Global Peace Talks are discussed?

Because its quite apparent Israel is most likely being Set Up to allow Iran take the First Hit with a Nuke Bomb.

Yes some World Leaders STILL Want to Secretly Protect Iran.

Yes there are also some World Leaders who STILL Want to see Israel wiped Off the Face of Planet Earth!

I Pray I'm Wrong about this Foreign Policy theory Because GOD Almighty Has Vowed To NEVER Allow Israel To Be Destroyed by Anyone or Anything.

Perhaps Our Global Leaders Should Either Read The Holy Bible Or Ask God Directly Via Prayer What HIS Plans Are For Israel's Future.

I Can Tell You That It Mostly Does NOT Include Israel's Destruction.

PRAY FOR PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST!

PROTECT OUR VOTING RIGHTS!

WE MUST NOT CONTINUE TO JUST KEEP PROTECTING RICH PEOPLE ONLY, WHILE MAKING THE POOR PAY FOR THE RICH!

THERE MUST BE REAL REFORM FOR EVERYONE INCLUDING THE RICH & THE VERY RICH!

OCCUPY UNTIL REAL CHANGE OCCURS FOR EVERYONE!

WHY VOTE?

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Attack on Chicago police stations, Obama office were planned, prosecutors say


Three anti-NATO protesters charged with terrorism conspiracy planned to attack four Chicago police stations, the local campaign headquarters for President Barack Obama and the home of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, prosecutors alleged in court documents Saturday.

While friends of the three men insisted they were just operating a home brewery, prosecutors stated that police found a gun that fires mortar rounds, swords, a hunting bow, ninja-like throwing stars and knives with brass knuckle handles.
The beer operation, prosecutors added, was used to fill bottles with gasoline that would later be thrown as Molotov cocktails.

The three were being held on charges of conspiracy to commit terrorism, possession of an explosive or incendiary device and providing material support.
The men were identified as 20-year-old Brian Church, of Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.; 24-year-old Jared Chase, of Keene, N.H.; and 24-year-old Brent Vincent Betterly, of Oakland Park, Mass.

Defense attorneys told a judge on Saturday that undercover police were the ones who brought the Molotov cocktails, and that their clients were entrapped, the Associated Press reported.

Bond of $1.5 million was set for each defendant.

Michael Deutsch, one of their attorneys, later told reporters outside the courtroom that it was all a setup. Two informants "ingratiated themselves" with the three men and "this was all their idea," he insisted.

But Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy told reporters "the evidence speaks for itself" about what he called an "imminent threat."

"They were making the bombs ... (and had) directions on how to implement this," added Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez.

Sarah Gelsomino, another attorney for the men, earlier said they were "absolutely in shock and have no idea where these charges are coming from."

"The National Lawyers Guild deplores the charges against Occupy activists in the strongest degree," Gelsomino said in a statement decrying the charges.

Six others initially arrested have been released. They were all detained in a raid Wednesday on a home in Bridgeport on Chicago's South Side, NBCChicago.com reported.
Beer or bombs?

But the group of protesters said what police thought was suspicious was actually a home beer-brewing operation.

“We were handcuffed to a bench and our legs were shackled together. We were not told what was happening,” one of those detained but later released, Darrin Ammussek, told NBCChicago.com.

“I believe very strongly in non-violence, and if I had seen anything that even resembled any plans or anything like that, we wouldn’t have been there," he added.

He claimed that during 18 hours in custody, police never told him why he was arrested, read him his rights or allowed him to make a phone call, The Associated Press reported. He said he remained handcuffed to a bench, even after asking to use a restroom.

"There were guards walking by making statements into the door along the lines of 'hippie,' 'communist," 'pinko,'" a tired-looking Ammussek told reporters just after his release.

NBCChicago.com said the National Lawyers Guild had threatened legal action if the detained protesters were not released or charged by Friday night.

“They came in with guns drawn and broke into a unit that was not housing protesters in order to get into another unit in the building that was housing protesters,” said the guild's Kris Hermes.

Security has been high throughout the city in preparation for the summit, where delegations from about 60 countries, including 50 heads of state, will discuss the war in Afghanistan and European missile defense.

Among the pre-NATO protests planned for Saturday was a march on the home of Mayor Emanuel. The big show will be on Sunday, the start of the two-day NATO summit, when thousands of protesters are expected to march 2½ miles from a band shell on Lake Michigan to the McCormick Place convention center, where delegates will be meeting.


On Friday, Chicago police on bicycles and foot tailed activists through the streets of the city, but ignored taunts and went out of their way to make as few arrests as possible. Protesters made a lot of noise and tried to evade police, but otherwise were relatively uneventful.

In all, police said there was a single arrest on a charge of aggravated battery of a police officer. Another man was briefly taken into custody, but he was released a short time later after being questioned by police, a department spokesman said.

Also, officers were seen trying to arrest a man who scaled a bridge tower and pulled down part of a NATO banner. Earlier, police handcuffed a man at the end of a noisy but largely peaceful rally organized by the nation's largest nurses union.

From the police side of the protest line, it went largely how Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy envisioned it earlier this month when he said, "We're not going to lock somebody up for dropping a banana peel."

Michael Olstewski, 22, a recent music school graduate who came to Chicago from Atlanta, one of hundreds of protesters who took to the streets on Friday for a spontaneous march, said protesters may be waiting to make a big statement.

He said he didn't do anything to get arrested Friday, "but later in the week ... If I feel it's strategic and a powerful statement" he would provoke police into arresting him.




NATO: Alliance partner Israel not invited to Chicago summit, chief denies any Turkey link

Israel will not be invited to NATO’s May 20-21 summit in Chicago, the alliance’s top official said Friday. But he denied that alliance member Turkey had blocked Israel’s participation.

Instead, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said the reason is because Israel does not participate in NATO’s main military missions.

News reports have claimed that Turkey blocked Israel’s participation because of the raid in 2010 by Israeli troops on ships heading to Gaza in which eight Turks and a Turkish-American died.

NATO has a system of partnerships with dozens of nations across the globe such as the Mediterranean Dialogue, a NATO outreach program with seven friendly nations, including Israel.

In the past, partner nations did not usually attend the alliance’s summits. But Fogh Rasmussen said 13 would do so this time.

“At the Lisbon summit (in 2010), we made clear that we would enhance dialogue and cooperation with partner nations ... because in today’s world security challenges know no borders, and no country or alliance can deal with most of them on their own,” he told journalists.

Two other members of the Mediterranean group, Jordan and Morocco, are among them. But Fogh Rasmussen said Israel is not because it does not participate in missions in Afghanistan and Kosovo.

“Israel has not been invited to attend the summit because Israel is neither a participant in ISAF nor in KFOR ... no one has blocked an invitation because it’s not been an issue,” Fogh Rasmussen said. ISAF and KFOR are acronyms for coalition forces in Afghanistan and Kosovo.

Earlier this year, Turkey scuttled a plan to include an Israeli warship in a NATO-run flotilla patrolling the Mediterranean.

In the past, Israeli warships and air force jets have joined in some NATO exercises, but Israel’s participation in the naval operation would the first time its armed forces have taken part in one of the alliance’s military operations.

Representatives of about 60 nations and international organizations will attend the Chicago conference. Partner nations include include Sweden, Switzerland, Qatar, Georgia, Australia and New Zealand.

Representatives of Russia and several Central Asian states also have been invited to discuss the war in Afghanistan — the summit’s main focus — “because they provide important transit arrangements to the benefit of our operation,” Fogh Rasmussen said.

The alliance has repeatedly said it is prepared to enhance practical cooperation with all partner nations in the region, including Israel. But some members have opposed past attempts to forge closer cooperation with the Jewish state, saying that could hurt the alliance’s relations with other Muslim countries, including Afghanistan, which remains NATO’s top operational priority.


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Sources: AP, Huffington Post, MSNBC, Russia Today, Washington Post, Youtube, Google Maps

Welfare Reform 2.0: Paul Ryan vs Democrats (Entitlement Reform)

BLACK POLITICAL BUZZ'S 21st CENTURY EFFECTIVE WELFARE REFORM PROPOSAL:


This may sound harsh but it’s time for the Federal Gov’t to STOP Paying Low Income Women to have Babies as if they are Breeding SLAVES!

This is why I completely agree with Congressman Paul Ryan on Entitlement Reform.

Most Saturday Mornings I enjoy watching Professor Melissa Harris-Perry's program on MSNBC.

The Topics are Interesting & the Conversation is usually enlightening.
However I don't always agree with her views on Policies which affect the American BLACK Community.

For example this morning she was advocating its ok for Low Income Women to Sit at home & raise their Children on Federal Money. i.e., Welfare.
Excuse me but isn't that why there are already too many Unwed Mothers on Welfare producing even more Babies?

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Sorry Professor Perry but I'm NOT down with that!


We've long known that Poverty is BIG Business In America!

Entitlement Reform is NOT a Racist Concept which Targets BLACKS & Latinos. It is Necessary for America's Financial Stability.

It took Political Courage for Pres. Clinton to Urge Congress to pass Welfare Reform Legislation. What about today's Democrats?

Going forward the ONLY way I will Support Low Income Mothers receiving Gov't Entitlements, Including Child Care Assistance, is if these 10 Requirements are Enforced from the Federal Gov't level all the way to State & Local Gov't agencies.


NOTE:

I Am NOT Encouraging a "Nanny State".

But In Order for 21st Century Welfare Reform to be truly EFFECTIVE, it must be FAIR & allow for Opportunities for Success.

NO MORE LAZY OR SLACK DSS, SOCIAL SERVICE & CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICE WORKERS!

Here Are The 10 Welfare Reform Requirements Which Must Be Strictly Enforced On The Federal, State & Local Levels. Especially In North Carolina:

1) Low Income Mothers in need of any type of Gov’t Assistance will be Required to Sign detailed “Cooperation Contracts”.
“Cooperation Contracts” will list Requirements which must be met at ALL times to remain a Recipient of any Gov’t Assistance/ Benefits.
“Cooperation Contracts” will also be used as Partnership Agreements between the Recipients & Governing Agencies

2) There is a Strict Time Limit for how long Low Income Women receiving Gov't Assistance can receive that Assistance.
For Example: NO More than 5 Years!
NO Extensions!!!!
NO Exceptions Unless the Mothers become Permanently Disabled.
I mean REALLY Disabled. NOT Faking An Illness!

3) Low Income Women of Child Bearing Age, who receive Gov't Assistance must be Required to use an Effective form of Birth Control.

FREE ABORTIONS do NOT help Low Income Women because after having those ABORTIONS most of those Women become Pregnant again in less than 1 year's time due to Emotional Guilt.

FREE ABORTIONS is just another Business racket which Financially Benefits Doctors to become Wealthy off Federal Gov't Funding.

The More ABORTIONS some Doctors perform, the more they are paid by the Federal Gov't & by Planned Parenthood!

So FREE ABORTIONS is actually a Financial Scheme using the Bodies of Low Income Women!
i.e., BREEDING SLAVES!

Thus Low Income Women of Child Bearing Age, who receive Gov't Assistance must be Required to use an Effective form of Birth Control.

4) When Low Income Women receiving Gov't Assistance have more than 2 Children, they Should NOT be awarded Additional Gov't Assistance for those additional Children.

NONE!

1 to 2 Children is the Limit as long as they are receiving Gov’t Assistance.
The Government can NOT control how many Children a Woman has but they do NOT have to provide Gov’t Assistance for All those Children.

This Requirement must be Enforced!
If Not then the Federal Gov't is just paying Women who are receiving Gov't Assistance to have more Children out of Wedlock, at the Federal Government’s Expense.

5) Low Income Women receiving Gov't Assistance must be required to Attend Accredited School/ Training Programs Full-time for NO more than 2 to 4 Years.

For Example:
Community Colleges Or Universities NOT For-Profit Trade Schools!

They must also keep their Attendance Current & their GPA Satisfactory (A, B Or C).
OR.....
If they are Working Full-Time. (35 to 40 Hours Weekly)

After Completing School or Training Program, Recipients would be Required to Complete Work Internships (Paid or Non-Paid) with Local Businesses for 3 Months to Learn Effective Work Skills & Build Up Work References.

6) If Low Income Women receive Food Stamps there must be Proper Monitoring of how those Food Stamps are being used.
Those Food Stamps Should NOT be Sold.
Those Food Stamps Should NOT be used to just Feed their Children Junk Food or Food with NO Real Nutritional Value on a Regular Basis. (Sweets, Pizza, TV Dinners, etc.,)

7) Low Income Mothers Will be Required to Cooperate with the Federal & State Gov’t in securing Child Support from the Biological, Legal Fathers of their Children.
If the Fathers are Deceased then the Mothers must Still be Required to Cooperate and allow Governing Agencies to make that Determination.

8) Low Income Mothers receiving Gov’t Assistance MUST have their Children Vaccinated & be Required to take their Children to the Doctor twice a Year for Well-Child Examinations.
Such Visits would help Reduce Child Abuse, Reduce Child Neglect & Ensure their Children are Healthy and Developing Normally.

For example:
Monitoring the Children’s Health to see if they are being given Over-the-Counter Meds by their Mothers to make them Sleep at night. (Blood Tests)

Or…

NOT receiving Proper Nutrition even though the Mothers are using Food Stamps to Purchase Food.
This could be an Indication the Food Stamps are being Sold by the Mothers. I said it could be an Indication.

If a Low Income Mother receiving Gov’t Assistance applies for Disability Checks due to a Child’s Illness, the governing agencies & the Child's Doctor should Closely Investigate to see if the Mother is perhaps Intentionally Contributing to their Child’s Illness or Causing their Child’s Illness just to receive additional Gov’t Assistance.

9) Low Income Mothers MUST Attend Parent-Teacher Conferences at their Child’s Day Care & at their Child’s Schools.

Their Children Will NOT be allowed to Drop Out of School!

Children aged 5 to 18 would be Required to Attend School regularly until they Graduate.
Or….
The Mothers would lose Benefits for those Children.
(Food Stamps & Medicaid, etc.,)

10) For Low Income Mothers with Infants, Pre-school & School-aged Children in need of Child Care Assistance, that Child Care Assistance is ONLY to be granted if the Mothers are Attending School or Working Full-Time.

The Child Care Assistance must match their School or Work Schedules.

If the Recipients Drop out of School, Refuse to Attend School on a regular basis or Quit Working, the Child Care Assistance will Cease to Exist within 30-Days.

These 10 Welfare Reform Requirements are just that! Requirements!

NO Exceptions!
NO Exceptions!
NO EXCEPTIONS Unless.....
The Mothers become Permanently Disabled.
I mean REALLY Disabled. NOT Faking An Illness!

Going forward providing Gov’t Assistance to Low Income Mothers under these 10 Terms is the ONLY way I would Approve of Low Income Women receiving any type of Gov't Assistance.

Otherwise the Federal Gov't is just paying Women receiving Gov't Assistance to have more Children out of Wedlock, at the Federal Gov't Expense.





Welfare Reform Failing Poor Single Mothers


“Stretched Thin,” “Both Hands Tied,” and “The War on Welfare” are three new books that highlight welfare reform’s failure to address the enduring poverty of single mothers and their children.

The women at the bottom in America, single mothers on public assistance, are sometimes called “drawer people,” the subjects of case files that stay in the welfare manager’s drawer, year after year.

They are mothers who quit work or can’t work because they are ill or disabled, or illiterate, or victims of abuse, or the sole caregivers for an elderly parent or chronically sick child.

These so-called hard-to-serve single mothers may include women who fail to apply for the 70 jobs in one month required to qualify for a federal cash grant. They may want to go to school full time, which is against welfare rules in some states. They may be approaching the five-year lifetime limit for cash assistance that most states impose. Or they may simply not own a car.

“I feel like poverty just … it’s a vicious cycle,” says one mother on welfare, an Oregon hospice worker with three teen-aged children, in Stretched Thin: Poor Families, Welfare Work, and Welfare Reform, a rare in-depth study of caseworkers and their clients and former clients.

“I mean if you get your head above that water, then they’re going to drop you. …You know they are going to let the air out of your lifejacket, and you go back down to the bottom rung again.”

The posters in welfare offices proclaim, “Work is always better than welfare.” But is it? Not if you’re a single mother in a low-wage, no-benefits, dead-end job, according to both Stretched Thin and Both Hands Tied: Welfare Reform and the Race to the Bottom of the Low-Wage Labor Market, another new book on America’s fraying safety net.

In close-up studies of single mothers both on and off the dole in Oregon and Wisconsin, two states that pioneered welfare reform, these books report what it’s like to stock shelves at Walmart, empty bedpans in nursing homes, or flip burgers at McDonald’s, working nights and split shifts — and somehow also trying to raise a family.

“It’s all the stresses in the world,” says one mother in Both Hands Tied, describing her life as a cleaning woman and the sole caretaker of three children. “You know what I’m saying? You have to do all these things, and then you have to worry about child care, making it home in time to feed them, put them in the tub, clean up the house. … You’re trying to do all this on your own, with no help.

What’s the word for it? I don’t even know the word for it.”

The starting point for both books is 1996, when the federal Aid to Families with Dependent Children program was abolished, ending 60 years of guaranteed monthly cash grants to families without a man present.

In its place, a Republican-dominated Congress passed welfare reform, or the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. Vowing to “end welfare as we know it,” President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, signed the act into law.

Members of both parties agreed that poor single mothers should support their children primarily through wage labor rather than government aid. In practice, this meant that for single mothers to get welfare checks, they also had to go to work.

At the time of its demise, AFDC represented only 1 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.

But, as recounted in The War on Welfare: Family, Poverty, and Politics in Modern America, a recent book on the history behind the reform, the antipoverty coalition that sought to dramatically expand federal aid to the poor in the 1960s and ’70s had long since disbanded. For decades, says Marisa Chappell, the author and a historian at Oregon State University, welfare had been branded as “a destructive program that drove poor fathers away.”

Democrats joined Republicans in blaming welfare for a host of society’s ills, including gang violence, teen pregnancies and low SAT scores. The press was full of stories about shiftless “welfare queens” with drug-addicted sons.

First on a long list of congressional findings for the reform legislation was, “Marriage is the foundation of a successful society.” The law noted that the number of people receiving AFDC had tripled since 1965, and more than two-thirds of them were children.

It stated that the number of children receiving public assistance — 9.3 million — was “closely related to the increase in births to unmarried women,” which had nearly tripled between 1970 and 1991.

But Chappell says the preponderance of research does not support the idea that AFDC encouraged women to stay unmarried or have additional children to increase their welfare payments. “Against all evidence,” she says, “both conservatives and liberals insisted that government income support … discouraged the creation and maintenance of two-parent families among the ‘underclass.’”

Like Chappell, the authors of Stretched Thin and Both Hands Tied — four sociologists and an anthropologist — take aim at the philosophical underpinnings of welfare reform, the belief, old as the workhouses of 19th-century England, that cash assistance breeds laziness and the poor themselves should bear the chief burden for improving their lot.

All three books examine what happens to poor single mothers working in an economy in which wages are stagnant, benefits are declining, layoffs are rampant, low-paid service sector jobs have replaced good manufacturing jobs and two incomes are required for a family to stay out of poverty. Against this backdrop, the authors say, welfare reform has condemned millions of poor women and children to downward mobility.

For all the rhetoric about reducing chronic welfare dependency, moving poor women toward self-sufficiency and getting their foot in the door of the world of work, the books show, the effect of reform has been to reduce government spending and lift women and children off the rolls — but not out of poverty.

On the 10th anniversary of welfare reform in 2006, Clinton claimed success in an essay (“How We Ended Welfare, Together”) for The New York Times, stating that the welfare rolls had dropped by two-thirds, creating “a new beginning for millions of Americans.”

The gains of the late 1990s, Clinton noted, were buoyed by a strong economy during his presidency, an increase in the minimum wage and expansions in such federal programs as the Earned Income Tax Credit, Head Start, child care subsidies, the collection of child support and incentives for businesses that hired welfare recipients.

“Overall, 100 times as many people moved out of poverty and into the middle class during our eight years as in the previous 12,” Clinton said. “Of course, the booming economy helped, but the empowerment policies made a big difference.”
Between 1995 and 2000, on the heels of welfare reform, poverty in America did in fact decline, even as the welfare rolls were slashed in half.

During those years, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the child poverty rate dropped from nearly 21 percent to 16 percent, back to 1970s levels. The poverty rate for households headed by single women fell from 32 percent in 1995 to a historical low of 25 percent in 2000.

But Stretched Thin challenges this supposed success story. Even in the prosperous economy of the late 1990s, it shows, finding a job was not usually a ticket out of poverty. Co-authors Sandra Morgen, an anthropologist, and Joan Acker, a sociologist, both at the University of Oregon, and Jill Weigt, a sociologist at California State University, San Marcos, surveyed more than 900 people, most of them white single mothers, who were taken off the rolls in Oregon or denied welfare benefits in early 1998.

They found that more than half — 55 percent — wound up taking jobs that paid wages at or below the poverty line. Two years later, the authors found, nearly half still had family incomes below the poverty line.

Stretched Thin provides a close-up of a punitive system in which a caseworker boasts about his “shaming technique,” and poor women forgo raises of 25 cents per hour to avoid losing food stamps.

“They’ll pay for your day care to work a minimum wage job for the rest of your life …” says a waitress who dropped out of community college after her mother fell ill and could not watch the grandchildren. “But they won’t pay for day care for a year or two for someone to go to school and get a degree so they could become more successful.”


Census data show that poverty rates plummeted in the U.S. between 1959 and 1973, during a period of sustained economic growth. Between 1965 and 1972, as noted in Stretched Thin, federal spending on welfare and other antipoverty programs more than doubled.

The U.S. poverty rate reached a historic low of 11 percent in 1973, down from 22 percent in 1959.

Yet by 1973, welfare had been under attack for years. As recounted in The War on Welfare, the Moynihan Report of 1965, written by Assistant U.S. Secretary of Labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan for a Democratic administration, proclaimed, “The Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling” and “approaching complete breakdown.” Unable to support their families, black men were deserting them, leaving a “matriarchal structure” and a “tangle of pathology” behind, the report said.

Bit by bit, The War on Welfare shows, liberals abandoned their defense of poor women as caregivers and joined the conservative chorus calling for reform. The Moynihan Report, Chappell says, expressed a broad consensus on the American left.

In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan‘s General Accounting Office found that more than a decade of research had failed to support the view that welfare was fostering two-parent family breakups or out-of-wedlock births. But by then, the country was making a U-turn in the war on poverty.

Today, poverty is on the rise again. The gains of the late 1990s have proved to be unsustainable. In 2008, the most recent year for which data are available, the overall poverty rate rose to 13 percent, and the child poverty rate rose to 19 percent. Nearly 29 percent of households headed by women in 2008 were poor, approaching 1998 levels.

In remarks before a U.S. House of Representatives committee that month, Carmen Nazario, assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said that between 1995 and 2008, the percent of poor single mothers with no work and no welfare had more than doubled, to 35 percent.

Well over half the decline in welfare caseloads was due not to a drop in poverty, but rather to a drop in the share of poor families receiving assistance, Nazario said.

“We must be certain that the program remains responsive and accessible to families when they are in need,” Nazario said.

Under current welfare rules, half of the parents receiving cash grants in a given state must work, or the state risks losing federal funds.

The grants for a family of three with no income range from a maximum $170 monthly in Mississippi to $923 monthly in Alaska. Single poor parents must work an average of 30 hours per week to qualify, or 20 hours if they have a child under 6. They must look for work as soon as they are able.

Yet Both Hands Tied reveals that the women often end up in truly dead-end jobs. To qualify for federal aid, they are frequently assigned to community service, sorting clothes for Goodwill or cleaning public housing offices. If they refuse these “workfare” jobs, they may be denied assistance.

Their caseworkers monitor their attendance and dock their pay if they miss hours.

The co-authors of Both Hands Tied, Jane L. Collins, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Victoria Mayer, a sociologist at Colby College in Maine, focused their study on a group of 33 women in Milwaukee and Racine, Wis., more than half of them African American, who entered, remained on or returned to the welfare rolls in 2003.

They found that none of the women was a stranger to work. Virtually all had worked since they were teenagers and had numerous jobs, often lasting more than a year, sometimes with promotions.

Among the personal stories in Both Hands Tied is that of a single mother, a former certified nursing assistant in Milwaukee, who goes on public assistance when her blood pressure during a pregnancy becomes dangerously high.

Her former employer did not provide medical leave. Now, seven months after giving birth, she has been assigned to collect rubbish and tend to the landscaping on city traffic islands.
“What am I going to do cutting down bushes?” she asks. “Am I gonna put that on my résumé?”

Federal funding for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the program that replaced AFDC, has remained at $16 billion since 1996, representing a 28 percent decline in real dollars. Congress provided an extra $2.5 billion in emergency funds for 2009 and 2010, and, as Miller-McCune went to press, the House had approved an additional $2.5 billion for 2011.

But Congress was not expected to significantly expand the program long term.

“Despite the shocking reality of silent and unmet need, we have heard no clamoring for the reform of welfare reform,” Stretched Thin says.

In 1969, as America’s cities were burning, President Richard Nixon, a Republican, proposed a plan that would have represented a phenomenal expansion of the nation’s safety net. This bit of history, absent now in political memory but retold in The War on Welfare, was called the Family Assistance Plan.

It was aimed at blue-collar workers, who were losing manufacturing jobs to cheap labor overseas.

The plan would have provided a guaranteed annual income of $1,600 for all American families, or the equivalent of about $10,000 in today’s dollars.

The National Association of Manufacturers and a group of the country’s major industrialists, including the heads of Xerox and the Ford Motor Company, supported the concept.

“It wasn’t a socialist revolution, to be sure, but it was a great deal more radical than anything a mainstream politician might offer today,” Chappell says.

In a turning point for New Deal-style politics, her book shows, Nixon’s plan died after four years of debate, defeated by a conservative onslaught and bitter divisions in the liberal camp. Conservatives attacked it as a “giant step deeper into the quagmire of the welfare state.” Welfare activists didn’t like it because favored white two-parent families to the detriment of single African-American mothers.

Today, during the country’s worst economic crisis in 70 years, even the Brookings Institution, the Washington, D.C., think tank that helped draft the welfare reform of 1996, says “more attention needs to be paid to the adequacy of the safety net.”

In testimony before the House Committee on the Budget late last year, Ron Haskins, a Brookings economist and an architect of the welfare overhaul, said, “The 1996 reforms were successful when the economy was strong, and even during a mild recession like that of 2001.

But that recession was nothing more than a modest thunder storm; the current recession is a hurricane.”

Brookings is projecting the poverty rate will rise to 14.4 percent next year, bringing the total of poor Americans to 45 million.

Early in 2008, while running for president, Barack Obama made a vow to cut poverty in half in 10 years, adding, “I do so with great humility because it is a very ambitious goal.”

These three books suggest ways the goal can be reached: Raise the minimum wage. Provide more jobs, better job training and universal child care. Establish a universal monthly child allowance, as 88 other countries have done. Expand unemployment benefits and give them to part-time workers. Require employers to provide paid family leave. Make preschool and college available at low cost or for free.

Or take the advice of Johnnie Tillmon, the national welfare rights leader, Los Angeles laundrywoman and mother of six who said back in 1971, during the Nixon years, “If I were president … I’d start paying women a living wage for doing the work we are already doing — child raising and housekeeping. And the welfare crisis would be over. Just like that.”


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Paul Ryan Unveils Risky 2013 GOP Budget; Medicare Targeted, Major Revisions To U.S. Tax Code.

Congressman Paul Ryan's Risky 2013 Budget Blueprint Targets Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare Reform, Social Security, the U.S. Tax Code & Defunds Pres. Obama's Health Care Law i.e., Repeals it.





House G.O.P. Lays Down Marker With New Budget Plan

House Republicans, believing that worries over the deficit will trump affection for Medicare and other popular programs, unveiled a federal budget blueprint Tuesday morning that would cut deeply into domestic spending, transform the tax code and balance the budget by 2040.

Because tax revenues would remain unchanged, the deficit under the plan would be almost as deep as the red ink under President Obama’s feet in the fiscal year that begins in October. But by mid-decade it would drop precipitously, and over decades, significant changes to Medicaid and Medicare, the federal health care plans for the poor and the elderly, would help bring the budget into balance.

“We are here to offer Americans the chance to choose which future they want,” Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, said, positing a choice between “a path to renew prosperity” and “the president’s path of debt and decline.”

Ultimately, the House budget is a political document, since the Senate has no intention of passing a budget of its own.

The plan amounts to a political bet, with high stakes wagered by both parties.

“This isn’t just matter of the House battling with the Senate or arm-wrestling with the president,” said J. D. Foster, a fiscal policy expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “For better or for worse, what they produce is going to be the standard for conservatives and Republicans going into this election season.”

Republicans believe voters will reward them for what one what member of the House Budget Committee, Jason Chaffetz of Utah, called a “bold and realistic” effort to transform and shrink government. Democrats are equally certain that because the plan fundamentally changes Medicare without raising taxes on the rich, they can pummel vulnerable Republicans.

On Monday, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee began a “Millionaires over Medicare” campaign against 41 House Republicans who Democratic officials believe are vulnerable to the line of attack. “Under the leadership of Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and Speaker John Boehner, House Republicans are again proposing a budget that ends the Medicare guarantee while protecting millionaires,” a memo from the group said. “It’s not only bad politics, it’s very bad policy.”

The budget plan embraces a Medicare plan similar to the one put forward by Mr. Ryan and Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, which would change the health plan from a guaranteed, fee-for-service government insurance program to a menu of private insurance plans subsidized by the government. Older Americans would be able to buy into the existing fee-for-service program, although annual expenditures would be capped.

The other flashpoint will be total spending on programs under Congress’s annual discretion. The budget will cap that spending at $1.028 trillion, the same level set by last year’s budget but $19 billion below the cap set in July after protracted negotiations to raise the nation’s statutory borrowing limit.

Democrats argue that the level in the new budget amounts to a broken promise that will lead to more strife as the House and Senate forge 12 spending bills this summer that will add up to two different totals. The House will aim for the $1.028 trillion cap in the new House budget while the Senate will aim for $1.047 trillion, the summer Budget Control Act cap.

“Ignoring the B.C.A. represents a breach of faith that will make it more difficult to negotiate future agreements,” two senior Democratic senators said Monday in a letter to Mr. Boehner and Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader.

“Rather than trying to tear down the B.C.A., we should be holding it up as an example of what can be accomplished if we are willing to set aside our differences and work hard to find bipartisan solutions to our nation’s challenges,” said the letter from Kent Conrad of North Dakota, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, and Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

House Republicans argue that additional cuts to both discretionary and entitlement spending are needed now to head off an automatic $110 billion in across-the-board cuts to defense and domestic programs in 2013. Even with the lower total, the House would still be above the $950 billion that domestic programs would reach if the across-the-board cuts take effect.

Under the House plan, the current $1.18 trillion deficit would fall to $797 billion in the coming fiscal year, compared with $977 billion under Mr. Obama’s plan. By 2016, the deficit would fall to $241 billion by Republican estimates. The Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that Mr. Obama’s budget would still have a $529 billion deficit in 2016.

The Ryan plan would accumulate $3.1 trillion in additional debt through 2022. The president’s would add $6.4 trillion, more than twice that total. The Republican budget cuts spending by $5 trillion more than the president’s plan, mandates the repeal of Mr. Obama’s health care law and assumes the elimination of the government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The tax code would be simplified to just two tax rates, 10 percent and 25 percent, with the closure of tax credits and deductions. The 35 percent corporate income tax would be lowered to 25 percent and the existing, worldwide system of taxing corporate profits would be changed to a territorial system in which only domestic profits were subject to United States corporate taxation. But the budget assumes revenues would stay consistent with revenues under the current individual and corporate tax codes.

Medicare would be turned into something like Mr. Obama’s health care plan for the uninsured, a subsidized set of private insurance plans, while Medicaid would be converted to fixed block grants to the states.

Bipartisan talks continue over a so-called grand bargain on deficit reduction that would combine tax increases, spending cuts and changes to entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. But hopes are dimming as both parties frame the election around their vision of deficit reduction.

“The idea of a grand bargain in 2012 is very hard to find credible,” Mr. Foster said. “To a large extent this election is about deciding what the grand bargain is supposed to look like.”


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Ronald Reagan's Welfare Reform Speech (Radio Address)

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Credit Reporting Agency Monopolies Destroy Lives! Millions Held Hostage! (Videos)

Credit Error? It Pays to Be on V.I.P. List

The credit rating bureaus, whose reports influence everything from credit cards to mortgages to job offers, have a two-tiered system for resolving errors — one for the rich, the well-connected, the well-known and the powerful, and the other for everyone else.

The three major agencies, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, keep a V.I.P. list of sorts, according to consumer lawyers and legal documents, consisting of celebrities, politicians, judges and other influential people. Those on the list — and they may not even realize they are on it — get special help from workers in the United States in fixing mistakes on their credit reports. Any errors are usually corrected immediately, one lawyer said.

For everyone else, disputes are herded into a largely automated system. Their complaints are often electronically ferried to a subcontractor overseas, where a worker spends, on average, about two minutes figuring out the gist of the matter, boiling it down to a one-to-three-digit computer code that signifies the problem — “account not his/hers,” for example — and sending a dispute form to the creditor to investigate. Many times, consumer advocates say, the investigation translates to a perfunctory check of its records.

“The legal responsibility of the credit reporting agencies and of the creditors is well established,” said Leonard Bennett, a consumer lawyer in Newport News, Va. “There is a requirement that they do meaningful research and analysis, and it is almost never done.”

Consumers who have trouble fixing errors through the dispute process can quickly find themselves trapped in a Kafkaesque no man’s land, where the only escape is through the court system.

“You are guilty before you are proven innocent in a situation like this,” said Catherine Taylor, 45, of Benton, Ark., who said she had been denied employment and credit because her filing was mixed up with a felon who had the same name and birthday.

Judy Johnson of Bossier City, La., was confused with a less creditworthy Judith Johnson, with a similar address and Social Security number. For nearly seven years, Judy Johnson, a 63-year-old credit manager for a building supply company, said she tried to remove the black marks from her credit report. But when she was denied a credit card, she knew the problem had returned — a third time. “This time, I was livid,” she said.

She ultimately brought a suit against one of the bureaus, and recently settled for an amount she cannot disclose. But the problems still linger. A deputy sheriff recently came to her door to serve her papers for a debt she says she does not owe.

The credit rating bureaus, private-sector companies that each attempt to track all American consumers’ credit use, have grown much more powerful over the last couple of decades as credit has become a crucial cog in the nation’s financial system. Their reports are used to formulate the all-powerful credit score, which lenders use to determine creditworthiness.

But as the bureaus’ work has become more important, consumer advocates say, regulation has not kept up, in large part because their overseer, the Federal Trade Commission, lacks broad authority. That could change once responsibility for the credit bureaus shifts to the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which will be able to write rules and examine the credit agencies’ policies.



The bureaus, meanwhile, do not have an economic incentive to improve the system, consumer advocates say, because their main customers are the creditors, not consumers.

“There is no neutrality in the credit reporting agencies,” said John Ulzheimer, who has been an expert witness in more than 80 credit-related cases and is president of consumer education at SmartCredit.com. “They work for the lenders who buy credit reports from them, and anyone who suggests otherwise is not being intellectually honest.”

When asked about the V.I.P. category, TransUnion said all consumers “have the ability to speak to a live representative.” Equifax said consumers who received a free copy of their credit report were provided with a number for customer service.

Experian denied that it had V.I.P. lists. But a spokeswoman did say that prominent people deemed high risk — like politicians in an election year — might have their credit files taken offline so that creditors or other companies making inquiries could not get access without the bureau’s permission. Experian said those people did not receive any other special handling.

David Szwak, a consumer lawyer in Shreveport, La., who has handled dozens of credit cases, said that the V.I.P. designation and preferential treatment did exist at Experian, and he provided sworn testimony from former Experian employees that the category existed.

Estimates of credit reports with serious errors vary widely, anywhere from 3 to 25 percent. A recent study, paid for by the Consumer Data Industry Association, the trade group for the bureaus, found potential errors in 19.2 percent of reports, but said that less than 1 percent of them had disputes that, when settled, resulted in a meaningful increase in scores. Even 1 percent translates into millions of consumers, since there are at least 200 million files at each of the bureaus.

The F.T.C. is expected to deliver a nationwide study on credit report accuracy next year that could provide more clarity. It could also include recommendations for legislative action.



The volume of disputes has been rising as consumers borrow more and gain greater access to credit reports. The automated system was a response to that. A spokesman for the trade group said most consumers received an answer within 14 days.

Experian is the only bureau that still processes disputes in the United States, experts said, though most complaints wind their way through the same online system — unless the dispute involves a V.I.P.

“They get a lot more high-end treatment,” said Mr. Szwak, the lawyer, who has read the bureaus’ internal procedure manuals and deposed or cross-examined employees. The biggest difference at TransUnion and Equifax, lawyers said, is that V.I.P.’s disputes are specially handled domestically. Regular consumers’ files, meanwhile, may get priority treatment if they involve a time-sensitive issue, like a mortgage pending, or if the consumer is represented by a lawyer or dealing with fraud.

Last year, new rules went into effect to strengthen existing regulations on the accuracy of reports. The rules also allow consumers to dispute errors directly with the creditor. But critics say the rule lacks any teeth because consumers don’t have the right to sue the companies. (Individuals can, however, sue the bureaus and creditors after lodging a dispute through their system.)

But the problem, advocates say, is that consumers cannot vote with their feet. “They cannot remove their information from the bureaus,” said Chi Chi Wu, a staff lawyer at the National Consumer Law Center, who wrote a report on the automated dispute process in 2009, “or take their business elsewhere.”


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Obama May Lose His Financial Reform Fight To Lobbyists

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No One Marching For The Banks


Two days before President Barack Obama called on Wall Street titans to ask their lobbyists to stand down in the fight over financial regulation reforms, JP Morgan mobilized its entire New York workforce to join the battle.

On Tuesday, it dispatched an e-mail on the reform package the Senate is considering to 30,000 employees, noting sections it liked and those it didn’t, including a tough proposal to overhaul the way banks handle derivatives.

More than 530,000 New Yorkers who work in the financial services industry could be adversely affected by the provision, the e-mail warned, according to a person familiar with it. JPMorgan workers were asked to e-mail to Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand urging her to stand up for them.

But it’s unlikely that rallying cry will spark much of a popular uprising against the financial regulation reform legislation. If anything, it underscores the inability of the Big Banks and their allies to latch onto a phrase or argument that could resonate with the public and provide the industry’s Republican defenders with the leverage to reverse the momentum in the regulation fight.

During the health care debate, GOP opponents withstood accusations of becoming the ‘Party of No’ and charges that they were denying coverage to children because they could see palpable support for their position in the screaming protesters at town hall meetings and the tanking poll numbers of Obama and health-care supporters.

Now, the shouting is on the Democrats’ side. Labor leaders next week are organizing marches on Wells Fargo and Bank of America, and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is expected to lead about 10,000 workers in a march down Wall Street in support of the reforms.

Change to Win Chair Anna Burger said it is “pretty outrageous” for the big banks to draw their workers into the fight. “They’re making their staff lobby against consumer protections,” she said.

“These are the same people who they forced to push bad products that put workers into debt. And now they’re using them to stop Wall Street reform,” she added.

Muscling amendments past labor’s supporters in the Senate might be an achievable goal if polls didn’t provide ample evidence that it’s not just union members who are still outraged at the financial industry.

A recent Pew study found that 61 percent of Americans say it is “a good idea for the government to more strictly regulate the way major financial companies do business.” Even the tea party activists can’t provide much cover. The Wall Street bailouts of 2008 were one of the galvanizing causes of the movement.



That’s not to say that the banks’ allies didn’t try to change the legislation’s trajectory, and Democrats for months feared that the legislation would indeed be defeated by a filibuster. Although some Republicans had hinted they might support the legislation, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) rallied his caucus in opposition to it.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sunk $3 million into an ad campaign and an effort to gin up grassroots opposition. And congressional Republicans settled on attacking the bill as a “bail-out,” though opened themselves to Democratic charges that they were singing from a song book prepared by pollster Frank Luntz.

Neither of those efforts got very far, and both were overshadowed by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s announcement that it was filing a civil lawsuit against Goldman Sachs accusing it of selling investments that were rigged to lose money. The case exploded in the headlines and reminded the public of all the banking shenanigans that made them angry in the first place.

Those dynamics help explain why McConnell, who had been using GOP opposition to the bill as a way to lure Wall Street campaign donations, this week freed his members to engage in negotiations on a bipartisan bill.

Of course, the fight isn’t over yet and the banks aren’t flinching even as the odds against them grow steeper.

JP Morgan, which declined to comment for this story, is opposed to a provision passed on Wednesday that would regulate the $450 trillion derivatives market for the first time. Under it, most trades would go through exchanges and clearinghouses, which would make them more transparent. Some analysts say that is key to avoiding a meltdown similar to that of 2008.

JPMorgan and USAA, a financial services company that serves military families, are worried that the so-called Volcker Rule, which is designed to prevent federally insured banks from trading on their assets, would essentially break them up.

Like JPMorgan, USAA also sent an email urging more than five million members and 22,000 workers to take their case to Capitol Hill. USAA argues that because it is primarily an insurance company, it should be exempt from the Volcker Rule. Its affiliated banks took none of the risks, and received none of the bailouts, of the bank being targeted.

“We have no problem with these limits on banks. Bring it on,” said USAA spokesman Roger Wildermuth. USAA’s problem is with language that targets banks affiliated with it. “Our members shouldn’t be penalized because we provide integrated solutions by having an affiliated bank.”

In an email sent early Friday morning, President Josue Robles urged customers to contact their senators and press for a USAA carve out. It was the first time in more than 25 years that the organization solicited its members to lobby on a federal issue, Wildermuth said.

“The current Senate bill would disproportionally impact USAA because we are a unique and fully integrated association. USAA is not like the banks and other companies that helped bring down our economy, and we never took a penny of TARP funds. We do not engage in the harmful practices this legislation seeks to resolve,” Robles wrote.

A similar email went to USAA’s employees. Wildermuth would not disclose how many members and employees have contacted their senators so far, saying only the organization is “thrilled” with their response.

Meanwhile, local bankers, who still can wield considerable influence on lawmakers, are coming to the aid of the big banks on some portions of the legislation.

The American Bankers Association last year generated 300,000 contacts on Capitol Hill and its keeping up the pressure. In March, it held a Washington summit that drew more than 1,000 local bankers, who spent part of their time meeting with their senators and congressmen.

“There is a mischaracterization about a lot of this legislation as being aimed just at the largest institutions,” said John Hall, an ABA spokesman. “Community banks, who had nothing to do with this economic crisis, are going to be greatly affected by the outcome.”

But Burger predicts the more intense lobbying efforts will backfire, only further infuriating Americans already angry at Wall Street. And Eddie Vale, a spokesman for the AFL-CIO, said a central message in the upcoming protests will be: “Make Wall Street pay.”


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Sources: Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Meet The Press, MSNBC, Politico, Whitehouse.gov, Youtube, Google Maps

Democrats Lack Votes For Financial Reform, Where's Pelosi?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Shelby: Dems Will Lack Votes Monday For Financial Reform


Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and the committee's ranking Republican, Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, said Sunday they don't have a deal yet on the financial regulatory reform bill - but said they were on the verge of one.

"We're getting there, we're close," Dodd said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "I think Richard and I have a pretty good understanding of where we are on the bill."

"We're closer than we've ever been," Shelby said, adding that there are "two or three things" that need to be resolved, singling out efforts to end "too-big-to-fail" financial institutions.

The two men and their staffs planned to meet later Sunday, but Shelby said they needed more time to get a deal. The Republican also said that Democrats "will not get cloture" when they try to break a GOP filibuster to bring a bill that passed the Banking Committee to the Senate floor Monday evening.

"Will we get a bill tomorrow?" Shelby said on the same program. "I doubt it."

Both men suggested they were still negotiating how to deal with provisions that would wind down troubled institutions and attempt to ensure that taxpayers won't be on the hook for future bailouts.

Dodd said they were "down to the point of whether Congress should be involved" on the matter. But Shelby said the bill would still give too much flexibility to the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to help distressed financial institutions.

Shelby said the Dodd bill "now as constituted" will not pass the Senate. But both senators were optimistic that they could get a deal sometime this week.


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Sources: MSNBC, Meet The Press, Politico, Google Maps