At a recent event, Republican Wisconsin U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde said that he is exasperated with media coverage of “sad personal stories” about Americans who have been affected by the Great Recession. Evidently tired of reading about low-income or homeless individuals unable to access basic needs, Hovde expressed his disdain for such “sob stories,” while pointing to a reporter:

I see a reporter here. I just pray that you start writing about these issues. I just pray. Stop always writing about, ‘Oh, the person couldn’t get, you know, their food stamps or this or that.’ You know, I saw something the other day — it’s like, another sob story, and I’m like, ‘But what about what’s happening to the country and the country as a whole?’ That’s going to devastate everybody.

Watch it (relevant clip begins at 13:47):

According to Hovde, more important issues include lowering the corporate tax rate and the national deficit. Hovde’s comments come after a May 2011 study conducted by the National Journal, which reviewed how often the words “unemployment” or “deficit” appeared in the nation’s five largest newspapers. The findings clearly show that the deficit was covered significantly more than the unemployment in major American news outlets.

A Wisconsin hedge fund manager and businessman, Eric Hovde is one of four candidates looking for the GOP nomination for the state’s U.S. Senate seat. The winner would run against Democratic candidate Rep. Tammy Baldwin. But perhaps Hovde simply doesn’t want the media to write about food stamps because then people might notice that Republicans are trying to cut them. (HT: Amanda Terkel)

–Angela Guo

A group of Roman Catholic nuns kicked off a nine-state bus tour across the Midwest this morning in an effort to highlight the cuts to safety net programs contained in the House Republican budget authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), himself an outspoken Catholic. The bus tour began this morning in Iowa and includes a Tuesday stop in Ryan’s Wisconsin district.

Along the tour, the nuns will stop at food pantries, shelters, schools, and hospitals to highlight the impact of the cuts. They will also visit the offices of ten Republicans who voted for the budget, including Ryan and Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), another outspoken Catholic. The purpose is to draw attention the work the nuns have done on behalf of poor Americans and the devastating impact the Republican cuts would have on those who rely on safety net programs, Sister Simone Campbell told the New York Times:

“We’re doing this because these are life issues,” said Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of Network, a liberal social justice lobby in Washington. “And by lifting up the work of Catholic sisters, we will demonstrate the very programs and services that will be decimated by the House budget.”

As ThinkProgress has highlighted, the GOP budget would cut millions out of food assistance and other programs, with 62 percent of its spending cuts coming from safety net programs. Ryan attempted to use his Catholic faith to justify the cuts when the budget was released, earning a strong rebuke from religious leaders across the country. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) called the cuts “unjustified and wrong” and sent letters to Congressional committees urging them to oppose the draconian measures.

The nuns’ bus tour is taking the issue a step farther, though, mere weeks after the Vatican called on American nuns to stop highlighting economic justice issues in order to focus more on other church priorities, including abortion, gay marriage, and contraception. And though the House GOP budget directly contradicts much of Catholic social teaching, the USCCB has remained far more outspoken on what it perceives as affronts to “religious liberty” than they have on the spending cuts.

The nuns have asked some of the Bishops to join the tour but have thus far not received a response. The nine-state tour includes stops in Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia before ending July 2 in Washington D.C.

Several states have been taking their share of the $25 billion foreclosure fraud settlement that was crafted in February with the nation’s five biggest banks and, instead of using the money for its intended purpose of providing foreclosure relief to troubled homeowners, have used it to bolster other areas of their budgets. Georgia lawmakers, for instance, have been planning to stash nearly $100 million from the settlement into their state’s general fund.

As Kate Little, president of the Georgia State Trade Association of Nonprofit Developers wrote today, that money did indeed wind up in the state’s general budget, where it will be spent on corporate giveaways — economic programs meant to entice companies to move to Georgia — rather than helping homeowners:

According to Georgia’s Attorney General Sam Olens, the state’s Constitution requires such funds to be deposited in the general fund with the General Assembly responsible for determining how to allocate the money.

Gov. Nathan Deal and the General Assembly decided in the waning days of the 2012 session to divide the money between the Regional Economic Business Assistance (REBA) and the OneGeorgia Authority.

That means that none of the funds will go to address foreclosures, even though Georgia has consistently ranked in the top five of states across the country with the highest rates of foreclosure.

Georgia is hardly alone in siphoning off foreclosure settlement funds to plug holes in its budget. But using the money for corporate handouts — which often backfire on a state and lead to a race to the bottom as states attempt to out-do each other in terms of the biggest giveaways — is doubly insulting to homeowners depending on the settlement to provide them with a lifeline.

A long-term transportation package that would re-authorize current spending on highway construction projects and lock-in infrastructure spending for future projects appears all but dead thanks to Republican obstruction in the House of Representatives. With time running out before current authorization ends at the end of the month, House Republicans are demanding the Senate add approval of the Keystone XL pipeline to a transportation bill that already passed with widespread bipartisan support.

House and Senate negotiators have been meeting for weeks — since the Senate passed its bill, 74-22 — to work out a compromise, but the House GOP has repeatedly threatened to walk away unless the pipeline is attached. Now, the legislation is all but dead, an industry source told The Hill:

“I think the bill’s dead,” a transportation industry source said to The Hill on Friday. “I don’t think they can fix what they have in front of them. Kicking it up to the leadership probably gives it a chance…but every time they get to the five-yard line, they move the goal posts back.”

Lawmakers have until June 30 to reach a deal on transportation spending before the current funding mechanism for road and transit projects runs out. [...]

Boxer said that the House lacked “urgency” and “leadership” in the highway negotiations. [House Transportation Committee Chairman John] Mica countered that the Senate “appears unwilling to compromise at all” on House provisions, like mandating the approval of the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline.

This isn’t the first time House Republicans have jeopardized millions of transportation jobs by demanding approval of the pipeline. They threatened to walk away from negotiations early this month for that reason, and in March nearly caused a transportation shutdown before passing a short-term re-authorization. The implications aren’t small: 1.9 million workers will have to walk off the job without re-authorization of highway funds. Senate Democrats estimate that the long-term authorization package will create an additional one million jobs on top of that.

House Republicans have pitched the pipeline as a job creator, but the State Department estimates it will lead to only 6,000 temporary jobs — a far cry from the nearly three million created or saved by the long-term highway bill the GOP is blocking.