The $138 billion in student debt that's been relieved by Biden has nothing to do with his "Plan B" for debt relief after the Plan A was shot down by the courts. It's just about Biden's Education Department running existing forgiveness programs with a modicum of competence. Today's announcement, for example, involves the speedy implementation of the updated income-driven repayment (SAVE) program, which promised that people paying 10 years with less than $12,000 in debt would get it forgiven.
npr.org/2024/02/21/123…

The UAW's selective strike strategy is new for UAW, but it's been very successful for one other union. So much so that they trademarked the practice.
That would be @afa_cwa's CHAOS strategy. 🧵 CHAOS stands for Creating Havoc Around Our System. It began at Alaska Airlines in 1993. There was a protracted strike with the flight attendants, despite the airline earning record profits. Negotiations had dragged on for 3 years.

I read @FranklinFoer's Biden bio The Last Politician, and found this disconnect between a peripatetic presidency of action and the public perception that nothing's happening. What accounts for it? Maybe it's the White House's theory of politics.
prospect.org/culture/books/… Reading the accounts of Biden directing meetings and horse-trading with Congress—the work of politics—is so disconnected from this White House's extreme cloistering of the president that it called to mind the old SNL Reagan mastermind sketch:

This whole story is quite something. Timeline goes like this:

https://twitter.com/ChristaLaser/status/1693740050553409737

Aug 7: Josh Wright suddenly announces he's leaving GMU
Aug 7: Prof Laser releases Wright's attempt to turn a job interview into a date ()
Aug 8: GMU bids Wright a fond farewell ()

https://twitter.com/ChristaLaser/status/1688753648589819904

https://twitter.com/lutherlowe/status/1693744341607452908

Our business of health care series continues with a history of UnitedHealth, the largest insurer & the largest employer of physicians in the country, with so many subsidiaries that 25% of its revenues come from *itself*.
From @SaraLSirota & @KristaKBrown.
prospect.org/health/2023-08… We go through UnitedHealth's entire history, from its founding as a way around state laws that required HMOs to be nonprofits run by physicians to its serial acquisitions of just about everything in healthcare.
https://t.co/DYbarYOQxJprospect.org/health/2023-08…

OK I've got a #longread today for our health care series about the godfather of modern health policy, responsible for Medicare Advantage, Medicare Part D, risk adjustment, physician payment schedules & more.
His name is Tom Scully.
prospect.org/health/2023-08… Once out of government, Scully became a partner at the leading health-focused private equity firm (Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe), using his unparalleled knowledge of a system he helped create to exploit pockets of government support.
prospect.org/health/2023-08…

So according to the president's words, they're going to create a new program, I presume with the same parameters, under the compromise & settlement authority of the Higher Education Act that we discussed as the main way to cancel student debt 4 years ago: prospect.org/day-one-agenda… He mentioned that "it will take longer." I think this is what that means.
There are a couple regulatory hurdles. They are discussed in this letter:
static.politico.com/4c/c4/dfaddbb9…

Breaking: 90% of the $4 trillion in Covid funding properly spent, and thousands of people who grabbed at the other (potentially) 10% have been arrested, with thousands more investigations underway
apnews.com/article/pandem… Also another $1 trillion has yet to be spent and therefore has yet to be stolen. So it's more like 8% (potentially) stolen, with many of those responsible arrested and that number probably maximized for sensationalism's sake

NEW from me: student loan payments are going to restart in September. This is an impossible task made more impossible by the private loan servicers whose entire history has proven their incapability to do the job. A 🧵:
prospect.org/education/2023… As @millennial_debt told me, "I’m not aware of any instance where a creditor restarted a 40-million-account portfolio. That’s at a scale that finance doesn’t operate in, let alone government"

If you're the White House this is a salable deal. That =/= a good deal, but they can sell it.

https://twitter.com/bpolitics/status/1661904792556281857

The expectation is that McCarthy will never get his guys to pass an actual budget. That would then mean a continuing resolution at current levels for 2 years. With all the funding shifts, this is scheduled to be pretty close to that, with a 1% bump in year 2.

I have a feature out today about the new industrial policy, and how it's designed to support the very groups that have been left out of past economic transitions, building the necessary coalition for long-term transformation. 🧵
prospect.org/economy/2023-0… The idea that America has forgotten how to build anything is silly. We went from zero LNG exports to the world's largest exporter in six years, through national policy, willing financing, and economic and political power.
prospect.org/economy/2023-0…

Excited to bring you the cover story of our latest issue today, from @lukewgoldstein. It's the history of the farm bill, an object lesson of how in Washington, "bipartisan" usually means someone's getting rich. In this case, Big Ag.
prospect.org/power/2023-05-… Democrats fight in the farm bill for nutrition assistance (SNAP).
Republican fight for a baroque array of agricultural subsidies.
But the real function of the modern farm bill is to deliver windfalls to industry by subsidizing cheap commodity grains.
prospect.org/power/2023-05-…

We have a little more information now on the debt ceiling case that transpired today a Boston courtroom.
politico.com/news/2023/05/2… "If the emergency is as dire as you think it is, I would think that it’s within the power of the president to address it using executive branch authority," the judge said to the plaintiffs, who sought a faster hearing. (eyes emoji)

So Joe Biden, who mumbles in public about "having the authority" to continue to pay the nation's bills, has signaled intention to file OPPOSITION to the case challenging the constitutionality of the debt ceiling statute.
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco… It's not that Biden or the White House thinks there's not enough time or that the Supreme Court will stop any effort to end-run the debt limit.
By their actions, they are demonstrably opposed to challenging the debt limit. They believe in it.

Interesting...
The National Association of Government Employees has today filed for an emergency injunction in their case challenging the constitutionality of the debt ceiling statute.
courtlistener.com/docket/6734475… I wrote earlier today that the failure to file for emergency relief has left the case docket bare for nearly two weeks.
prospect.org/economy/2023-0…

Michael Delaney is a controversial 1st Circuit nominee with red flags on reproductive rights, worker protections, the regulatory state, even sexual assault victims rights.
But it's hard to get Dems to publicly come out against him.
This story explores why:
prospect.org/justice/2023-0… Sens. Jeanne Shaheen & Maggie Hassan (whose husband is friends with Delaney) have zealously promoted their selection. Other Senators with judicial nominees don't want to cross them. National & NH Dems don't want to cross them. A conspiracy of silence.
prospect.org/justice/2023-0…

Huge win for the UAW in Georgia that begins to validate what Biden is trying to do with industrial policy
nytimes.com/2023/05/12/us/… Aaaand it's actually USW but just go with it

We have had USSR-style shortages every day for the last decade in prescription drugs, thanks to monopoly middlemen and hospital market structure.
Keep reading those econ textbooks and darkly warning about letting the free market work
cc @huzzahmpls
prospect.org/culture/books/… You will never ever hear about these shortages from anyone who spends their life wedded to economic theory, and when they can't get their Adderall refilled the lack of curiosity continues

So I read the great @StrikeDebt report on the Supreme Court's student debt case, and buried in there are some amazing facts. Like this: the loan servicer being used as the basis for standing is *barred from suing the Education Department* by contract:
prospect.org/justice/2023-0… This is the language. A servicer like MOHELA "waives and releases all current and future claims" if they lose loans for whatever reason
prospect.org/justice/2023-0…

Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, in a Dear Colleague letter, announces a discharge petition effort on the debt limit.
The timing of a discharge petition is such that this needed to start at the beginning of the Congressional session; probably too late now. People are pointing to this article and it's good that there was a quiet effort initiated. Unfortunately you need to do more than have the bill sit in committee to get a discharge petition going.
nytimes.com/2023/05/02/us/…

From me: I stumbled upon a remarkable research paper about how Big Tech lobbyists invented the concept of digital trade & willed it into the template for trade deals before a regulatory regime took hold.
This is how Washington really works from the inside:
prospect.org/power/2023-04-… The reason we now know this story is because the researcher worked for 2 years at USTR, got to know all the lobbyists, and when she went for her Ph.D. in sociology and called up those lobbyists, they just told her everything prospect.org/power/2023-04-…