Morning Buzz: March 26, 2013

It’s great news that D.C. is no longer covered with snow. College graduates, on the other hand, are buried with high levels of underemployment. Ben Casselman of The Wall Street Journal recently reported that “new research suggests their job prospects may not improve much when the economy rebounds.”

The slow economic recovery has left “nearly half of employed college graduates are in jobs that don’t traditionally require a college degree.”The unemployment rate of college grads (3.8 percent) is much lower than those with just a high school diploma (7.9 percent), but their underemployment has corollary effects: college grads displace less-educated workers out of the workforce entirely.

This conundrum for young people is even worse than PGA Tour pro Sergio Garcia getting his ball stuck in a tree.

Now is the time to create policy to help the youth of today find meaningful full-time work.

Seize the day,

Mark Bednar
@MarkBednar

@politicalwire “Chris Christie headed for a NJ-Gov landslide re-election://politicalwire.com/archives/2013/03/26/christie_heade”

@gretawire “Video: How YOU the Taxpayer Paid for the IRS Star Trek Parody Video http://soa.li/mxzDZ6X”

@BloombergMrkts “BRICS nations plan new bank to bypass World Bank, IMF | http://bloom.bg/10H3gkl”

@GallupNews “Lincoln, Neb., Bests All Cities in Wellbeing in 2012… http://bit.ly/13sZdMr”

On The Radar

Economic Growth

Liberals Find Themselves in Spending Trap from The Wall Street Journal by Gerald F. Seib. “The budget action last week in Congress, which locked in for the rest of the year the spending levels set in the much-ballyhooed sequester, establishes a pretty simple pattern: Squeeze money out of the military, but also squeeze money out of all varieties of domestic social programs the federal government runs, including those that protect the environment, help feed poor children and give rent assistance to needy families. Meanwhile, the even bigger entitlement programs that really drive the deficit—Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid—are left nearly untouched.”

Goldman Sachs: Sorry, U.S. Manufacturing Isn’t Coming Back from The Washington Post by Brad Plumer. “This boom hasn’t really shown up in the data — at least not yet. Yes, U.S. manufacturing has expanded and added jobs since 2009 as the sector recovers from the recession. But that appears to be a cyclical bounce-back and not any sort of long-term shift. At least, that’s Jan Hatzius’s conclusion in a new research note for Goldman Sachs. ‘Evidence for a structural renaissance is scant so far,’ he writes.”

The Euro Is Killing Europe from Foreign Policy by Daniel Altman. “Are the best days of the European Union already behind it? Just a few months ago, having won the Nobel Prize for Peace, it could boast of decades without a major war, the westward turn of the former Soviet satellites, and flourishing internal trade. But now its one big mistake — the euro — threatens to tear the union apart.”

Immigration

Why the Fight Over Work Visas Won’t Doom The Immigration Bill from National Journal by Fawn Johnson. “Previously, the AFL-CIO opposed any kind of temporary-visa program. That intransigence caused a highly public split with the Service Employees International Union in 2007. SEIU was willing to embrace some form of temporary work visas for immigrant labor if the broader immigration bill also legalized the currently undocumented population. Now labor is speaking with one voice. They want legalization for the undocumented population and are willing to allow new foreign workers to come to the country, provided the employers pay them at the same rates they would pay an American worker. The business community has indicated it can live with those parameters.”

Health Care

Disability Insurance: America’s $124 Billion Secret Welfare Program from The Atlantic by Jordan Weissman. “The number of former workers enrolled in the Social Security disability program has more than doubled in the last two decades, and the reasons why have little to do with the health of our workforce. … That rapid, under-the-political-radar expansion has turned the program into a massive budget item. As of 2010, its monthly cash payments accounted for nearly one out of every five Social Security dollars spent, or about $124 billion. In 1988, by comparison, it accounted for just one out of eight Social Security dollars. Because disabled workers qualify for Medicare, they also added $59 billion to the government’s healthcare tab. Are disabilities just becoming more common? According to economists such as MIT’s David Autor, the evidence says no.”

Here’s Obamacare’s Most Controversial Regulation from The Washington Post by Sarah Kliff. “One provision, however, has engendered more controversy than any other: The requirement that contraceptives be covered without co-payment has drawn more than 147,000 public comments, according to an analysis from the Sunlight Foundation. These are the letters that companies, non-profits and private citizens send to the federal government, hoping to sway the regulatory process.”

Large Companies Are Increasingly Offering Workers Only High Deductible Health Plans from KHN by Michelle Andrews. “Historically, one of the perks of working at a big company has been generous health benefits with modest out-of-pocket costs. But increasingly, large companies are offering their employees only one option: a plan with a relatively high deductible linked to a savings account for medical expenses.”

X-Factor

Use An Axe, Not A Scalpel from Foreign Policy by John Aquilla. “This focus on taking out the leaders of essentially leaderless networks (that is, interconnected cells that are highly self-organizing and at least semi-autonomous) has led to serious difficulties in the field. For example, many intelligence operatives and military servicemembers who plan and conduct drone operations have found that, all too often, the occasional strike from the sky inflicts damage that the networks can work around and quickly repair.”

Nevada Politican Puts Chips On Election Betting Bill from Politico by Kevin Robillard. “If a Nevada state Senator gets his way, gamblers could have a new kind of horse race to bet on. A top Las Vegas lawmaker introduced a bill Monday to legalize betting on federal elections. … Segerblom said betting on the presidential election was ‘one of the biggest moneymakers in all of betting outside the United States,’ something gaming companies themselves have testified to.”

This & That

Hey Feds, Don’t Put Money On Those March Madness Brackets from The Washington Post by Emily Heil.

Cat Slinking Down The Stairs Gif.

The Spring Peeper Frog: Call Of The Cross Bearer from The Washington Post by Patterson Clark.

Napping Kitten Who Thinks He’s A Napkin.

Eliot Spitzer Coming Back? from The New York Post.