The Americans for Prosperity Foundation on Monday kicked off a $4.1 million TV ad campaign blasting President Obama for what it claims is wasteful spending of taxpayers' dollars.
An amendment from Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) to the small-business bill that repeals the requirement for businesses to issue 1099s for purchases above $600 would increase premiums and the ranks of the uninsured, states a new report from the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).
More than half of the respondents (56 percent) in a new CNN poll say the economy will be an extremely important factor in deciding who they support in the upcoming midterm election.
For the first time since 2006, banks have eased lending terms for small businesses, according to the Federal Reserve.
In a quarterly survey of senior loan officers, the Fed found that banks have eased terms for commercial and industrial loans to small firms with at most $50 million in sales.
The survey, released Monday, comes at a critical time for the Obama administration, which has pushed hard for a $30 billion fund to stimulate lending to small businesses. The president first proposed the fund in January, but Congress has yet to approve it. Senate Democratic leaders are planning votes on the measure in September.
The Fed survey indicated that banks overall have loosened restrictions on lending, but said that most of the changes have occurred at the nation's largest banks. Demand for business and consumer loans was unchanged, the Fed said.
The survey was based on responses from 57 domestic banks and 23 U.S. branches of foreign-based banks.
Economist Jeffrey Sachs, the director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, on Sunday slammed the Obama administration’s approach to combating the recession.
Sachs took particular issue with the multi-billion dollar stimulus package Obama signed into law shortly after taking office that added to the deficit when the country was already drowning in red ink.
“They added to [the deficit] and thought that that would work both politically and economically,” he told CNN’s "Fareed Zakaria GPS," adding, “What’s happened is the stimulus substituted for thinking; the stimulus substituted for planning.”
Sachs argues the stimulus included tax and spending measures that were aimed at propping up market sectors that had already imploded because of vanishing demand.
“[What] I found surprising about the Obama approach was that it basically was trying to get people to start spending again where they were saying, ‘We’re tired, we’re tired, we need to save a little bit,’” he said. “And once one realizes that consumption is going to be down, we’d need a different approach from simply ‘stimulus,’ from cutting taxes for households to spend more.”
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