The Federal Reserve last week announced a new round of so called quantitative easing, or QE3, in an attempt to boost the still sluggish economy. The Fed, for the first time, opened the door to continuous easing until labor market conditions improve.

Republicans predictably took issue with the move (even as they admitted that it could be good for economic growth). But in a speech today, New York Federal Reserve President William Dudley defended the Fed’s action, saying that it is consistent with the Fed’s mandate to produce full employment:

In my view, the decision to ease policy further is fully consistent with our dual mandate and policy framework. As I mentioned earlier, we have two goals—to promote maximum employment and price stability. We therefore seek to minimize how far employment is from its long run normal level and inflation is from our longer-run goal of 2 percent on the PCE measure. [...]

Looking ahead, in the absence of further monetary easing, I concluded that growth would remain too subdued over the next several years to make big inroads into the spare capacity that remains from the Great Recession. As a result, unemployment would remain unacceptably high, with economic risks skewed to the downside. Meanwhile, with substantial slack in labor markets and inflation expectations stable, inflation was likely to remain a bit below our 2 per cent longer-run objective.

In this situation, I concluded that our policy framework means that further monetary policy easing was appropriate provided that the benefits of using the tools available outweighed the costs.

As ThinkProgress has noted, the Fed has consistently failed to meet its dual mandate of low inflation and full employment, as inflation has stayed low but unemployment has remained high. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke estimated that the first two rounds of quantitative easing created two million jobs.

Connecticut Republican Senate candidate Linda McMahon earned some headlines today for being the first Republican to distance herself from Mitt Romney’s comments about the “47 percent.” But there’s one area in which McMahon and Romney line up precisely: antipathy towards the Dodd-Frank financial reform law.

Romney has promised to repeal the law in its entirety, while McMahon said in 2010 (during her failed Senate rin) that she would have voted against it. And on the campaign trail this year, McMahon is calling for a “freeze” on the implementation of the law, as the Connecticut Post reported:

“I would definitely freeze it at the least right now,” McMahon said in a brief interview last week during a campaign stop in her hometown of Greenwich.

That position, not mentioned in her campaign fliers, is in stark contrast to that of Murphy, who boasted about his support of Dodd-Frank when it passed the House of Representatives in June 2010 and has never stopped. [...]

“Look, I think there were some things about Dodd-Frank — I think big banks needed to have more skin in the game,” McMahon said in Greenwich. “But my understanding is that there are still over 280 some rules yet to (be) written.”

Republicans (as well as some Democrats) have been looking at ways to slow down Dodd-Frank and other financial reforms, and the law remains far from being fully implemented. But with the economy still struggling to recover from a financial crisis that cost $12.8 trillion, simply doing nothing, thus letting the banks return to business as usual, should not be considered an option.

In a video published yesterday by Mother Jones, Mitt Romney divided America up into two camps: those who pay federal income taxes and those who don’t. “There are 47 percent who are with [Obama], who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it,” Romney said. “These are people who pay no income tax.”

But those 47 percent who have no federal income tax liability are far from the free-loaders Romney described. More than half of them pay the federal payroll tax — at rates higher than Romney pays on his own income — and most of the rest are either elderly, unemployed, or have an extremely low-income.

And by only focusing on federal taxes, Romney ignores taxes at the state and local level, including sales taxes, gas taxes, and sin taxes. In fact, when all taxes are taken into account, Americans of all income levels pay taxes basically in line with their share of total income, as these charts from Citizens for Tax Justice show:

Basically, those at the bottom of the income scale pay so little of the federal income tax because they make so little of the income.

Earned sick leave advocates thought they’d scored a victory Monday night when a three-judge panel in Orange County, Florida ruled that a compensated leave measure must make it to the county’s ballot for November’s election. But before there was time to celebrate, the Orange County Commissioners stepped in; the court gave them 20 days to respond — enough time that, should they use it, they’d miss the deadline for printing new ballots:

And if county leaders choose to use any of that time, Tuesday’s deadline to print the ballot will pass.

In a statement, Orange County Mayor Teresa Jacobs said she had directed County Attorney Jeff Newton to review the decision and advise the County Commission, which meets Tuesday, on how to proceed.

“The court’s decision today reflects the ongoing confusion caused by a political committee rushing this initiative through the process,” she said.

The hotly-contested initiative had garnered the 50,000 signatures needed to qualify, but was bumped off the ballot last week by the Orange County Commission, who ruled the suggested law’s language was unclear. Their argument was not dissimilar from that of big businesses, who earlier sued to stop the initiative, saying the ballot language did not indicate whether the new law exempted non-profits and religious institutions.

The law would make paid sick leave compulsory for any business with more than 15 employees. Earned sick leave allows workers to take off time when they would be unproductive and likely to spread disease, and to work full-time without worrying about losing their jobs should they have to take care of a loved one.

The Romney campaign is in damage control mode today, trying to explain Romney telling wealthy donors in a private meeting that “there are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”

“These are people who pay no income tax,” Romney continued, in a video posted by Mother Jones. “My job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” But who are the 47 percent of Americans who currently have no federal income tax liability?

Mostly, they are either too poor to qualify for even the lowest tax bracket (but still pay federal payroll tax, and state or local sales taxes, gas taxes, and excise taxes), or they benefit from tax credits for the working poor, the elderly, or students, as these charts from the Tax Policy Center show. Only 7 percent of the country is non-elderly and has no federal tax liability, and most of them make less than $20,000:

Here are the reasons for those who paid no federal income tax reaching that point:

In 2011, payroll tax receipts totaled $818 billion, only $200 billion less than was brought in by the federal income tax. Those Americans who paid payroll taxes, but had no income tax liability, still pay about 15 percent of their income, higher than the 13 percent Romney pays.

As ThinkProgress has explained, more and more income has become concentrated at the top of the income scale in the last few decades, so the wealthy have paid a larger share of federal taxes, because they have a larger share of the income.

Romney is hardly alone in his contempt for those who don’t have any federal income tax liability (even though people who fall into that category disproportionately live in Republican states). Over the last few years, many Republicans have explicitly called for finding a way to make the poor pay more, so that the number of federal income tax payers rises.