Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Economists divide the government’s tools to influence the economy into two categories: Monetary policy (the Fed’s manipulation of interest rates to speed up or slow down the economy) and fiscal policy (Congress’ use of taxing and spending power). But for the past several years interest rates — the ones the Fed charges the banks — have been functionally zero, taking away one of the key ways the government can prime the economic pump. And this, argues senior economist Heather Boushey of the Center for American Progress, is why extending unemployment benefits is so important to preventing a double-dip recession at this point.
Businesses of all sizes are not hiring because they do not see sufficient demand for their goods and services. The Federal Reserve is doing its bit, maintaining the federal funds rate — the interest rate at which banks can borrow from the Fed — at near zero for a year and a half, but there is no more room for monetary policy to boost the economy. That leaves fiscal policy — including especially unemployment benefits — as the primary tool government has to increase the demand for goods and services.
Alas, enough members of Congress don’t get it. Despite the lack of jobs and record-breaking unemployment, Congress has allowed federal unemployment insurance provisions to lapse. When Congress returns, they should quickly move to restore long-term unemployment benefits. But, they should also seek to ensure that benefits do not expire again until the economy has improved. The way to do this is to tie the expiration date for long-term benefits to each state’s unemployment rate: When a state’s unemployment rate has returned to normal, the unemployed in that state would no longer be eligible for long-term unemployment benefits.
But that is highly unlikely. Even if the current extension before Congress passes, it only goes through November. And staffers on Capitol Hill have told reporters off the record that this is probably the last extension they will be able to get through Congress, especially if, as expected, the Republicans make significant gains in both houses of Congress during the mid-term elections.
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