Everything from public education to child care subsidies and aviation safety could be on the chopping block. But a group of more than 20 Democrats are petitioning Obama in the hopes of ensuring the nation’s most critical social-safety-net programs will not be subject to budget cuts.

“Democrats have built the most popular government programs in American history — including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — by working with Republicans whenever possible and by defeating Republican opposition whenever necessary. The torch has been passed to today’s elected officials, and we must carry it forward boldly,” states the letter, authored by Reps. Alan Grayson (Fla.) and Mark Takano (Calif.).

Earlier this week, progressive champion Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) called out Fox News’s Sean Hannity for his disinformation around the sequester, telling him he was the “worst excuse for a journalist” he had ever seen.

Last night, Hannity responded by smearing Ellison when he wasn’t there to defend himself. He implied that the Congressman held anti-semitic views, and brought up debunked attacks used against Ellison during his 2006 campaign.

But this behavior is nothing new for Hannity himself along with the network he belongs to. Hannity and the network have a history of inciting islamophobia and racial and ethnic animosity. Here are a few examples:

-Ai??Fox Host John Gibson Said We ai???Need More Babiesai??? Because The Majority Of Americans May Be Hispanic In 25 YearsAi??[5/12/06]

-Ai??Fox Host Steve Doocy Claimed Barack Obama Went To A ai???Madrassaai??? And Was Possibly A Muslim ExtremistAi??[1/19/07]

-Ai??Fox News Managing Editor Said Barack Obama Had ai???Fairly Controversialai??? Views About ai???The White Raceai???Ai??[3/28/08]

-Ai??Fox News Host Brian Kilmeade Suggested ai???Special Screeningsai??? For Muslim American Soldiers After The Fort Hood ShootingsAi??[11/7/09]

-Ai??Fox News Host Blamed Desecration Of A Tennessee Mosque On The ai???Stubbornnessai??? Of Muslims Building A Community Center In New York City[8/24/10]

-Ai??Fox News Immediately Hired Disgraced NPR Commentator Juan Williams, Who Was Let Go For Making Insensitive Comments About MuslimsAi??[10/21/10]

-Ai??Fox Host Glenn Beck Said The 3/5 Compromise Was A ai???Way To Take A Step To Abolish Slaveryai???Ai??[1/6/11]

-Ai??Fox Host Sean Hannity Repeatedly Suggested That Middle East Uprisings Are Signs Of ai???World War IIIai???Ai??[2/8/11,Ai??2/10/11,Ai??2/22/11]

-Ai??Fox Host Glenn Beck Claimed That The Pro-Democracy Movement In Egypt Was Evidence Of A Muslim-Marxist Conspiracy To Establish An Islamic CaliphateAi??[2/11/11]

-Ai??Fox News Radio Reporter Todd Starnes Published Tweets About ai???Blacks Riotingai??? At A Burger King And Asking If Muslims ai???Will Stop …

Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH)

Last week, PCCC memberAi??Patricia Kerekes went to Rep. Carol Shea Porter ‘s (D-NH) office to ask the Congresswoman to sign onto the Grayson-Takano letter promising to vote against any cuts to Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits.

Shea-Porter’s staffer,Ai??Carol Perry, took the letter Kerekes gave to her and then assured Perry, “She’s not going to compromise. She’s not going to take any cuts.” Watch it:

Click here to sign on as a citizen sponsor of the Grayson-Takano letter against Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefit cuts.

You should follow BoldProgressives on Twitter here.

Will Congress act to stop economic — and human — calamity?

With Republicans lined up to defeat any replacement that would’ve increased taxes on the wealthiest Americans and corporations, the budget sequester went into place today.

$85 billion will be cut from the federal budget this year if Congress does not act, and next year spending caps will go into place. While some of this cut is from wasteful defense spending, much of it is from productive infrastructure.

Some economists are warning that if the sequester is not cancelled or replaced, that it could over time lead to a recession. This will not only cause job loss and economic calamity, but it also has a human cost.

Last year, medical researchersAi??studied the suicide rate in the United States during the Great Recession that began in 2007 and published their results in The Lancet. They concluded that during the length of that recession, there were an additionalAi??4,750 “excess” suicide deaths that likely would not have occurred if the country was not in such economic turmoil.

This figure should inform policymakers as they seek to stop this sequester before it harms the economy in a severe way.

George P. Bush

Last month, George Prescott Bush, the nephew of former president George W. Bush, announced that he had raised $1.3 million — before even deciding which office in Texas he wanted to run for.

While Bush has still not made up his mind about which office he wants to run for, a batch of elite lobbyists in Atlanta will be throwing him a fundraiser next Wednesday. We’ve exclusively obtained a fundraising invite to the event, which we uploaded below:

As you can see, hosts pitch in $1,000, while you can join the general reception for $250 or pay $500 for a photo with Bush.

The exploratory committee is notable for the presence of so many lobbyists. Here’s a few listed:

Rufus Montgomery: Montgomery, the Chairman of the fundraising event, is a prominent Georgian lobbyist, being the managing director of Government Affairs at Hall Booth Smith, P.C. Rufus “stays mum on the details of his lobbyist work,” but is known to represent Fortune 500 corporations, among others.Ai??ai???I fly under the radar,ai??? he told Georgia Trend Magazine, ai???but I derive a lot of satisfaction from influencing public policy.ai??? Disclosures show he has held accounts with chemical lobbyists at the American Chemistry Council and with the for-profit online education company Edison, Inc.
Brad Carver: Carver is the senior managing directorAi??of Government Affairs at Hall Booth Smith, meaning that he is another Georgia lobbyist.
Jason Anivitarte: Anivitarte is the Atlanta lobbyist for health care giant Kaiser Permanente.
Brian Hudson: Hudson’s lobbying client list in Georgia includes anti-labor Home Depot, Time Warner, and Quick Click Loans, llc — a loan shark.
R.J. Briscione: Briscione is a lobbyist for health insurer Wellpoint.

Again, Bush has not even …

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA)

This morning, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe and, in response to a question from a host, went through a long list of Medicare and Social Security benefit cuts that he endorses:

WARNER: Let me start with chained CPI which is a more rational way to measure inflation, deals with both the entitlement programs and Social Security, lets look at raising the cap on Social Security, let’s look at phased-in raising the age of Social Security, let’s look at means-testing Medicare, let’s look at combining the various Medicare programs into a single deductible, so everybody’s got at least a little bit of skin in the game in terms of the services they use.

Watch the Senator:

Recall that utilizing chained CPI would cut benefits for seniors by up to $1,611 a year. Raising the Social Security age would harm blue-collar workers the most, whose jobs have not gotten less physically demanding and whose life expectancy has only barely improved in the last few decades.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee did polling in Warner’s state of Virginia and found that 66 percent of people there oppose reducing Social Security benefits. 68 percent oppose reducing Medicare benefits.

If you live in Virginia, click here to call Sen. Warner and tell him to oppose these cuts to Medicare and Social Security benefits.

PCCC members

21 House Democrats have signed the letter by Reps. Alan Grayson (D-FL) and Mark Takano (D-CA) vowing to vote against any cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits.

Last Friday, Progressive Change Campaign Committee members in Oregon presented a petition signed by 1,372 constituents asking Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) to sign onto the Grayson-Takano letter.

“I’m the widow of a federal employee and 78 years old. So I have been on Medicare for quite a few years,” explained Margaret Wills about the importance of opposing cuts. “If I didn’t have that Medicare…I would probably be either dead or on the streets by now.”

“I look upon it as, this is not really about balancing the budget as much as it is part of the campaign from the time Medicare and Social Security were put in place to get rid of them,” she concluded about those advocating for benefit cuts.

25 people attended the event to petition the congresswoman. Marshal Jevning, one of Bonamici’s staffer’s, says it was the most people that had ever visited the office at one time for a constituent visit.

Watch the visit:

Click here to sign on as a citizen sponsor of the Grayson-Takano letter against Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefit cuts.

The Defense Department is the most wasteful part of the federal budget. We spend more on our military than the rest of the world combined, and the Pentagon has never been fully audited.

In Washington, D.C. today, dozens of demonstrators organized by USAction converged outside the lobbying headquarters of Lockheed Martin, calling on the government to “pull the pork” and cut down on defense waste in the budget. To demonstrate this, they inflated a giant pig:

Help us push for a balanced approach that cuts Pentagon waste, asks the rich to pay their fair share, and protects Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits from cuts.

You should follow BoldProgressives on Twitter here.

UPDATE: Here’s a video from the event:

Today, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke testified before the Senate Banking Committee. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) asked Bernanke about the $83.5 billion subsidy that Big Banks get every year from American taxpayers.

Warren suggested that Bernanke support a policy of ending this subsidy. After a back and forth with him about the question of “too big to fail,” Warren suggested that Big Banks — backed by the government — are causing smaller banks to get “smashed.”

WARREN: $83 billion says that there really will be a bailout for the largest financial institutions if they fail.

BERNANKE:That’s the expectation of markets, but that doesn’t mean we have to do it. […] Too big to fail is not absolute. […]

WARREN: It is working like an insurance policy. Ordinary folks pay for home owners insurance, ordinary folks pay for car insurance, and these big financial institutions are getting cheaper borrowing to the tune of $83 billion in a single year simply because people believe that the government would step in and bail them out. And I’m just saying, if they’re getting it, why shouldn’t they pay for it?

BERNANKE: I think we should get rid of it. […]

WARREN: I know we’re both trying to go in the same direction, I’m just pointing out that in all that space in between what’s happening is the Big Banks are getting a terrific break, and the little banks are just getting smashed on this, they’re not getting that kind of break, and that has long-term impact for all of the financial system.

BERNANKE: I agree with you 100 percent.

Watch it:

You should follow BoldProgressives on Twitter here.

Economists are warning that the upcoming sequester could severely harm the economy as government agencies at the federal, state, and local level will see sharp spending cuts.

The sequester’s cuts this year will amount to $85.3 billion. Around half of this spending will be cut from the waste-ridden defense budget, but much of the rest of it will come out of necessary investments in the country’s public infrastructure.

But there’s another area of the budget where almost as much money is spent — subsidies to Big Banks. In an editorial published last week, Bloomberg noted that the ten biggest banks get an effective annual subsidy of $83 billion from taxpayers, and that almost all their recent profits are subsidized by the federal government.

That’s only $2.3 billion short of the amount of money that the sequester cuts. It would therefore be logical if the government were to instead look at cutting these subsidies to Wall Street instead of investments in Main Street America.

You should follow BoldProgressives on Twitter here.

Video available here: http://on.aol.com/video/pccc-assault-weapons-ad-targets-mitch-mcconnell-517683712

With the sequester looming, many progressive economists have made the argument that these across-the-board cuts would be damaging to the economy and that there should instead be more targeted cuts focused on defense, corporate welfare, Big Agribusiness, and other wasteful areas.

But with half of the sequester’s cuts set to fall upon the Pentagon, the defense industry is making a self-interested argument against the sequester, claiming that it would hurt military readiness (a false claim, as military expertsAi??recommendAi??twice the level of defense cuts as are in the sequester).

Here’s one example. Defense giant Northrup Grumman has set upAi??StopSequestration.com. This website asks you to petition your lawmakers to demand that they stop the sequestration, which it says would cost jobs and hurt U.S. security.

But while asking that the government not enact the sequester and sizeable cuts to defense spending, the site also fearmongers about the U.S. debt:

Government spending continues to exceed government revenues, which means that the national debt keeps growing. Without a change in spending and taxation plans, the national debt will soon reach unprecedented levels. Such debt levels risk triggering a financial crisis.

There is no evidence that the levels of U.S. debt is anywhere near close to “triggering a financial crisis.” As economist Paul Krugman points out, as “long as the economy recovers, which is an assumption built into….projections, the debt ratio will more or less stabilize soon.”

The message this defense contractor is therefore positing is this: there should be major budget cuts for Americans, but not for waste-riddled defense contractors.

Click hereAi??to pledge to hold any Democrat who agrees to a deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits accountable.

You should follow BoldProgressives on Twitter here.

Ahead of a Senate hearing this week on the proposed assault weapons ban, a liberal group is attacking Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell with a new TV ad featuring a Kentucky gun owner. The ad is the second by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which now has pumped $100,000 on TV and online to criticize the Senate’s top Republican in his home state — well ahead of his 2014 re-election campaign.

A liberal group is launching its second ad attacking the Senate’s top Republican over gun control in the past month. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee’s spot features a Kentucky gun owner criticizing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for opposing an assault weapons ban.

With the budget sequester looming, some lawmakers are compiling alternative to the across-the-board cuts, and some conservatives want to slash Social Security and Medicare benefits as part of a deal.

A new poll out today from The Hill finds that this would put them out of step with the American public and even with self-identified Republicans.

In the poll, 62 percent of Republicans and 82 percent of Democrats opposed cutting Social Security and Medicare, while 49 percent of overall respondents said they favored cutting back on defense spending. Even among Republicans, 56 percent said they would oppose defense cuts while a larger 62 percent said they would oppose cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Click hereAi??to pledge to hold any Democrat who agrees to a deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits accountable.

You should follow BoldProgressives on Twitter here.

This morning, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee released a second video challenging Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on his deference to the NRA and opposition to gun reforms.

In the ad, Gary Nutt, a military veteran and hunter, says that he would be a “pretty bad hunter” if he needed an assault weapon to hunt, and notes that McConnell has taken $198,615 from the gun industry during his campaigns.

Watch it:

Click here to pitch in a few dollars to help run this ad in Kentucky.

Rising tides threaten polar bears today, they may threaten the entire state of Louisiana soon.

In new research about to be released by the NationalAi??Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the agency concludes that the state of Louisiana will face the highest sea-level rise “on the planet.”

This sea-level rise is largely due to the effects of man-made global warming. But as Louisiana faces looming catastrophe over the next few decades, much of its congressional delegation continues to drag its feet on climate action or deny the phenomena altogether. Here’s a rundown:

Sen. David Vitter (R): Vitter warned that global warming studies are often “ridiculous psuedo-science.”
Rep. Steve Scalise (R): Scalise has said that the science “is not settled” and that there “is dispute” over man-made climate change.
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D): While she has not engaged in global warming denialism, she has worked to stop the Obama administration from combating the threat of climate change.
Rep. John Fleming (R): Fleming has signed the Koch Brothers front group’s Americans For Prosperity’s pledge to block a tax designed to rein in carbon emissions.
Rep. Rodney Alexander (R): Alexander co-sponsored a resolution saying that the Ai??”impacts of climate change and proposed resolutions, tainted by the recent uncovering of climategate, are not universally accepted.”
Rep. Bill Cassidy (R): Cassidy denies global warming outright, saying it could just be a “shift in the axis” of the planet.
Rep. Charles Boustany (R): Boustany has voted against letting the Environmental Protection Agency work to stop global warming and defends subsidies for oil and gas companies.

Out of all of the delegation, only Democratic Rep. Cedric Richmond has taken actions to protect the environment and battle climate change.

A liberal group is again challenging U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s position on gun control in a commercial that began running Monday in Kentucky and Washington in advance of the Senate’s next hearing on guns.

The group Progressive Change Campaign Committee is spending $100,000 to run the ad for at least a week. It began airing Monday in Louisville, Lexington, Bowling Green and Paducah markets plus Washington, D.C., as the Senate’s Judiciary Committee prepares for a hearing Wednesday on the “Assault Weapons Ban of 2013.”

It features Edmonson County resident Gary Nutt telling viewers that, as a hunter, he doesn’t see the point of owning semi-automatic assault weapons that can fire dozens of rounds quickly without needing a reload.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is on the wrong side of an assault weapons ban, a progressive group argues Monday in a new attack ad released in the congressman’s home state of Kentucky… The ad hits out at McConnell, up for re-election in 2014, for taking money from the gun industry. The ad debuts ahead of a Senate hearing this week on an assault weapons ban—something President Barack Obama’s administration wants after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. The committee believes McConnell’s opposition to a ban could lead to loss of votes for him this year… The ad is set to run on broadcast and cable in Lexington, Louisville, Bowling Green and rural Paducah markets and has an initial buy of $25,000, according to the committee. Monday’s ad brings the total spent by the PCCC on McConnell to $100,000.

With a persistently poor economy, one uphill battle unemployed Americans have to face is job discrimination. Many employers explicitly discriminate against jobless Americans, warning them not to even apply.

Joining New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington, D.C., the New York City council recently passed a bill to ban this discrimination. But Mayor Michael Bloomberg just vetoed it. He had previously called the bill “misguided” and claimed that it would “hurt small businesses.”

Recall that New York City’s unemployment rate is 9.4 percent. The council is expected to try to override Bloomberg’s veto.

Erskine Bowles

Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson have released yet another austerity plan that lowers taxes on corporations while proposing Social Security and Medicare benefit cuts.

But in a surprising statistic released from Alan Grayson’s office, it appears that there’s one deficit-enlarging tax break that Bowles personally benefits from that he is refusing to touch.

According to the SEC, Bowles owns 20,000 restricted stock units in Facebook. Thanks to Facebook’s ability to claim tax deductions worth $16 billion — what the company raised in its recent IPO — it is able to collect a $500 million tax refund, which would zero out its 2012 taxes.

As a result of this tax loophole, the value of Erskine Bowlesai??i?? share of the company increased by $114,000.

Click hereAi??to pledge to hold any Democrat who agrees to a deal that cuts Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits accountable.

Call on New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn to bring a paid sick days bill to a vote.

New York City Council speaker Christine Quinn is considered a front-runner for that city’s mayoral race, but her bid has been dragged down by the factthat she refuses to allow a vote on a proposal that would give residents of the city guaranteed paid sick days.

One of her leading supporters — author Gloria Steinem — just announced that she will withdraw her support from Quinn unless she allows a vote on the sick days proposal. “Making life fairer for all women seems more important than breaking a barrier for one woman,” said Steinem about Quinn’s bid to be the first female mayor without helping guarantee that women in the city get paid sick days.

Join with PCCC to ask New York City Council Speaker Speaker Christine Quinn to hold a vote on a city-wide paid sick leave.

In Georgia, both progressive groups like Common Cause and conservative organizations like the Tea Party have joined hands to demand restrictions on the gifts that lobbyists can give to lawmakers.

Many in the legislature are considering a gift limit of $100 per gift, and others want to ban gifts outright. Polling shows that 72% of Georgians want to see gifts to lawmakers capped.

Under the watchful eyes of this new bipartisan reform movement, lobbyist gift spending has actually plummeted. While lobbyists spent aAi??sizableAi??sum on gifts in January 2013 — $240,000 — this is actually a 35% decline from January 2012.

This is evidence that an engaged public tackling the issue of corruption can make an impact even before it passes actual reform laws.

Click here to join our Take Back Democracy campaign to help stop the influence of money in our politics.

You should follow BoldProgressives on Twitter here.

Rep. Marc Veasey (D-TX)

As Congress gears up to craft immigration reform legislation, some LGBT advocates are demanding that it include equal rights for same-sex binational couples, who currently face a mountain of legal hurdles in the system.

At a Stonewall Democrats meeting on Tuesday, freshman congressman Marc Veasey (D-TX) demanded that this equality be in the legislation.

VEASEY: Comprehensive immigration reform to me means including same-sex families. Same-sex families that want to have their loved ones reuinted with them hear in the United States, that has to be covered, that has to be included. Any bill we pass does not go far enough if same-sex language is not included.

Watch it (relevant section begins at 4:21):

Prominent gay Americans have faced drastic circumstances due to the lack of equality for LGBT partners in U.S. immigration law. For example, prolific civil liberties writer Glenn Greenwald was forced to live in Brazil part time because he could not live alongside his partner in New York City, where he studied law.

Wisconsin was the site over an epic struggle in 2011 to defend public employees’ collective bargaining rights. Backed by Koch brothers cash, Republicans were successful in rolling back public employee rights. In doing so, Republicans claimed that they were just concerned with budget matters and did not want to target unions specifically.

But a year and a half later, Republicans are now advancing a bill that has nothing to do with Wisconsin’s budget but everything to do with crushing unions.

House Republicans have introduced a bill that would allow private businesses to cut back on hours unilaterally, without having to talk to the unions or negotiate with their workers. As the Chippewa Herald notes, this law would be “in contrast to almost all similar laws in other states.”

Republicans are fast-tracking the bill, and it may get a committee vote as soon as Thursday. “It’s one more step toward their goal of ending the right of Wisconsin citizens to have their voice heard in the workplace,” said Democratic state senatorAi??Julie Lassa in a statement.

Recall that Republican Governor Scott Walker told a billionaire donor that he is pursuing a “divide and conquer” strategy with respect to unions — going after public ones first to take on private ones later. His strategy seems to be in action here.