One World Trade Center, which will replace the World Trade Center towers that fell in the September 11 terrorist attacks, became the tallest building in the United States this morning when workers hoisted a 408-foot spire atop it. At 1,776 feet tall, the building is now the tallest in the United States and the third-tallest in the world.

And, as American Rights at Work noted when it became the tallest building in New York, it was built with union labor:

It’s fitting: union members were among the first responders; union members served in the immediate cleanup; and now union members are part of the rebuilding.

Anti-union legislation has made its way across America in recent years, from Michigan to Indiana to Wisconsin. But unions were instrumental in building America’s middle class, in responding to the attacks on 9/11, and now, in rebuilding the World Trade Center in the decade since the attacks.

“It’s a pretty awesome feeling,” project manager Juan Estevez told the Associated Press. “It’s a culmination of a tremendous amount of team work … rebuilding the New York City skyline once again.”

Today the White House released an Executive Order designed to increase the transparency and usability of public government information by making government data open and machine readable by default.

“To promote continued job growth, Government efficiency, and the social good that can be gained from opening Government data to the public, the default state of new and modernized Government information resources shall be open and machine readable. Government information shall be managed as an asset throughout its life cycle to promote interoperability and openness, and, wherever possible and legally permissible, to ensure that data are released to the public in ways that make the data easy to find, accessible, and usable. In making this the new default state, executive departments and agencies (agencies) shall ensure that they safeguard individual privacy, confidentiality, and national security.”

The order and accompanying memorandum lay out a new approach to open data that incorporates planning for open data principles in the earliest stages of government projects, requires agencies to index all of their data internally, and requires agencies to publicly report what datasets are already and can be made public under existing law online. The latter requirement will effectively create a digital menu of what information can be requested from which agencies and under what circumstances for the first time — potentially making that information more accessible to journalists, activists, and entrepreneurs.

Similarly, by making data available in machine readable format (read: not PDFs), the order will may make it much easier for those stakeholders to process and analyze large amounts of government information for patterns and connections.

This is not the administration’s first foray into transparency and open government initiatives, issues that featured prominently in President Obama’s 2008 campaign. In December 2009, the White House issued an Open Government Directive similarly aimed at opening access to public government data. However, many groups believe its implementation fell short of expectations.

The House Financial Services Committee advanced a package of bills Tuesday that would weaken major regulations included in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, doing so over the objections of the Obama Administration with bipartisan support.

The legislative package, which has been criticized by both current Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and his predecessor, consisted of six bills that would weaken the regulation of derivatives. Derivatives are the the financial instruments that were at the “center of the storm” that caused the financial crisis, according to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. Nevertheless, those regulations have emerged as a key target for opponents of reform and the financial industry.

One of the most significant rules the package would weaken is the so-called “push-out” provision that would limit derivatives trading at banks and financial institutions that are insured by the federal government. But rather than weaken the push-out rules, Congress should be making them even stronger, former Federal Deposit Insurance Commission chair Sheila Bair told Bloomberg:

“If Congress wants to re-open Dodd-Frank on this question, if anything, they should push all derivatives activities (other than the banks’ own hedges) into affiliates outside of the insured bank,” Bair said in an e-mail. “This would force market funding of derivatives thus providing substantially greater market discipline than permitting them to be funded with insured deposits.”

Like the Volcker Rule, which would limit forms of risky trading at federally-insured banks, the push-out rule is meant to make the large institutions that were at the center of the financial crisis safer. But the Financial Services Committee, chaired by noted Dodd-Frank opponent Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX), has repeatedly passed legislation weakening derivatives reforms since the law passed. At one point in 2012, there were nine separate pieces of legislation aimed at the regulation of derivatives pending in Congress. “These proposals threaten to create large oversight-free zones that could allow risky behaviors to flourish,” advocacy group Public Citizen wrote of such legislation in 2012.

The package of legislation isn’t expected to move forward in the Senate, according to Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT), one of the sponsors. But Congress isn’t just taking aim at the rules: in recent years, it has gutted the budget for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the agency tasked with enforcing the new derivatives rules.

A new report from GMI Ratings on the percent of corporate boards that have women members shows that global progress is moving at a crawl. The Women on Boards 2013 survey looked at 5,977 companies in 45 countries and found that women hold 11 percent of board seats, up a mere 0.5 percent from a year ago and just 1.7 percent over the last five.

But the report did find a bright spot: Europe leads the trend, with far higher percentages of women on boards. In fact, Europe accounts for more than half of the female directors added to boards between 2009 and 2013. The report chalks this up to legal mandates requiring diversity:

Leading the globe on gender-diverse boards is Europe, where legal requirements for women’s representation exist or are being considered at both the EU level and in various countries. Norway, Sweden and Finland continue to lead the developed world in their percentage of female directors, with 36.1%, 27.0%, and 26.8%, respectively. Significant increases in women’s representation are also happening in Italy and France, following the passage of recent laws on board diversity. France now ranks 4th in the world, with 18.3% female directors. (In Spain, however, where a law exists but enforcement mechanisms are weak, much less change has occurred.)

Europe also leads in having at least three women on companies’ boards, a level at which research suggests women’s influence comes to a critical mass.

The United States, on the other hand, lags pretty far behind. While the percentage of women on boards has risen 3.3 percentage points in Nordic countries and 4 points in the rest of developed Europe since 2009, it has only risen by 1.9 points in the U.S. Rather than mandating quotas for the inclusion of women on boards as has been done in Europe, the U.S. relies more on “investor pressure and voluntary change over legislative mandates,” the report noted.

The impact of diversity goes beyond inclusion. Research has shown that companies with gender diversity on their boards significantly outperform those that don’t. Diversity overall has been a boon for the economy: As much as 20 percent of U.S. growth in productivity over the past half century can be attributed to the inclusion of women and other marginalized groups in the labor force. But there is still a lot of room to grow. One report found that if women’s employment levels were raised to match those of men, it would boost U.S. GDP by 5 percent.

Gabriel Gomez, the Republican nominee to fill John Kerry’s open Senate seat in Massachusetts, claimed a $281,500 deduction on his income taxes for promising not to alter the appearance of his historic home. While he identified this “easement” as a donation to a controversial Washington, DC-based organization, he was reportedly already prevented from making any such changes under local historic preservation laws — a move the Internal Revenue Service has identified as a common “tax scam.”

The Boston Globe reported Thursday major alterations to the facade of the the Gomez family’s 112-year old home — assessed in 2012 as valued at more than $2 million — were prohibited under the Cohasset, MA town by-laws, as it falls into the Cohasset Common Historic District. As such, experts told the paper, there was little or no value to his “donation” when he promised the the National Architectural Trust (now the Trust for Architectural Easements) that he would make no major changes to the outside of his home.

In 2005, Gomez claimed the $281,500 income tax deduction, suggesting that agreeing to the easement had reduced the value of his property. Five weeks later, the Globe noted, the Internal Revenue Service identified such tax deductions for valueless easements as one of its “Dirty Dozen” tax “schemes that promise to eliminate taxes or otherwise sound too good to be true.” In a section called “Abuse of Charitable Organizations and Deductions,” the advisory warned:

“A “contribution” of a historic facade easement to a tax-exempt conservation organization is another example. In many cases, local historic preservation laws already prohibit alteration of the home’s facade, making the contributed easement superfluous. Even if the facade could be altered, the deduction claimed for the easement contribution may far exceed the easement’s impact on the value of the property.

A Gomez campaign spokesman told the Globe that Gomez’s easement goes further than the existing zoning laws, in part because homeowners have the right to challenge any rejected requests for alterations in court. He also noted that the IRS did not challenge Gomez’s deduction — as it did in many other cases — but refused to explain how the value of the easement was calculated.

But Dean Zerbe, former senior counsel for then-Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA), blasted the deduction as “unconscionable” and mostly for the wealthiest “one percent.” “All this is a tax break shenanigan that all the blue bloods on Beacon Hill and the swells in Georgetown take advantage of,’’ he told the paper, “It is wealthy people playing fast and loose. Nobody is taking tax breaks on mobile homes.’’

On his campaign website, Gomez notes that he “experienced how onerous taxes and excessive regulation are barriers to job creation,” and complains that the federal govenrment “runs at an annual loss.”

But while he personally took advantage of this complicated tax loophole, he claims to want to do away with such provisions. On Monday, Gomez told CNBC’s Lawrence Kudlow that he would support comprehensive tax reform to benefit CEOs. “Absolutely we need to have a comprehensive tax reform. I think we need to start looking at the corporate tax loopholes as well as the personal loopholes… we shouldn’t have a tax code that is thousands of pages long.”

America’s budget deficit is shrinking at a faster pace than at any time since World War II, and it is now projected to fall below 5 percent of GDP this year, 3 percent of GDP in 2014, and 2 percent of GDP in 2015, according to a Potomac Research report released Wednesday. That may please Washington politicians who have ignored jobs and unemployment over the last three years, but it isn’t good for the economic recovery.

The immediate deficit reduction efforts Washington has pursued repeatedly since Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 2011 have in fact dampened the economic recovery, economists told the New York Times, and without the spending cuts and tax increases enacted in the last three years, unemployment would be a full-point lower and economic growth two points higher:

The nation’s unemployment rate would probably be nearly a point lower, roughly 6.5 percent, and economic growth almost two points higher this year if Washington had not cut spending and raised taxes as it has since 2011, according to private-sector and government economists.

After two years in which President Obama and Republicans in Congress have fought to a draw over their clashing approaches to job creation and budget deficits, the consensus about the result is clear: Immediate deficit reduction is a drag on full economic recovery.

Hardly a day goes by when either government analysts or the macroeconomists and financial forecasters who advise investors and businesses do not report on the latest signs of economic growth — in housing, consumer spending, business investment. And then they add that things would be better but for the fiscal policy out of Washington. Tax increases and especially spending cuts, these critics say, take money from an economy that still needs some stimulus now, and is getting it only through the expansionary monetary policy of the Federal Reserve.

The spending cuts have been especially damaging, as they have made up the vast majority of deficit reduction efforts since the end of the Great Recession. Modest tax increases targeting the wealthy went into effect at the beginning of 2013, but it is the expiration of the payroll tax holiday, which will raise taxes on the median American family by roughly $1,000 this year, that will hurt the recovery, the economists and analysts said. Nonpartisan reports have said the income tax increases on the wealthy would do little to affect growth.

That deficit reduction is holding back the recovery should not come as any shock. The stimulus bill President Obama signed into law in 2009 put the U.S. on a path to recovery that far outpaced the austerity-laden European economies, but as focus has turned to deficit reduction, growth has turned tepid. While rises in government spending have traditionally added to growth and pulled the U.S. out of economic downturns, it has plateaued since 2010, hampering recovery efforts this time. Reduced spending, in fact, “has detracted from growth in five of past seven quarters,” one investment bank wrote in a midyear report this week.

Republicans have blocked efforts, such as Obama’s American Jobs Act, that would have further stimulated the economy. That legislation would have led to the creation of a million jobs and added to growth, according to independent analysts, and would have aided states and local governments and federal agencies that have laid off more than 500,000 public employees, many of them teachers and public safety workers, since the end of the recession. With government borrowing costs at historic lows and unemployment still high, it’s that sort of shot in the arm the economy needs. But after Congress let sequestration, the damaging budget cuts that could wipe another 700,000 jobs out of the economy, take effect in March, it is now focused on finding even more deficit reduction in the immediate future.

President Obama called for universal preschool in his State of the Union address and followed up with $75 billion in funding over the next decade to expand quality programs as well as $1.4 billion in 2014 to expand child care. Implementing such a program would not just benefit children; it would also have an important impact on working mothers.

As Sarah Jane Glynn, Jane Farrell, and Nancy Wu of the Center for American Progress highlight in a new report, today’s working parents have very limited options. They can leave the workforce to care for children themselves, which is challenging on finances and can hurt women’s long-term earnings. They can pay for child care out of pocket, which can take up more than a third of a low-income family’s budget. Or they can use federal or state-funded programs, which are very limited.

The benefits of expanding preschool, therefore, would be huge for working women, as they report:

Only 6 out of 10 kindergarten programs in America are open for full-day enrollees. Increased funding for Head Start and child care subsidies together can encourage extended hours to better accommodate parents’ work schedules.

Enabling more women to work by improving access to child care can help mitigate the gender wage gap and reduce a mother’s likelihood of going on public assistance.

Lower costs and increased access to child care can lead to a decrease in the number of women leaving employment and an increase in the rate of entering employment, enabling mothers to keep working when they want or need to do so.

Access to affordable and quality child care has been shown to have important benefits for women’s employment. When faced with high costs, mothers are more likely to leave their jobs and less likely to take new ones. Research from other countries shows that families who receive child care support are more likely to be employed and stay in their jobs longer than those who don’t get help. Single mothers benefit in particular, as they are nearly 40 percent more likely to keep their jobs over two years when they receive support.

Meanwhile, long waitlists for child care assistance can take a big toll on families. They are much more likely to lose their jobs, quit their jobs, or miss work due to child care problems. It also strains finances: a quarter of families on a child care waitlist in Minnesota had to rely on public assistance until they could get support.

The overall economic effects of expanding preschool are undeniable. Studies have found that high-quality, universal programs can have economic returns of $7 to $11 for every dollar spent due to children being more likely to go to college, less likely to become teen parents or commit violent crimes, and see increased earnings later in life.

Yet America lags behind most other developed countries when it comes to enrollment in preschool and spending on these programs. Other countries enroll nearly all of their preschool-aged children in programs, yet just half of American three-year-olds and two-thirds of its four-year-olds are enrolled. The U.S. is ranked 21st for the percent of GDP spending devoted to early education programs.

Senate Democrats passed a budget for the first time in four years earlier this year, a move that would seemingly please the Republicans who spent the last four years reminding everyone of the fact that the Senate hadn’t done so. But now, with the House and Senate sitting on differing budget proposals, Senate Republicans have blocked four efforts to form a conference committee that would be tasked with forming a compromise budget.

Here are seven times Republicans have chastised Senate Democrats for not passing a budget since September of last year (and assuredly, it’s not a comprehensive list), including two instances in which Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) blasted them for not moving to the type of bicameral conference committee the Republicans are now blocking:

1. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY): “A second term presents the opportunity to do things differently, and in the Senate that means a return to regular order. Later this week, the House plans to send the Senate a bill to address the debt limit in a timely manner. Once we get it, the Senate should quickly respond. If the Senate version is different than the one the House sends over, send it off to conference. That’s how things are supposed to work around here. We used to call it legislating.” [Senate floor, Jan. 22, 2013]

2. McConnell, again: “Why aren’t we trying to do something about reducing spending? We know we need to do it. When are we going to do it? We don’t need to use the deadlines. We could go through the regular order. Congress could pass bills. They could have conferences between the House and Senate.” [ABC, Jan. 6, 2013]

3. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN): “We have not had a budget in this body for 1,240 days.” [Senate floor, Sept. 20, 2012]

4. Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX): “1,387 days since the United States Senate has passed a budget.” [Senate floor, Feb. 14, 2013]

5. Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN): “It has been 1,372 days since the United States Senate passed a budget.” [Senate floor, Jan. 30, 2013]

6. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA): “Let’s get back to the business of America. Let’s get a budget to the floor.” [Senate floor, Sept. 20, 2012]

7. Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO): “These problems are big, but they are not necessarily that complicated. We just have to have the willpower to deal with them. This Congress has not done that. This Senate, more importantly, has not done that. The House has passed bills. The House has passed a budget.” [Senate floor, Sept. 20, 2012]

The reasons why the GOP doesn’t want to go to conference is clear: they don’t want to consider any compromise that may include new revenues (the Senate budget raised $975 billion) or that raises the debt ceiling, which will need to be upped before October at the latest. Previous deals to reduce the deficit have been comprised primarily of spending cuts, and any further deficit reduction would have to be 90 percent revenues to bring balance to the total package of reductions since President Obama took office.

As Brian Beutler explained, both new revenues and an early, clean debt limit increase are untenable to Republicans, who hold less popular political positions on both. So instead of going to the conference the GOP spent four years demanding, they’ve chosen to block it from forming.

A new AFL-CIO analysis of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 4,693 workers were killed on the job in 2011, an average of 13 workers every day. That’s more than the number of pedestrians struck and killed by cars every year and more than the lives lost during the entire Iraq War. This is the third year that the fatality rate for workers has been unchanged after years of decline.

Another estimated 50,000 died from diseases contracted on the job. Overall, workers reported 6.8 million job-related injuries and illnesses.

The report also notes that the cost of injuries and illnesses that occur on the job is huge. One study put the figure at $250 billion annually due to medical costs and the loss in productivity, more than the cost of cancer.

These numbers come after a fertilizer plant in West, Texas exploded, killing 15 and injuring hundreds. The plant hadn’t been inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the agency tasked with ensuring workplace safety, since 1985. In fact, the Government Accountability Office recently found that the average workplace only gets a visit from OSHA inspectors every 99 years.

That number may get even worse, as OSHA can expect a big cut from sequestration. It will have to slash its budget by 8.2 percent, which could mean 1,200 fewer workplace inspections. Meanwhile, Republican budgets have sought to reduce its budget by $99 million and cut other workplace protection agencies.

Last month, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) signed a package of stringent abortion restrictions into law, including a “personhood” clause that defines life as beginning at fertilization that puts abortion rights into jeopardy and could also endanger access to in vitro fertilization and some forms of contraception. Given that these new laws may skirt the legal precedent that a woman has a right to access an abortion, the state will have to spend money defending them from lawsuits. That sum could come to well over $1 million, as Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt has requested $500,000 more to fund the legal battle on top of the $800,000 it spent last year.

But Kansas has been dealing with budget cuts, particularly in Brownback’s most recent budget that reduced overall state spending by $465 million while also cutting income taxes. Taxpayer money that is being spent on defending these legally questionable laws could be going to many other important programs:

1. Restoring sequestration cuts: Sequestration is going to impact every state with its across-the-board cuts, taking a bite out of programs that have already dealt with decreased funding in recent years. With just over $1 million, Kansas could restore all funding to a variety of vital programs: law enforcement and public safety, job search assistance, vaccines for children, domestic violence services, nutrition assistance for seniors, and upgrades to public health threat response.

2. Tobacco prevention: Kansas ranks 39th in the U.S. for spending on tobacco prevention programs, as it spends under $1 million, just .62 percent of the $161 million it pulls in from tobacco-generated revenue. Yet prevention programs have been found to be highly effective at lowering tobacco use as well as cost effective: One study estimated that returns could be as much as $50 saved for every $1 spent thanks to avoiding tobacco-related health problems. The state could double its already low efforts with the money spent defending its new anti-abortion laws.

3. Arts funding: In 2011, Kansas became the first state without an arts agency when Brownback vetoed funding for the Kansas Arts Commission. The Kansas legislature had recommended appropriating just $689,000 to fund the agency, which would have allowed the state to continue receiving $1.2 million in federal and regional arts funding. The state funding could more than be restored, bringing arts grant dollars back to the state and reinvigorating an arts and nonprofit sector that generates $153.5 million a year in economic activity.

4. Drinking water protection: As part of the spending cuts in Brownback’s most recent budget, he used his line-item veto on some programs, including $800,000 for LEPP, the Local Environmental Protection Program. That program provided grants to local health departments to monitor wastewater and water systems and enforce regulations in order to protect drinking water. State officials have warned that without the program, the state will see increased health problems, lawsuits, and local fees for installing septic tanks and other systems, as well as non-compliance with federal environmental laws.

5. Higher education: College and university budgets have been struggling with decreased state funding, and Kansas is no exception. One community college, Kansas City Kansas Community College, stands to lose about $430,000 from its budget if a 2-4 percent cut to higher education funding goes through. The cut has been proposed as one way to reduce spending in the wake of Brownback’s income tax cuts. If the funding is cut, the college may have to increase tuition on top of the $6 per credit hour increase this past semester. Yet many of the students are young and some are unemployed, making it difficult for them to shoulder more costs, a school official said.

6. Public education: Education spending is predicted to drop $216 per student after the tax cuts Brownback signed into law on top of a $745 decline between 2008 and 2013. Yet a state court ruled that the state is short changing students and must restore $440 million in education spending. While $1 million is just a drop in that bucket, it could go toward ensuring that Kansas’s children get the well-funded education that they deserve.

Kansas is spending a large amount of money defending its anti-abortion laws, but it’s far from the only state doing so. North Dakota has signed the most stringent abortion restrictions in the nation into law, leading the attorney general to request a budget increase of $400,000 to defend them from lawsuits. Arkansas is also gearing up to spend state money defending its new ban on abortions after 12 weeks. At a time when many states have been grappling with tight budgets, the sums of money spent on defending against lawsuits could be used elsewhere.

Bangladesh’s $20 billion garment industry makes it the world’s second-largest apparel exporter, and the United States is its second-largest buyer after Europe. With the factory collapse death toll now over 800, American consumers may be looking to buy clothes that weren’t made in such working conditions. It is likely much better for the Bangladeshi economy and its garment workers for companies to invest in upgrades rather than flee the country, and those investments could cost consumers a mere 10 cents per garment. But in the meantime, there are some places for American shoppers to turn.

Finding these retailers can be difficult, given how much American companies rely on Bangladeshi manufacturers, but some have either taken steps to ensure better working conditions or simply manufacture their clothing elsewhere. Below are some of those retailers, although the list is far from comprehensive. Help ThinkProgress build this list: Where do you buy clothing that is sourced from humane working conditions? Leave your suggestions in the comments and we will update the post.

Levi Strauss & Co.
Sells: Full range of men’s and women’s apparel
Levi Strauss & Co. claims to be the first multinational apparel company to establish a code of conduct for its suppliers in 1991. Its Terms of Engagement outlines rules for child and forced labor, working hours and wages, freedom of association, and detailed safety requirements. While it still sources from factories in Bangladesh, it doesn’t use multistory facilities that have factories with different owners, and in the past it has taken action to police the standards in its facilities. When it found that two factories in Bangladesh employed child workers, it decided to keep paying the workers while they attended school and offer them full-time jobs once they were of legal working age rather than fire them.

Patagonia
Sells: Outdoor apparel and gear
While it has factories in Bangladesh, it has eight in the U.S. and a Code of Conduct for its suppliers that expressly prohibits unsafe working conditions, child labor, and excessive hours and encourages higher wages and unionization.

Land’s End
Sells: Jeans, shirts, and sweatpants as well as home and pet items
Land’s End launched a “Made in the U.S.A.” collection in 2012 with its Durable Goods line. The line offers clothing, home, pet, and specialty items.

Brooks Brothers
Sells: Men’s dress clothes
Brooks Brothers has a clothing line of men’s dress shirts, suits, ties, and dress shoes that are made in the United States. The company also has a commitment to philanthropic spending and partners with non-profit organizations related to health issues, education, and the arts.

New Balance
Sells: Sneakers and sportswear
New Balance has a line of sneakers either made in the U.S. or assembled here.

American Giant
Sells: Men’s sweatshirts, T-shirts, and sweatpants
Seeking to address the fact that “most clothes we love…are made in countries that are so far away, the only American job it created was a store clerk,” the company sources its materials and manufacturing in the U.S.

Alta Gracia
Sells: College apparel
Alta Gracia’s products are made in the Dominican Republic, where it says it pays a living wage, sometimes “more than three times the minimum wage,” respects the right to form a union, and ensures a safe workplace. The Worker Rights Consortium ensures that the company is compliant with these standards through on-the-ground monitoring.

Flint and Tinder
Sells: Men’s underwear and accessories
The company manufactures all of its products in the U.S. in its own facilities, which started with a single factory and has expanded to a larger group. It says that for every 1,000 pair of underwear it sells in a month, it adds at least one job in its supply chain.

The United States is again approaching its debt limit, though an improving economy and new revenues have pushed the deadline for when it will need to be raised as far back as October. And yet again, Republicans are pushing legislation that amounts to nothing more than a phony fix to the issue, a bill known as the Full Faith and Credit Act that will prioritize debt payments in a way that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) says “makes it clear to our bondholders that we’re going to meet our obligations.”

But such a plan makes it clear that the U.S. will meet only some of its obligations, leaving many Americans, including troops, veterans, and the elderly, out in the cold. Boehner doesn’t see that as a problem, he told Bloomberg TV last night:

COOK (Host): Doesn’t it mean as Democrats have suggested you’re basically choosing to pay China before U.S. troops?

BOEHNER: Listen. Those who have loaned us money, like in any other proceeding, if you will — court proceeding — the boldholders usually get paid first. Same thing here.

Worse yet, the Republican plan doesn’t allow the nation to avoid default. If the U.S. services its debt payments but still misses others, it is still defaulting on payments it is required to make. Since the bill only allows Treasury to make payments as it receives revenues, and the bulk of its payments are made at the beginning of the month even though revenues don’t come in until later, it would almost certainly be unable to meet at least some of its obligations.

When the GOP has considered similar plans before, Treasury officials have called it “unworkable.” Bipartisan analysts said it was “essentially impossible.” Failing to fulfill spending obligations would be “the first step to becoming a banana republic,” a Bush-era Treasury official said. Instead of inspiring confidence among investors, bondholders, and the American people, the legislation would zap it.

Far from preventing default, the Full Faith and Credit Act would essentially ensure it. That wouldn’t just put paying China ahead of senior citizens and members of the military — it would also hammer economic growth both in the United States and across the world. (HT Huffington Post)

ELKHORN WI — At a Wisconsin town hall last week, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) offered his strongest endorsement yet of a key financial reform generally pushed by Democratic lawmakers.

In the past, Ryan held a more lukewarm position on the Volcker Rule, where he endorsed the concept in theory but not in name.

By banning federally insured banks from risky proprietary bets, the Volcker rule is a key component of Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act and is meant to protect taxpayers from bank speculation. Ryan’s words put him at odds with conservatives in the House and Senate who have repeatedly worked to delay and weaken the bill. He cited Volcker at two different town halls, as well as Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and David Vitter’s (R-LA) bill to rein in big banks:

RYAN: I have concerns about the Vitter bill. The idea is one I find very appealing. I also believe in what we call the Volcker rule, which mean if you’re going to act like a hedge fund then be a hedge fun. If you’re going to be a bank, then you have to be regulated like a bank. Meaning separate the ability of banks to take the implied subsidy of insured deposits and leverage that. I think that was one of the mistakes that was made.

Watch the video:

Although he says he supports consumer protections in theory, Ryan is still lockstep with Republicans on demanding the repeal of Dodd-Frank.

House and Senate Republicans are responsible for repeatedly delaying the Volcker rule after their unsuccessful attempt to cut it from Dodd-Frank. For instance, Reps. Spencer Bachus (R-AL) and Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) have done their best to ensure it does not take effect anytime soon. “While the Volcker Rule promises little if any benefit, what little benefit it does promise will not be realized if regulators further fragment financial markets and ratchet up the costs of compliance for market participants by issuing multiple versions of the Volcker Rule,” Bachus and Hensarling wrote. Even now, the expected date of the final rule was moved from the beginning of 2013 to sometime this year.

While bank industry lobbying has not managed to eliminate the rule in its entirety, Republicans have successfully watered it down to the point where even Paul Volcker has said he doesn’t like it. But a strong Volcker Rule like the one originally proposed is still necessary, and it has garnered support from many former bankers and industry insiders. As one former Merrill Lynch banker said, the Volcker Rule is “necessary to correct a mistake that poses a danger to our economy.”

Today, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 15,056, an all-time record. For one conservative group, this can only mean one thing: it’s time to impeach President Obama.

That was the message Capitol Hill Daily, a conservative publication based out of Baltimore, sent to Citizen United’s listserv today. They accused President Obama of “wreck[ing] the stock market” and asked readers to take a poll about whether he should be impeached as a result.

From the email:

Dear Concerned Reader,

Fearing the very worst, the nation’s super-rich are unloading their stocks at an alarming rate.

Even more troubling, the wealthiest 1% of Americans, who typically know the most, are the ones most anxious to sell.

You see, Obama just allowed 13 new tax increases to further slow the economy, wreck the stock market and make it even harder on the 12 million Americans already looking for work.

The bigger question is this…

Is Obama’s Latest Tax Screw Up Grounds For Impeachment?

See a screenshot below:

When Obama took office on January 20, 2009, the Dow Jones was at 7,949. Over the last 4 years, it has gone up approximately 90 percent before reaching a new high today.

It’s important to remember that the health of the stock market is very different from the health of the overall economy. Middle class wages are stagnating and millions are still unemployed or underemployed.

But when a conservative organization claims ignores reality in such a blatant way, one can’t help but quote former Rep. Barney Frank: “On what planet do you spend most of your time?”

Last week, ThinkProgress spoke to directors of Meals on Wheels programs across the country, and they detailed how sequestration is cutting meal delivery and on-site meal services to needy seniors who may now have to go hungry. Since then, stories about sequestration’s harmful cuts to seniors have continued to pour in from across the country. The stories from Florida and Maine have been particularly wrenching:

• Throughout Florida, meal services for seniors have been cut. In the Orlando area, five senior meal sites are closing, another 20 seniors are losing their home support services, and other seniors will lose their transportation services, including help getting to medical appointments. Similarly, Aging Matters in Brevard had to close two of its lunch sites. In Ocala, Marion Senior Services will serve 6,000 fewer meals in 2013. Meanwhile, Holly Hill, Ormand Beach and six other locations from Deland to New Smyrna Beach had to cut its on-site meals from 5 days a week to 4 days a week while the waiting list for home-delivered meals is at 2,356 and growing. These may just be numbers to some, but not to the seniors who depend on the meals. Sometimes, these meals are seniors’ “only hot meal of the day.”

• The same stories are playing out in Maine. In central Maine, Spectrum Generations has had to cut its meal delivery service to just once a week, while Eastern Agency on Aging in Bangor had to furlough its employees once a week. “It is having a tremendous impact on people who need services…These are services that help to keep people — the elderly and the disabled — living in their homes and in their communities rather than living in institutions, which are much more expensive,” said Jessica Maurer, executive director of the Maine Association of Area Agencies on Aging. Meanwhile, in midcoast Maine, the Meals on Wheels program is facing funding shortfalls that may impact its on-site meal service program.

But losing crucial nutrition support services is not the only way sequestration is hurting seniors. It is also robbing $75 million from Aging and Disability Services programs. These include programs that protect vulnerable adults from elder abuse, that support services for people experiencing Alzheimer’s disease, and that provide home and community-based services that allow seniors to live at home for as long as possible. These drastic cuts are funneled down to the local level in various forms, from funding cuts to senior centers in Missouri to layoffs at a hospice in Kentucky.

In total, sequestration is cutting more than $230 million to four critical programs that support seniors. It cuts $117 million from Social Services Block Grants, which fund Meals on Wheels and other important initiatives, $75 million from Aging and Disability Services programs, $23 million from Community Service Employment for Older Americans programs, and $19 million from Housing for Elderly programs. But while Congress rushed to stop flight delays right before they flew home for recess, they have done nothing to ease the pain of these cuts on seniors.

We’ve laid out before some revenue options that can help ease the sequester. Many have been suggested in the president’s budget, including the elimination of the special tax break for derivatives traders that would yield $2.4 billion — well more than what is needed to stop sequestration’s harmful impacts on seniors. Ending subsidies for corporate jet owners and tax breaks for golf courses would get us halfway there. And so we ask this question again: what, exactly, are Congress’ priorities?

Our guest blogger is Anna Chu, Policy Director for the ThinkProgress War Room at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Today, the House is set to vote on the Working Families Flexibility Act, legislation that would weaken rules requiring businesses to pay employees overtime wages when they work more than 40 hours in a given week and instead give employers the option of providing their workers with “comp time,” or time off from work. The bill is being touted as a Republican response to the need for today’s working parents to balance work and family by allowing them to accrue unpaid overtime hours.

A big worry of opponents of the bill is that employers will have the power to coerce employees into taking comp time instead of having to pay them overtime wages. When confronted with this possibility, the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Martha Roby (R-AL), told the Sirius radio show The Morning Briefing with Tim Farley that employees will be able to turn to existing worker protections against coercion under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA):

The employee absolutely can pick up the phone and call the Department of Labor and report their employer because that is not allowed. The anti-coercion and discrimination provisions in this bill are very clear, that an employer cannot not use compensatory time in any way to coerce or discriminate or force an employee to take compensatory time… All of the protections that are currently under the Fair Labor Standards Act exist under this bill as well for the employee to make sure the employer does not take advantage of the employee.

But workers may not be as well protected as Roby indicated. While the bill does give workers the right to sue, George Zornick reports at The Nation that they are denied the use of a faster and cheaper avenue through the Department of Labor. On top of this, it doesn’t give the Department of Labor any extra funds to investigate or enforce the anti-coercion provisions. This means that workers who experience intimidation may have to hire their own lawyer and shell out lots of money to bring a case.

Meanwhile, the balance of power often rests with employers. Workers are fighting wage theft, or employers violating FLSA overtime laws, at huge rates. A 2009 survey reported that two-thirds of low-income employees had experienced a wage law violation in the previous week alone. The problem has been on the rise, with actions filed in federal court alleging wage and hour violations increasing by 400% between 2000 and 2011. Many employers are already failing to follow the FLSA’s rules.

Opponents have other concerns with the legislation. The FLSA requires overtime pay for work over 40 hours a week, which provides a big disincentive to ask employees to work long hours. That could diminish if employers can offer comp time instead. Employers may also be able to deny requests to use the comp time if they can claim it “unduly disrupts the operations of the employer” or that the request didn’t come in “within a reasonable period.”

In the radio interview, Roby also pointed to the fact that public sector workers have had this arrangement since 1985. But as Alex Seitz-Wald reports at Salon, “that move was to cut costs for government, not provide workers with more freedom,” plus government employees generally have a union to help them fight employer violations.

In fact, this is an old idea that has had trouble gaining traction over the years. Seitz-Wald points out that Republicans introduced similar legislation in 1996, 1997, and 2003. If Republicans are looking for policies that can help today’s working families, they could consider paid family and medical leave, paid sick days, and protections for workers who request flexible working conditions.