House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) said last night that he “never” expected a Balanced Budget Amendment to pass, even as a large minority of House Republicans are threatening to reject any debt ceiling increase unless the Constitution is rewritten to include one. Speaking with Fox News host Greta Van Susteren, Ryan said it’s not “realistic” to expect that Democratic House Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) would force the large number of members needed to change the Constitution to “vote against their conscious”:

RYAN: What I never really agreed with is the idea that we would expect Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to deliver 40 [and] 15 votes from Democrats for our version of the Balanced Budget Amendment. You know, I just never thought that was realistic, to demand Democrats vote against their conscious for our version of the Balanced Budget Amendment. So I just never thought that would work.

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Ryan’s political calculus is of course accurate, but it’s noteworthy coming from the GOP’s chief number cruncher and the staunchly conservative author of the Medicare-ending Republican budget. The current GOP version of the BBA is a disastrous idea that even leading conservatives have rejected. There’s no way it could achieve the two-thirds majority needed in both houses of Congress to pass, let alone before the Aug. 2 deadline to raise the debt limit. But as House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said yesterday, many members of own caucus are willing to let the deadline pass in the hope that the ensuing economic “chaos” would force Democrats to switch their votes.

The amendment is an integral part of the GOP’s “Cut, Cap, and Balance” plan. This was the only GOP debt ceiling solution until it was rejected by the Senate, forcing Boehner to roll out his own framework Monday that has divided the GOP. Recognizing the reality of the situation, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) took to the senate floor yesterday to excoriate his colleagues‘ intransigence for demanding nothing short of an Constitutional amendment.

As the Republicans haggle over whether to support their own plan for raising the nation’s debt ceiling, an “unprecedented” coalition of religious leaders are urging President Obama and Congress not to sacrifice the needs of the poor in the name of debt reduction. Even the conservative U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops joined the effort, singling out House Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) plan for its “disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor persons.”

In scrutinizing the debt deals, some religious leaders praised the plans for at least exempting low-income “means-tested” programs from across-the-board cuts. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities notes today, however, that Boehner’s plan does not actually exempt programs like Medicaid and food stamps from such cuts. Instead, it does the opposite.

Breaking a 26-year policy of exempting basic low-income entitlement programs from across-the-board cuts, both of the House Republican plans — “Cut, Cap, and Balance” Act and Boehner’s debt-ceiling proposal — “drop all of the low-income exemptions that have been part of every previous across-the-board cut mechanism since 1985″:

For 26 years, all budget legislation that would trigger across-the-board cuts if Congress fails to meet a fiscal target has exempted the basic low-income (or “means-tested”) entitlement programs from those cuts. The Gramm-Rudman-Hollings laws of 1985 and 1990, the deficit reduction agreement of 1990, and the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 — all bipartisan pieces of legislation — included that exemption. So did last year’s “pay-as-you-go” law, which requires Congress to offset the cost of new tax cuts or increases in entitlement programs so they don’t increase the deficit. Congress has never enacted a law with an across-the-board cut mechanism that subjects core assistance for the poor to these cuts.

But in the last few weeks, House Republicans have advanced two major pieces of legislation that would do just that. Both the “Cut, Cap, and Balance Act,” which the House passed last week, and the new Boehner debt-ceiling proposal drop all of the low-income exemptions that have been part of every previous across-the-board cut mechanism since 1985.

“In an exercise in political cynicism,” CBPP notes that both bills include an exemption for payments to Medicare providers that was not part of previous laws. This allows Republicans to avoid another hit from the senior community “even as they subject those living below the poverty line to the risk of automatic cuts that would push them even deeper into poverty.” Earlier this week, CBPP put out an analysis showing that Boehner’s debt ceiling plan “could well produce the greatest increase in poverty and hardship produced by any law in modern U.S. history.”

The Republican move to cut a long-standing bipartisan protection for the poor really brings into question exactly which Americans Republicans say they’re fighting for. Religious leaders should take note. If asked “What Would Jesus Cut,” it seems Republicans are determined to provide the wrong answer.

As House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) struggles to get his caucus’ collective “ass in line” for today’s vote on his re-worked debt ceiling plan, a growing number of House Democrats are pushing for a vote on a clean debt ceiling increase. Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) and the Congressional Black Caucus — save Rep. Allen West (R-FL) — were rounding up support for a plan that, absent a debt deal that can pass in both chambers, will just raise the debt ceiling to prevent default this coming Tuesday.

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe today, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) predicted that this is the exact scenario Congress will face. “I think we’re going to end up in a stalemate,” said Cummings:

CUMMINGS: I think we’re at a point where the Republicans have pushed and pushed, haven’t given much at all, and now I think we’re going to end up in a stalemate. I anticipate that the Boehner bill will get through the House today after he’s pushed his folks kind of hard and then it’ll be dead on arrival once it get’s to the Senate, then the Senate will send something over.

And then I think the president is going to have to step in. Then he’s going to have to say ‘Look guys, there doesn’t seem to be an agreement here. And so basically let’s send this clean extension.’ By the way, which is what just about every member of the Democrats on the House side are petitioning for. And I think we’ll resolve this matter. And that’s the way it should’ve been. I still think this whole thing has been manufactured.

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Some Democrats are even calling for Obama to use the untested legal option, via the 14th Amendment, to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling without congressional consent. “We’re getting down to decision time,” said Rep. John Larson (D-CT). “We have to have a fail-safe mechanism. We believe that fail-safe mechanism is the 14th Amendment and the president of the United States.”

As ThinkProgress reported last April, home furniture giant IKEA has set up shop at a manufacturing plant in Danville, Virginia for the past three years in order to gain access to a non-unionized pool of labor and avoid Swedish unions. Workers at the Danville plant allegedly faced mandatory overtime, frantic hours, and even racial discrimination.

Yesterday, following an intense union organizing drive by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the employees at this Virginia plant voted overwhelmingly to unionize:

Workers at Ikea’s U.S. furniture factory voted to form a union, a victory for the labor movement seeking to rebound from record-low membership at private companies. Employees at the plant in Danville, Virginia, voted 221-69 today to join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the National Labor Relations Board said. The factory, operated by a subsidiary called Swedwood, makes low- cost bookcases and coffee tables for sale in Ikea’s 37 blue and yellow U.S. big-box stores.

Local news station WDBJ7 covered the workers’ victory. Watch it:

“We fully support the right of our co-workers to make this decision,” said a spokeswoman for the IKEA subsidiary that operates the plant. “We accept their decision and will work with their union in a mutually cooperative and respectful manner.”

GOP 2012 presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has been basing his campaign on his supposed economic bona fides, falsely stating that the Obama administration has made the economy “worse.” Romney particularly highlights his supposed history as a job creator. “I know what it takes to create jobs,” he says. “I’ll do everything in my power to create more jobs for Americans.”

Romney took his roadshow to Ohio yesterday. He spoke a manufacturing plant run by Screen Machine Industries Inc., where he , according to the Columbus Dispatch, “focused his remarks on jobs and the economy.” Bernard Cohen, the owner of Screen Machine Industries, joined the pile-on against President Obama, saying, “I think Obama doesn’t understand business and he’s hurting us.” Romney also featured Screen Machine Industries prominently in a web video that he released yesterday:

However, neither Romney nor Cohen ever pointed out that Screen Machine Industries has received substantial support from the 2009 Recovery Act (i.e. the stimulus). In fact, the company received four different stimulus contracts from the Department of Veterans Affairs, totaling more than $218,000:

Romney, of course, has slammed the “failed stimulus package,” saying it was akin to “putting a cup of gasoline on a fire.” Cohen said that he doesn’t recall receiving stimulus money.

This isn’t the first time Romney has chosen his venue for a campaign speech poorly. Back in June, he gave a speech at a bank that had received TARP funds, despite deriding TARP as a “slush fund.”

Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), the congressman who proposed a preposterous bill to lower the debt ceiling, today trivialized enormous cuts to government services by comparing them to someone having to drop out of a country club because of the bad economy. Broun is opposing the deficit reduction plan put forward by Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) because he believes it doesn’t go far enough. When MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell confronted him on the absurdity of trying to lower the borrowing limit on money Congress has already spent, Broun insisted that government has to act like a person who is “overextended” would:

BROUN: The thing is, when someone is overextended and broke they don’t continue paying for expensive automobiles. They sell the expensive automobiles and buy a cheaper one. They don’t continue paying for country club dues, they drop out of the country club.

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Broun clearly doesn’t understand the magnitude of the cuts being considered, and how dramatically they will affect average Americans. Dropping out of a country club may be his idea of sacrificing, but it’s tragically out of touch with the reality of millions of families, who are struggling to pay their bills and have to choose between paying for food or electricity.

Boehner is currently revising his original plan, which cut $850 billion and called for a committee of lawmakers to recommend an additional $1.8 trillion in deficit cuts, because conservatives like Broun complained that it didn’t go far enough. That original plan was described by Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget Policy Priorities as “tantamount to class warfare” for its draconian cuts, which he says “could well produce the greatest increase in poverty and hardship produced by any law in modern U.S. history.”

Boehner’s plan would force at least $1.5 trillion in cuts to entitlement programs, while leaving tax breaks for the wealthy untouched (and, in fact, ignoring new revenues altogether). According to Greenstein, it will make policymakers choose among “cutting the incomes and health benefits of ordinary retirees, repealing the guts of health reform and leaving an estimated 34 million more Americans uninsured, and savaging the safety net for the poor.” But apparently, Broun thinks that’s akin to having to skip a few rounds at the golf course.

Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), who has been toying with running for the Republican presidential nomination, likes to brag about Texas’ job growth. But he’s made clear that he doesn’t consider public sector jobs (including his own) to be real jobs. “Government doesn’t create any jobs. They can actually run jobs away,” he told Glenn Beck.

However, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out today, public sector jobs (largely in education) have grown at a much higher rate under Perry’s watch than private sector jobs:

The Lone Star State gained more than a million jobs since the end of 2000, while the U.S. has lost almost 1.5 million, according data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

About 300,000 of the new Texas jobs were in government. Well over half of them, fueled by the surging population, were at public schools. Employment in the state’s public sector has jumped 19% since 2000, compared with a 9% rise in the private sector.

For the most part, Perry’s claims about the booming Texas economy are very much oversold, and its job growth over the past decade is in large part a function of population growth and the availability of housing. As the Austin American-Statesman noted, “While the national unemployment rate is 9.1 percent and the Texas unemployment rate is 8 percent, some 23 states, including New York, have lower unemployment rates.” Between 2008 and 2010, jobs actually grew at a faster pace in Massachusetts than in Texas, and “Texas has done worse than the rest of the country since the peak of national unemployment in October 2009.”

Perry’s state does, however, lead the nation in the highest percentage of minimum wage jobs. And later this year, hundreds of public employees in Texas will be laid off due to the massive spending cuts the Texas legislature authorized to deal with the Lone Star state’s $27 billion budget deficit. But since, according to Perry, those jobs never existed in the first place, will the layoffs actually count as jobs lost?

In exchange for not sending the nation into economic ruin, a swath of Republicans are demanding to pass a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) to the Constitution. By forcing government to actively slash spending in the face of falling revenues, such an amendment “would greatly damage an already-weak recovery,” “mandate perverse actions in the face of recessions,” and is considered one of the worse ideas in Washington. Nonetheless, as House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said today, the fringe contingent of the GOP is aiming to create “enough chaos” to force the Senate and the White House to accept a BBA. Freshman Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), sponsor of the Senate’s BBA bill, actually wants America’s “house to come down” unless he gets his way.

But today on the Senate floor, a more seasoned senator schooled the freshman contingent on economic reality. Though an avid supporter of the BBA, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) stood amazed that some members actually believed a BBA could pass in the Senate. Such a belief, he said, is “worse than foolish. That is deceiving.” Taking heed of numerous economists’ warning about the Aug. 2 deadline, McCain said that Republicans who are holding out on raising the debt ceiling for an impossible amendment is “unfair” and “bizarro”:

MCCAIN: Over here, we have individuals who believe somehow that there is still chance, at least in this Congress, to pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Now, I will take back seat to none in my support of the balanced budget amendment. Thirteen times I voted for it. I will vote for it tomorrow. But what is really amazing about this is that some, some members are believing that we can pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution in this body with its present representation, and that is foolish. That is worse than foolish. That is deceiving. Many of our constituents, by telling them that just because the Majority Leader tabled the Balanced Budget Amendment legislation, that somehow through amending and debate, we could somehow convince the majority on the other side of the aisle to go along with a balanced budget amendment of the constitution. That is not fair.

That is not fair to the American people, to hold out and say we won’t agree to raising the debt limit until we pass a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. It’s unfair, it’s bizarro. And maybe some people who have only been in this body for six or seven months or so really believe that. Others know better. Others know better.

Watch it:

The senators McCain was taking to task include Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Rand Paul (R-KY).

McCain also read aloud from a Wall Street Journal editorial today that depicted conservatives anxiously waiting for a BBA as living in a fantasy world in which they are “tea-party Hobbits” that “could return to Middle Earth having defeated Mordor.” “This is the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell into GOP Senate nominees,” said WSJ. “The reality is that the debt limit will be raised one way or another, and the only issue now is with how much fiscal reform and what political fallout.”

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said today that some members of his own caucus who are refusing to agree to a compromise debt ceiling deal are hoping to unleash “chaos” and thus force the White House and Senate Democrats to make bigger concessions than they’re already offering. As many as 40 House Republicans, especially Tea Party members and freshmen, have demanded nothing short of changing the Constitution to include a balanced budget amendment before they would vote to raise debt ceiling, even though that has zero chance before the U.S. faces potential default on Aug. 2.

Speaking on conservative radio host Laura Ingraham’s show this morning, Boehner agreed that failing to raise the limit before the deadline would be devastating, and said the “chaos” plan won’t work when asked by Ingraham what’s motivating the recalcitrant Republicans:

BOEHNER: Well, first they want more. And my goodness, I want more too. And secondly, a lot of them believe that if we get past August the second and we have enough chaos, we could force the Senate and the White House to accept a balanced budget amendment. I’m not sure that that — I don’t think that that strategy works. Because I think the closer we get to August the second, frankly, the less leverage we have vis a vis our colleagues in the Senate and the White House.

Listen here:

Boehner offers only political calculus for why this Tea Party plan wouldn’t work. He completely ignores the devastating effect a downgrade in U.S. debt and potential default would have on the American people and the global economy, who happen to be innocent bystanders to this high-stakes hostage negotiation.

Many on the left have been arguing all along that some Republicans are more interested in extorting concessions than addressing the debt issue, and are willing to blow up the economy if they don’t get their way — it’s refreshing, if troubling, to see that their leader agrees.

Last week, mega-bank Wells Fargo was slapped with an $85 million fine by the Federal Reserve for strong-arming borrowers who qualified for prime loans into subprime loans. The fine is the largest consumer protection enforcement action ever.

But pushing borrowers (and particularly minorities) into riskier, more expensive loans is hardly the end of Wells Fargo’s ills. As Andrew Cohen laid out in the Atlantic, the bank (which received $25 billion in bailout funds) also foreclosed on a Massachusetts family for failing to make its mortgage payments, after explicitly telling the family that it should skip those payments:

They verbally agreed with their lender, Wells Fargo, to take certain steps toward such a modification. The bank told the Dixons to stop making their payments on the loan (funds that would later be added to the modified loan amount) and to provide loan officers with certain financial information. The Dixons complied and began to work with bank officials.

Eighteen months later, however, instead of modifying the loan, Wells Fargo told the Dixons that they had defaulted upon their payment obligations — because they hadn’t made their monthly payments. The bank told the family it intended to foreclose upon their house. The notice from Wells Fargo, which arrived 17 days before Christmas 2010, gave the family roughly 30 days notice.

This is not an isolated problem, and it arises principally because banks are allowed to “dual-track” borrowers, which means they can proceed with foreclosure proceedings even while examining whether a family is eligible for a mortgage modification. Bank employees, confused over the modification process, tell families to stop mortgage payments in order to qualify for a modification, and then the bank promptly forecloses.

At the moment, 20 percent of mortgages in the nation are underwater, meaning that the borrower owes more on the mortgage than the house is worth. Foreclosures will likely top 1 million, this year, and mortgage abuses, including robo-signing, are still ongoing. With all that, doing away with dual-tracking would do a world of good.

An “unprecedented” coalition of religious leaders are coming together to urge President Obama not to sacrifice the needs of the poor in negotiations to reduce the nation’s debt. Leaders from the Episcopal Church, the Salvation Army, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the United Church of Christ all met with Obama last week to present their unified message:

The reason it’s unprecedented is because “we don’t agree on much else,” said John Carr of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development.

The coalition focuses on those Jesus called “the least of these” (Matthew 25:45), which speaks to obligations to look to the less fortunate. One goal it to get lawmakers to consider, “what would Jesus cut?” (Actually, to ask the question is probably to answer it.) [...]

“Poor people don’t have an office on K Street,” said Galen Carey of the National Association of Evangelicals. “They don’t have lobbyists, so their voice is muted. That’s why it’s important for people of faith to step into the void.” The association is headed by Leith Anderson, former pastor to Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor and current Republican presidential candidate.

The coalition is called the “Circle of Protection,” and they have been working hard on the debt ceiling issue, holding prayer vigils on the Hill and fasts. When the group met with Obama, they encouraged him to protect Medicaid, food stamps, aid to poor women with infant children, international development aid, and other programs specifically targeted to the poor. Coalition officials have also met with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and top aides to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI).

Jim Wallis, president of Sojourners, a Christian social justice group, points out, “A budget is a moral document.” His group’s website poses the question, “What would Jesus cut?” Wallis says that in debt ceiling negotiations, politicians will be faced with choices like whether to cut $8.5 billion for low-income housing or whether to save that money by ending tax deductions for mortgages on vacation homes for the wealthy.

Wallis’ group is launching an advertising campaign in the home districts of political leaders, aimed at encouraging them to shield the poor from draconian spending cuts. Another coalition member, David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, said they are reviewing the plan put forward by Speaker Boehner. “I don’t think they want to make kids hungrier,” he said. “But if you have deep, unspecified cuts in spending, they will make kids hungrier.”

For months, Republicans have refused to budge when it comes to negotiations over raising the nation’s debt ceiling, rejecting various generous concessions in return for a simple vote to ensure that the country pays its bills. Now, with default only days away, Republicans have dug in, insisting that acceptance of their radical “cut, cap, and balance” plan is the only way forward.

The Obama administration and the Democrats have offered the GOP deal after deal, saying that they are willing to cut everything from Social Security to Medicare in order to secure a debt ceiling increase, even though the debt ceiling is typically raised as a matter of protocol without controversy. But Republicans, sensing that they could wring more concessions from the Democrats and eager to placate their Tea Party base, have refused to say “yes.”

As the Los Angeles Times details, the administration was well aware that negotiating over the debt ceiling could lead to an ugly place. In fact, back in February, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner explicitly warned against engaging in negotiations over the debt ceiling at all, because “if you let people negotiate over the terms, the risk is you leave people with expectations you can’t meet”:

For months, the administration’s position seemed to be that the debt limit should be raised with no conditions. In Washington-speak, that’s known as a “clean” increase.

In February, Geithner spoke at a House Budget Committee hearing and said, “You know, this is not a popular thing for people to do, and if you let people negotiate over the terms, the risk is you leave people with expectations you can’t meet. And it is just that that suggestion leads us to suggest you should do it clean.”

But two months later, Obama told a reporter that lifting the debt ceiling was “not going to happen without some spending cuts.” Later in the month, White House Chief of Staff William Daley said something similar: “Nobody thinks there will be a clean debt ceiling extension vote. There probably shouldn’t be, without some changes in spending. The budget deficit is a real thing that has to be addressed.”

Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT), who introduced a clean debt ceiling increase, “said he got a phone call from Geithner commending him for pushing for an increase in the debt ceiling not tied to anything else.” According to reports, Geithner’s preferred strategic approach was ultimately rejected by others in the administration because it was deemed to be a course that couldn’t muster the votes. (Ironically, the preferred approach adopted by the administration also wasn’t able to generate support.)

Now, a clean debt ceiling increase seems to be inexplicably off the table, even though the leadership of both parties agree that the debt ceiling needs to go up if the nation is to avert an unprecedented and potentially catastrophic economic mess. Because default truly would be disastrous, and because a negotiated compromise seems increasingly out of reach within the Aug. 2 deadline, a clean vote for an increase would be the responsible course at this late hour.