Reuters reports: “The United States lost its top-notch AAA credit rating from Standard & Poor’s on Friday, in a dramatic reversal of fortune for the world’s largest economy.” The new rating is AA+.

In explaining their decision Standard & Poor’s cites both the decision by Republicans in Congress to turn the debt ceiling into a political football and the Republicans intransigence on tax increases. Some excerpts from the release:

[...]The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy.

[...]It appears that for now, new revenues have dropped down on the menu of policy options.

[...]The act contains no measures to raise taxes or otherwise enhance revenues, though the committee could recommend them.

[...]Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act.

Standard & Poors indicates that they could improve their rating for the U.S. if “the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for high earners lapse from 2013 onwards, as the Administration is advocating.”

In the third-largest recall on record, food giant Cargill is pulling 36 million pounds of ground turkey out of stores after a salmonella outbreak linked to one of the company’s plants sickened nearly 80 people, killing one. The recall follows other salmonella related troubles in the U.S., including salmonella-tainted eggs producing the largest U.S. foodborne illness outbreak since 1973 last summer.

According to the Hill, “although the first illnesses [related to the current outbreak] were reported in March, it required months for federal regulators to trace the cause back to Cargill’s turkey.” And things are not likely to get better going forward, as House Republicans are blocking the funds to implement a landmark food safety law and have proposed slashing the budgets of food safety inspectors:

As part of their Agricultural appropriations bill, House Republicans in June voted to slash millions of dollars from the FDA’s budget, which would have prevented the agency from enforcing tougher food safety laws installed by the Democrats in December.

The Republicans also cut funding for USDA food inspectors, who are charged with ensuring the safety of poultry, among other meat products.

In a statement yesterday, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) took the GOP to task for cutting food safety funds that are so clearly necessary. “The House majority has slashed funding for the FDA and USDA, choosing to preserve tax cuts for the wealthy over investing in and improving our food safety system,” she said. “By cutting their funding, we have limited their effectiveness and asked FDA and USDA to do more with less, and the impact of these cuts is starkly clear with this most recent recall.”

At the moment, one out of six Americans suffers from a foodborne illness every year, with 128,000 of those resulting in hospitalization. Ultimately, 3,000 people die from foodborne illness annually, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Georgetown University’s Produce Safety Project has found that foodborne illness costs the U.S. $152 billion each year.

Republicans have justified their cuts to food safety by insisting that the private sector “self-polices.” But that clearly wasn’t the case here, and this isn’t the first time that Cargill has had problems and been forced into a recall. In fact, “in 2007, the company recalled roughly 845,000 pounds of frozen ground beef patties linked to an outbreak of E. coli.”

Our guest blogger is Isha Vij, a research assistant for the Economic Policy Team at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Today’s jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicated better than expected job gains for both total nonfarm and private sector workers, with the economy adding 117,000 jobs overall. The data for temporary help workers, however, does not leave us with the same optimism for job growth going forward.

In July, employers added a mere 300 temporary help jobs. Temporary employment is usually a leading indicator that companies are going to be hiring in the coming months. And for workers who are unable to find full time work, temping can help them avoid being out of work altogether. When companies add temporary workers, we typically see clear gains in overall private sector employment in the months that follow.

For example, in the winter of 2009/2010, businesses added about 50,000 jobs each month. The following spring, we saw the sharpest growth in private sector employment in the recovery so far. Compare this to November 2008, when more than 100,000 temporary help jobs were lost. Private sector employment plummeted in the months afterwards, dropping an average of about 750,000 for the following five months.

The latest temporary help jobs numbers, though showing no major losses, are indicative of feeble jobs growth in the coming months.

Leave John Mica aloooooooone.

The 13-day shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration finally came to an end today, which will allow thousands of furloughed federal employees and tens of thousands of construction workers to get back on the job on Monday. House Republicans refused to reauthorize the FAA without including an anti-union provision that would make it harder for workers at airlines and railroads to unionize (a measure sought desperately by, among others, Delta Airlines). Airline inspectors were forced to work without pay during the shutdown.

House Transportation Committee John Mica (R-FL) has been at the forefront of the FAA debacle, advancing the GOP’s anti-union demands (on behalf of his biggest donors) and then adding cuts in subsidies to rural airports to the FAA bill that he admitted were only meant to tweak Democratic senators. But while he’s been more than willing to hold thousands of jobs hostage, Mica evidently can’t handle a little criticism about his role in the matter, as he whined to the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank about having a “brutal week.” “People don’t have to be so personal,” he added:

“I’ve had a brutal week, getting beat up by everybody,” Mica told me, minutes after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced a deal that would end the shutdown and avoid the cuts to regional air service that Mica wanted.

“I didn’t know it would cause this much consternation,” Mica said. “Now I’ve just got to get the broom and the shovel and clean up the mess.” Switching metaphors, he said he wanted “to unclog the toilet, but it backed up. So I don’t know what to do, what to say.” [...]

“People don’t have to get so personal,” he said with a sigh. “A lot of people hate me now and think I’m the worst thing in the world for what I did.” It’s “this sort of gotcha,” he said, “that’s changed the dynamics of people working more effectively together.”

I think the 4,000 FAA employees and 70,000 construction workers who were put out of work this week — and who may not receive back pay — actually had a rougher week than Mica. While he seemed to express “remorse” about the shutdown when speaking to Milbank, Mica today seemed to threaten shutting down the FAA again if Senate Democrats are unwilling to go along with his demands.

Our guest blogger is Matt Separa, a research assistant with the Economic Policy Team at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

The construction industry took a huge hit in 2007 as a result of the collapse of the housing bubble. Construction employment has fallen from its all-time high of 7.7 million in April 2006 to 5.5 million this July, a level not seen since March of 1996. Furthermore, levels have remained relatively stagnant since November 2009 after shedding nearly 2 million jobs in two years.

The July jobs report that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released today, while fairly good in comparison to previous months, showed a gain of only 8,000 construction jobs. These numbers indicate that a substantial investment in infrastructure along the lines of the Works Progress Administration is the right policy decision for politicians to make, especially at a time when the American Society of Civil Engineers grades the overall U.S. infrastructure as a “D” and estimates that a total of $2.2 trillion in spending is needed over five years to bring it up to acceptable levels:

Currently however, politics and public policy are only exacerbating the problem. Republicans refused last week to provide a clean extension of Federal Aviation Administration funding over a desire to include an anti-union provision, resulting in the furlough of nearly 70,000 construction workers and the immediate halting of $2.5 billion in airport construction projects. House Transportation Committee Chairman John Mica (R-FL) has presented a bill that would slash funding for the FAA and transportation infrastructure projects, costing more than 560,000 jobs and exacerbating unemployment in the construction industry, which is already at 16.3 percent.

Although a short-term deal to re-fund the FAA has now been struck, it is of little comfort to both the workers who had their lives disrupted and to the economy, which continues to suffer the blows of political intransigence.

Between yesterday’s stock market nose dive and today’s jobs report that shows the labor market is barely treading water, its undeniable that the economy is in a precarious position. A report earlier this week by analysts at JP Morgan showed that federal fiscal policy is actually going to retard growth through the next year, and the Federal Reserve seems unwilling to approve any additional measures to boost job creation.

With that in mind, job creation should be foremost on the minds of Washington policymakers. However, it seems that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has other plans:

In a meeting with his conference on Monday, Speaker John A. Boehner told members that the best thing they could do during the August recess was to sell their constituents on the idea that the amendment — which essentially stipulates that government cannot spend more than it takes in — is necessary and good.

Republican leaders on the Hill have pivoted from railing against Democrats about tax increases to pressing for the amendment, which would require the acquiescence of two-thirds of each chamber of Congress, and three-quarters of state legislatures. They point out that such a measure passed the House in 1995, but then failed in the Senate by a single vote.

Even though the GOP never even held a vote on a balanced budget amendment when it controlled both houses of Congress under President George W. Bush, it has now become obsessed with the BBA, demanding a vote on it as part of the deal to raise the debt ceiling. And evidently, the August recess will be spent trying to drum up the political support to make that vote a success.

As we’ve noted over and over again, a balanced budget amendment would force the government to actively make economic downturns worse, by cutting back on spending precisely when the economy needs it most. In a letter to Congressional leadership, five Nobel Prize-winning economists wrote that “a balanced budget amendment would mandate perverse actions in the face of recessions,” adding that the BBA would prevent federal borrowing to finance investments into infrastructure, education, environmental preservation, and other areas “vital to the nation’s future well-being.”

So instead of thinking of ways to alleviate the suffering of those coping with the current weak economy, Republicans are going to spend the rest of the month trying to sell a policy that will make future downturns even worse.

The unemployment rate inched downwards to 9.1 percent today, with private sector jobs increasing by 154,000. While a slight improvement, these better-than-expected figures provide little comfort to the 14 million Americans who are unemployed. 44.4 percent of the unemployed have been out of work for six months or more.

For these Americans who are struggling to make ends meet, the federal unemployment benefits program provides much needed financial support. Every dollar the federal government spends in federal unemployment generates two dollars of economic growth. These benefits, however, are set to expire at the end of the year.

In response to today’s jobs report, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) declared that “unemployment is far too high” and that Congress “must push pro-growth policies to get back on track.” Noting Cantor’s apparent concern as “spot on,”, CNBC host Jim Kramer told Cantor that obviously, “you’re for extending unemployment benefits given the chaotic situation.” Cantor’s response? Nope, because “for too long in Washington now we’ve been worried about pumping up the stimulus moneys and pumping up unemployment benefits”:

Cantor declared that “the most important thing we can do for somebody who’s unemployed is to see if we can get them a job” and declared that the only way unemployment benefits could be extended is if “we find commensurate cuts somewhere else”:

CANTOR: Jim, the most important thing we can do for somebody who’s unemployed is to see if we can get them a job. I mean, that’s what needs to be the focus. For too long in Washington now we’ve been worried about pumping up the stimulus moneys and pumping up unemployment benefits and to a certain extent you have states for which you can get unemployment for almost two years and I think those people on unemployment benefits would rather have a job. So that’s where our focus needs to be.

KRAMER: I just want to be very, very clear, on a day when we have a good unemployment number, that’s terrific, but not a great one and you confirmed not a great one, you are not in favor and will go against the president’s wishes to extend those unemployment benefits?

CANTOR: What I have said all along, Jim, is if we’re going to spend money in Washington, we better start to make choices and we’ve got to set priorities. If we’re going to spend money, we better cut it somewhere else.

Watch it:

A brief survey of Cantor’s priorities quickly reveals why his callous lack of concern for the unemployed is not surprising. He has always intimated that extending jobless benefits, or even preventing layoffs, are not his priorities. Even though unemployment benefits actually spur economic growth, Cantor prefers to focus on preserving tax cuts for the wealthy — something he even admitted actually would “dig the hole deeper” on the deficit.

In considering whether to fund programs like unemployment benefits that spur the economy and buoy struggling families, Cantor adopted an all-too-familiar Republican attitude: “I would say that sort of, we’ve been there, done that.” “So if nothing else,” he said, “let’s at least try something else.”