Author: Mike Lillis

The White House on Thursday took a giant leap toward eliminating new mountaintop coal mining projects in the Appalachian states, issuing strict new guidelines designed to protect headwater streams by curbing the practice of dumping waste in neighboring valleys.

Announcing the changes, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson said the guidelines are intended to make the standards governing new mountaintop projects “clear and consistent,” following a series of EPA decisions over the past year that stakeholders on all sides of the debate found contradictory.

Yet the practical effect of the new standards — which will require mining operations to control levels of toxins in nearby streams — will be to minimize, if not outright preclude, the dumping of mining waste in valleys adjacent to the projects. Because the coal industry maintains that most mountaintop projects wouldn’t be worth the additional cost of trucking the debris to more distant dumping sites, the guidelines — if properly enforced — could end most new mountaintop projects before they ever begin.

The move drew immediate criticism from the coal mining industry, which views the new environmental protections as a threat to profits and jobs. But it received high praise from one of the most powerful lawmakers in Appalachia, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), a one-time defender of mountaintop mining who more recently has turned a critical eye toward the practice.

At issue is the mining technique known as mountaintop removal, in which companies use dynamite and draglines to blast and scrape away Appalachian peaks in order to access the coal seams within. In the process, the trees, soil, rock and other debris resting atop the coal are often pushed into adjacent valleys, many of which hold tiny streams forming the headwaters of larger bodies of water below.

The technique has been attractive to coal companies, which save money by eliminating trucking needs (valleys are nearby) and labor costs (dynamite is cheap). But it’s also ravaged neighboring communities by poisoning wells and waterways, contaminating air, killing off wildlife and flooding nearby homes. The EPA estimates that nearly 2,000 miles of Appalachian streams have been buried already by mountaintop projects.

The new EPA guidelines are designed to gauge the health of nearby streams based on their levels of conductivity, which is a good indicator of water’s purity. The runoff from Appalachian mines tends to contain toxins like magnesium, sulfate, bicarbonate, and potassium — all ions that raise conductivity levels. The higher the conductivity, the tougher it is for aquatic life to survive.

Under the new EPA guidelines, mining projects expected to raise conductivity levels of nearby streams above 500 micro-siemens per centimeter — five times the normal level — will be rejected. That level has been shown to harm aquatic life, Jackson said, citing “considerable peer reviewed data.”

Jackson maintained that the intent of the guidelines is not to create a blanket ban on all new mountaintop removal projects. “This is not about ending coal mining,” she told reporters on a conference call Thursday. “This is about ending coal mining pollution.”

Still, the EPA chief also said that there are “no or very few valley fills that will meet standards like this.”

Indeed, EPA estimates that the Spruce No. 1 Mine near Charleston — at 2,300 acres, the largest mountaintop project ever proposed in West Virginia — would send conductivity levels of nearby streams as high as 2,400 micro-siemens per centimeter. For that reason, the agency last week proposed to veto the project.

No one has to explain to the coal industry that the new guidelines are are threat to the lucrative mountaintopping business. The National Mining Association, a trade group, issued a statement Thursday blasting the EPA’s new rules for what it called a failure “to give greater thought to the impact on jobs, affordable electricity and U.S. steel production.”

“EPA continues to point to ’new science’ that has been found to be both flawed and limited in its findings,” the NMA wrote.

On the other side of the debate have been environmental and community groups, which have fought a decades-long battle against mountaintop removal. In their eyes, the EPA’s new guidelines — which effectively attach hard numerical standards to environmental protections more vaguely outlined in the Clean Water Act — were a godsend after years watching the agency look away as mine after mine was approved.

The Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, a West Virginia-based advocacy group, applauded the EPA for “finally listening to scientists.” The Rainforest Action Network cheered the agency for “finally flexing its full authority under the Clean Water Act.” And Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said the policy represents nothing short of “the most significant administrative action ever taken to address mountaintop removal coal mining.”

The new standards will apply to all mountaintop operations proposed in the future, as well as the nearly 80 pending mountaintop permits the EPA is currently reviewing. The guidelines are specific to the Appalachian states only. “You can’t take this data and apply it outside the region,” Jackson said. But she broached the possibility that the standards could also apply to non-mining projects — things like roads — within the Appalachian states.

The guidelines take effect immediately, although the EPA is accepting public comments and could alter the standards based on that input.

For the Obama administration, it’s been a long road to today’s announcement. On the campaign trail, Obama vowed to end the practice of mountaintop mining in favor of less destructive methods. But the coal industry is a powerful force — and a strong economic engine — in Appalachia. And it has the ear of some of the more influential figures on Capitol Hill, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee. Faced with those competing pressures the EPA last year took steps to rein in mountaintop removal, but also issued more than 40 surface mining permits, threatening dozens of Appalachian streams.

At least one powerful Appalachian lawmaker was happy about the EPA’s move to define the permitting standards. The 92-year-old Byrd — who spent a lifetime defending the coal industry that practically defines West Virginia’s economy — said Thursday that he was “pleased” that the EPA took “very seriously” his concerns about the need for clear standards to govern the permitting process.

“Today’s announcement,” Byrd said, “will hopefully now have everyone reading off the same page.”

From the department of irony comes this Roll Call story indicating that Senate Republicans — whose objections to a one-month extension of the filing deadline for unemployment benefits will affect hundreds of thousands of jobless folks next week — are hoping to blame Democrats for their inability to pass the extension bill.

A GOP leadership aide said that while “unemployment and welfare have traditionally been Democratic issues,” Republicans believe the inability of Democrats to pass an extension last week can play to their favor.

To understand how requires a closer look at what happened on the Senate floor last week. The House last month passed a bill extending the UI filing deadline (not to be confused with the creation of additional UI benefits) through April. The Senate was hoping to pass the same measure unanimously, but Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) objected, insisting that the $9.2 billion cost be offset with unspent stimulus funds.

Coburn’s objection left Democratic leaders scrambling in search of a way to push the deadline in the short window they had left before the spring recess. With GOP leaders, they agreed on a one-week UI extension, meaning the deadline would arrive on the same day that Congress is scheduled to return to Washington from their two-week break. But House Democrats rejected that strategy, leaving Senate leaders with no choice but to adjourn without addressing the issue. (A cloture vote on the extension is scheduled for April 12).

So it’s the House Democrats’ rejection of the one-week extension — not Coburn’s rejection of the one-week extension — that Republicans hope to focus on during the recess.

McConnell’s office has provided GOP lawmakers with talking points emphasizing the fact that House Democrats killed a one-week, fully paid-for extension of the unemployment program, and that almost the entire Democratic Conference voted to adjourn for the spring recess while Senate Republicans all voted to stay in session. Although the GOP may not make a major push, lawmakers over the next several days are expected to make their case in local and regional media markets. “Locally … where these stories make the most difference, Senators are armed with the facts,” the GOP leadership aide said.

As a number of Democrats are eying the political advantages of President Obama’s newly announced offshore oil drilling strategy, Sen. Ben Cardin has another take.

“Expanding offshore oil sites when you already have tens of millions of acres currently available to the oil industry for exploration that they’re not using, to me, is something that really will not help a comprehensive energy policy for this country,” the Maryland Democrat said in an interview with PBS Wednesday. “We’re talking about a minuscule amount of oil, and the risks here are great.”

Cardin, of course, has good reason to be wary of any plan that would allow new drilling in the mid-Atlantic. Maryland’s economy hinges largely on the health of both the Atlantic and the Chesapeake Bay, where agricultural run-off already poses an enormous threat to the crab and fishing industries.

We’re talking about the fishing industry. We’re talking about watermen. We’re talking about tourism. We’re talking about property owners. It could have a major impact on the economy of the Mid-Atlantic.

The comments put Cardin sharply at odds with a number of other Atlantic-coast lawmakers, who see new drilling as a boon to the local economy. Just to Cardin’s south, Virginia Sens. Mark Warner (D) and Jim Webb (D) both applauded Obama’s proposed expansion this week. Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell (R) told reporters yesterday that the White House announcement melds with “our plan to truly make Virginia the energy capital of the East Coast.” And Virginia Beach Mayor Will Sessoms said a drilling expansion will help tourism by keeping gas prices low.

“These things are miles offshore,” Sessoms told The Washington Post, referring to the oil rigs that could pop up off of Virginia’s coast. “They won’t be seen.”

But neither those arguments nor the claims that more underwater drilling will lead the country to greater energy independence has convinced Cardin that an expansion is worth the environmental risks that could ruin Maryland’s economy.

“There are places,” he told PBS, “that are too special to risk offshore drilling.”

It’s been trumpeted as one of the key elements in the Democrats’ plan to expand access to health care for tens of millions of vulnerable Americans.

Yet a provision of the newly passed health reform bill that raises doctors’ payments under Medicaid is both temporary and limited in the scope of medical services it covers. The restrictions have left a number of health care advocates and doctors’ groups concerned about patients’ long-term access to care under the reform legislation.

The concerns are hardly trivial. The Democrats’ health reforms rely heavily on the successes of Medicaid, which will be expanded to include all non-seniors earning up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level (about $24,350 for a family of three). The bill is estimated to cover 32 million uninsured Americans over the next decade, and roughly half of those folks would fall into the Medicaid program.

Yet Medicaid rates are so low that many doctors refuse to see patients insured by the program. Indeed, doctors treating Medicaid patients in 2008 were paid just 72 percent of what Medicare paid for the same services, according to analysts at the Urban Institute, a Washington-based policy shop. As a result, only about 40 percent of physicians accept all new Medicaid patients, versus 58 percent for Medicare beneficiaries, according to a 2009 study from the Center for Studying Health System Change, which randomly surveyed more than 4,700 physicians.

Recognizing that problem, House Democrats passed legislation in December hiking certain payments under Medicaid to at least the level paid by Medicare, the federal program for seniors and the disabled. The bill initially passed by the House of Representatives allocated $57 billion to those rate increases over 10 years — a cost that Democrats more recently rejected as too high.

Instead, the health reconciliation bill signed by President Obama this week hikes Medicaid rates only for the years 2013 and 2014. The federal government would pay the entire tab of the increase, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will cost $8.3 billion. From 2015 onward, it would fall to states to pick up the difference in cost — a tough sell in a frail economy, when state budgets are already strapped.

There are other concerns. The rate hikes, for example, apply only to some primary care and pediatric services. Emergency room and other critical care services wouldn’t be subject to the increase. Nor would counseling, disability examinations, services delivered over the phone or a long list of other procedures.

Dawn Horner, a health policy expert at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families, said the Democrats’ reform bill goes a long way to improve access to care for Medicaid patients, “but it would be better if the Medicaid increases were across the board.”

That’s not the only problem. Because the bill ties the Medicaid pay hikes to the senior-centered Medicare program, procedures not covered by Medicare won’t be included. That stipulation has led some children’s care providers to worry that youngsters on Medicaid won’t have access to services specific to their age group. The flushing of kids’ ears, for example — a procedure common in pediatricians’ offices — wouldn’t qualify for the enhanced rate.

Providing some comfort to health care advocates, CBO has projected that some federal funding will go toward the Medicaid pay hike for a few years after 2014 — indicating that some states would likely phase out the higher rates instead of dropping them immediately, even if they have to cover a percentage of the costs themselves. By 2019, however, CBO projects that, without additional federal help, all states will have abandoned the increased payments, putting Medicaid patients in the same uncertain spot they were in prior to the reforms.

The concerns among some powerful stakeholders in the health care arena — including governors, doctors and patient groups — mean that there will be plenty of pressure on Congress to prevent the Medicaid pay increases from evaporating in 2015.

“It will be a fight … to extend it,” William Vaughan, a health policy consultant for Consumers Union, a consumer advocacy group, wrote in an email. “And that’s a fight worth making!”

In the meantime, though, patient advocates and doctors’ groups are celebrating the increase they got.

Just out from the office of House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) is this statement applauding President Obama’s move to expand offshore oil drilling:

Today’s announcement will help create jobs and strengthen our national security as we move away from foreign sources of oil.  Andrews Air Force Base was a fitting setting for today’s remarks, because enhancing our energy independence is critical to our national security.  One of the most significant things we can do to bolster our security is to free ourselves from relying on other nations for oil, by increasing domestic production, reducing consumption, and developing alternatives.  The plan put forward today will help us determine what resources are available to us, and how to appropriately tap into those resources, keeping in mind the need to protect our environment. The Obama Administration’s plan is another key step as we move toward energy independence.

That’s a more forceful endorsement than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) gave this afternoon, though even she appears to be supportive of the drilling expansion — if only to put Republicans in the uncomfortable position of opposing a practice they’d supported so adamantly in 2008.

In the summer of 2008, with gas prices through the roof and Republicans calling for an expansion of offshore oil drilling, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), a vocal proponent of renewable energies, called the drilling strategy “a cruel hoax on the American people.”

What a difference a year and a half can make.

With President Obama today proposing to loosen the ban on offshore drilling, Pelosi just issued a statement that largely eludes the topic altogether. She applauds, for example, tomorrow’s scheduled announcement to finalize vehicle fuel-efficiency standards. And she celebrates (without specifics) the Democrats’ efforts “to lower our nation’s dependence on foreign oil.” Only afterward does she get into the drilling controversy. It’s not quite the same tone she used with the Republicans:

The Obama Administration’s initiative regarding drilling on public lands must ensure that any offshore and onshore plan proceeds in an environmentally and fiscally responsible manner. Taxpayers who own these resources have been historically shortchanged from the huge profits received from drilling on public lands, and must receive a fair return in the future.

The Republican Study Committee just blasted out a release attacking the Democrats’ health care reforms for forcing Boeing, among other large corporations, to pay a $150 million charge based on the bill’s elimination of a corporate tax deduction for employees’ prescription drugs.

“ObamaCare will clip the wings of the American Dream(liner),” the Republicans say, citing estimates that the charge will reduce Boeing’s earnings by 20 cents a share in the first quarter of this year.

But before you shed tears for Boeing, consider some context. Boeing is the second largest government contractor in the country, with almost $11 billion in federal contracts in 2008 alone. It’s well on its way to winning a $40 billion deal to build an Air Force tanker. And Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), a long-time supporter of the Seattle-based company, was recently named head of the defense appropriations committee, which controls the purse strings of the Pentagon contracts that have treated Boeing so well.

As a result, the company isn’t exactly suffering. Indeed, its stock went from $35.58 a year ago to $73.53 yesterday — a jump of nearly $38, or 107 percent. Suddenly that 20-cent loss to help fund health reform doesn’t seem so disastrous, particularly considering the extent to which taxpayers have bolstered the company’s earnings over the years.

It’s a nuance that seems to be lost on the RSC.

Anyone surprised by the White House announcement to lift the ban on some offshore oil drilling might be interested in this story, from August 2008:

Sen. Barack Obama today softened his opposition to new offshore drilling, saying in a speech at Michigan State University that he is “willing to consider” allowing additional drilling in a limited number of offshore areas if it helps Congress pass energy legislation.

And that, it seems, is the political calculus behind today’s announcement to expand the spots where offshore drilling will be allowed. But here’s a note to the White House: It’s not working.

Even as environmentalists are screaming bloody murder, GOP leaders are already pouncing on the plan — which would open large expanses of the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico and the waters north of Alaska to oil drilling — as too limited in scope. It’s the same type criticism we heard on health care reform (even after Democrats dropped the public option). It’s the same type of criticism we’re hearing on financial reform (even though Democrats have scrapped the stand-alone consumer protection agency). And now we’re hearing it in the energy debate — as if the art of compromise doesn’t involve meeting the other side somewhere in the middle.

If this doesn’t prove the claims that the Republicans have been politically motivated to oppose everything the Democrats propose, nothing will. As an experiment, President Obama should endorse John Boehner for re-election in November. The House minority leader would probably vote for his challenger.

Via The Associated Press, Rep. John Spratt (D-S.C.), the chairman of the House Budget Committee who just this week announced his intention to run for a 15th term, says that he’s in the early stages of Parkinson’s disease. The symptoms, he told the AP, are “really more of a nuisance than anything else, at least at this point.”

The news comes a week after Spratt was named a member of the White House deficit reduction commission.

During her unsuccessful campaign to replace Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), four-term Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) said repeatedly that she would resign from her post in the nation’s capitol regardless of the outcome of that race.

But as Dave Weigel pointed out earlier this morning, she’s apparently changed her mind.

Today, Hutchison — flanked by GOP leaders Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and John Cornyn — announced that she’ll stay in Washington through the remainder of her term, which ends in 2013.

“For family reasons, I had planned to begin making a transition home to Texas this spring,” Hutchison said in a statement. “But it is clear to me that the stakes in our nation’s capitol have never been higher. President Obama’s victory on health care legislation has emboldened those who want an even bigger and more intrusive federal government.”

And they wonder why there’s public distrust of campaign trail promises…

President Obama this morning finalized (sort of) the Democrats’ sweeping health care reforms, signing into law the reconciliation bill that refines the larger reforms he enacted last week. Aside from tweaking the Senate’s version of the health care bill, the reconciliation measure also includes a huge overhaul of the nation’s student lending industry, eliminating $61 billion in federal subsidies to private companies.

“For a long time, our student loan system has worked for banks and financial institutions,” Obama said. “Today, we’re finally making our student loan system work for students and all of our families.”

Sallie Mae, the nation’s largest student lender, felt differently.

The New York Times today points out the chief flaw in the sweeping health reform bills passed by Congress last week: Health care spending might be unsustainable, it might be threatening to bankrupt the entire country, but there’s very little in the legislation that tackles the public’s severe overuse of medical services, estimated to constitute as much as a third of all health care costs.

[The legislation] is important, medical experts say, because it opens the door to medical care for millions of people who were shut out because they could not afford insurance or because they had pre-existing conditions or had reached lifetime caps on insurance payments. But controlling overuse is not its focus.

The reason is clear. While the reforms include additional funding for comparative effectiveness studies — research that tests different treatments for the same ailment to discover which work best on which patients — charges of rationing prevented lawmakers from stipulating that the more ineffective treatments be weeded out.

The argument of those rationing critics goes something like this: Even if a pill or test or procedure is found to be ineffective in 99 cases out of 100, it should remain available for that 1 percent of patients that respond to it. And that means that insurers (both public and private) will still have to cover it in all cases, even when there’s no health benefit at all.

“The minute you attack overutilization you will be called a Nazi before the day is out,” Uwe E. Reinhardt, a health economist at Princeton University, told the Times.

As proof of that, look no further than the outcry — and quick congressional intervention — that accompanied last fall’s scaled-back mammogram recommendations by an independent panel of preventive care experts.

The issue has split some of the most powerful members of the medical-industrial complex, with insurers in support of stronger links between effectiveness and coverage (i.e., they don’t want to be obligated to cover treatments with little medical value) and the pharmaceutical and medical device industries very much opposed (because they don’t want any restrictions on coverage of their products, even the ineffective ones.)

It’s a thorny issue, for sure. If you or a loved one is in that anomalous 1 percent of patients that responds to a drug, you don’t want anyone telling you it’s unavailable. Yet health care spending was $2.5 trillion last year, representing roughly 17.3 percent of the nation’s economy. And that figure is projected to jump to $4.5 trillion in just 10 years, representing 19.3 percent of projected GDP in 2019.

Robert D. Truog, a medical ethics professor at Harvard Medical School, told the Times that something has to give. “The point is that as long as a health care system has anything less than an infinite budget, there is a need to decide which types of health care will be funded and which will not.”

Congress, though, has so far declined to do so.

With unemployment still hovering near double digits, the Christian Science Monitor this week highlights a forgotten angle in the government’s efforts to help laid-off folks weather the storm: Getting part-time work could leave them in worse shape than if they’d remained jobless.

“Many people who have been out of work for a year are picking up work as temps or part-timers,” the Monitor writes, “unaware that state agencies will recalculate their unemployment benefits after a year – and use their most recent work history and pay level to do it.”

“What is going on for these workers is that because their most recent wages are much lower than the wages they earned in their prior fulltime job, they are facing substantial cuts in their weekly unemployment benefits,” says George Wentworth, a consultant at the National Employment Law Project (NELP) in New York.

The Monitor spotlights the case of a Massachusetts worker who was receiving $540 in federal help each month, only to see that figure drop to $103. The reason? She took a temporary job that slipped her from federal to state benefits, causing the state to recalculate her benefits based on the last job she had.

Not that Congress isn’t aware of the issue. A Senate bill passed earlier in the month would extend the filing deadline for emergency federal UI benefits through Dec. 31, but would also alter the underlying law so as not to penalize workers who take up part-time jobs in their search for longer-term employment. That provision, though, is not contained in a separate House-passed bill, which the Senate is expected to take up April 12.

Black homeowners are roughly 50 percent less likely than whites to receive help under the largest of the administration’s anti-foreclosure programs, according to a new survey of qualified families.

The findings have raised questions on Capitol Hill about the fairness of the program, led housing advocates to reiterate calls for a more aggressive foreclosure prevention initiative, and put the White House on the defensive just as it steps up its multi-pronged strategy to stabilize the troubled housing market.

Launched by the Obama administration 13 months ago, the $75 billion Home Affordable Modification Program provides financial incentives to mortgage lenders and servicers who agree to reduce monthly payments for struggling homeowners. Candidates for the program must live in the home in question, and their mortgage payments must exceed 31 percent of the family’s income. The program, designed to reach between 3 million and 4 million homeowners by 2012, has led to roughly 116,000 permanent modifications thus far.

Yet just 24 percent of black respondents eligible for mortgage modifications under the HAMP have received one, according to a survey conducted over the last two months by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, an advocacy group. By contrast, roughly 36 percent of HAMP-eligible whites benefited from a modification under the program. The disparity surrounding modifications, NCRC President John Taylor said last week, should compel the White House to take a closer look at the participating banks to ensure that they’re complying with the nation’s fairness-in-lending laws.

“Not only is the program really just not making the dent in the [foreclosure] problem,” Taylor told lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee on Thursday, “it’s not really being administered in a way that’s fair across the board.”

It didn’t take long for committee members to take notice, particularly those in the Congressional Black Caucus. At the Thursday hearing, Reps. Danny Davis (D-Ill.) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) were quick to press White House officials about their efforts to close the gap. Rep. Diane Watson (D-Calif.) blasted the subprime lenders who targeted minority communities for using tactics “bordering on the illegal.” And Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.) accused the mortgage lending industry of “racial insensitivity.” Clay wondered out loud what the administration is doing to repair what he called the “wanton, onward aggression that was displayed towards a class of people.”

“It’s going to take some aggressive actions on the part of the Treasury to really crack down on these abuses and eliminate [them] from the marketplace,” Clay said.

Government officials have long acknowledged that minorities were targeted by subprime lenders as the housing bubble inflated over the last decade. And that trend shines through in the NCRC survey. Indeed, although black respondents to the survey claimed higher income levels than their white counterparts, 47 percent of them said that problematic loan terms were a factor in their difficulties making monthly payments, versus 26 percent for white respondents.

It’s no coincidence, then, that those same borrowers are having the toughest time getting mortgage modifications under the HAMP, experts say.

“They started out with disproportionately bad loans,” Gene Dodaro, who heads the Government Accountability Office, told lawmakers Thursday. “They’re starting with just a more difficult problem in terms of having to modify those loans.”

Herbert Allison, Jr., the Treasury official charged with monitoring the HAMP, echoed that message. Acknowledging the “widespread predatory lending practices” in recent years, Allison vowed to “take action” if officials “find any type of discrimination” among lenders and servicers participating in the program. The administration, he said, is compiling race- and gender-specific data surrounding the HAMP, to be published “as soon as we have enough statistically valid data.” The target date for that release, he added, is June.

“If it’s found that … people did not get a modification who deserved one under our rules, we go back and rectify that,” Allison said.

But there’s another reason that blacks are likely benefiting less than others from the HAMP: They’re losing their jobs at a faster clip. While the nation’s unemployment rate was 9.7 percent in February, that figure jumps to 15.8 percent for black workers, according to the Labor Department. And no amount of mortgage reduction will help those without an income.

“The HAMP program does not really help you if you’ve lost your job,” Mark Calabria, a financial expert at the conservative Cato Institute, testified last week. “[There is] absolutely no way we can address the foreclosure situation without addressing the jobs situation.”

There’s good indication that the administration is catching on. Indeed, the White House last week launched a program that provides financial incentives for banks to write down principal balances, rather than reducing payments by simply altering interest rates. More important for the unemployed, the program also puts a three- to six-month moratorium on foreclosures for homeowners who have been laid off.

On Monday, the administration announced $600 million in emergency housing aid for high-unemployment states. That move follows the arrival of a similar program that allocates $1.5 billion to states where home values dropped more than 20 percent amid the recession.

Housing advocates have applauded those changes every step of the way. Many, however, contend that no program relying on the voluntary compliance of the banks — which can often profit more from a foreclosure than a modification — will ever be as successful as a program that forces the lenders to participate.

“We now know it’s really not working, and the fundamental reason it’s not working is because it is voluntary,” Taylor, of the NCRC, said of the HAMP. “It’s not that the program design is bad. It’s that participation is bad.”

It’s worth noting: Despite the new EPA scrutiny (and potential repeal) of the Bush-era permit approving the largest mountaintop coal mine in West Virginia’s history, a part of that project will continue its operations during the public comment and review process.

The Spruce No. 1 Mine — a 2,300-acre behemoth in southern West Virginia — was approved by the Army Corps of Engineers in 2007. But environmentalists quickly filed suit to block the project, which would fill six Appalachian valleys with 110 cubic yards of mining waste, burying seven miles of headwater streams in the process.

Under an agreement with the environmentalist plaintiffs, mining in one section of Spruce No. 1 was allowed to proceed despite the suit. That section — in the Seng Camp Creek drainage area — involves filling one valley.

EPA’s decision today doesn’t affect that agreement or block current mining around Seng Camp Creek, an agency spokesperson said today.

EPA will publish its proposed restrictions in the Federal Register April 2. The public will then have 60 days to comment on the changes.

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich) goes on the attack today against the anti-abortion folks who’ve accused him of folding on abortion restrictions in the Democrats’ health reform bills. From a Washington Post op-ed:

The pro-life groups rallied behind me — many without my knowledge or consent — not necessarily because they shared my goals of ensuring protections for life and passing health-care reform but because they viewed me as their best chance to kill health-care legislation.

Stupak also claims that House Democrats would have had the votes to pass the bill even if he and other anti-abortion Democrats had voted against it — a claim that might come as news to House Democratic leaders, who were under the impression that getting the Stupak coalition on board was the only way to pass the bill.

Once it was clear that the House leadership would eventually obtain the 216 votes necessary to pass health-care reform, I was left with a choice: vote against the bill and watch it become law with no further protections for life or reach an agreement that prevents federal funding for abortions.

The agreement he’s referring to, of course, resulted in the executive order issued by President Obama reiterating the federal ban on abortion funding — a move that critics have criticized as meaningless. Stupak defends it:

No, an executive order is not as strong as the statutory language we fought for at the start. We received, however, an “ironclad” commitment from the president that no taxpayer dollars will be used to pay for abortions.

There. He’s said his peace, and the bill is law. Now let’s all please move on.

In a show that the Obama administration is serious about putting the teeth back into the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agency today jump-started a process that could kill one of the largest mountaintop coal mining operations ever allowed in Appalachia. The decision — which is already being attacked by powerful coal-country Democrats — marks the first time in the EPA’s history that it has invoked its CWA authority to question the legitimacy of a permitted project.

Mountaintop removal refers to the process of blowing the tops off of mountains to uncover the seams of coal inside. The soil, rock, trees and other debris are then pushed into adjacent valleys, often burying tiny streams representing the headwaters of larger rivers below.

West Virginia’s Spruce No. 1 Mine, approved under the Bush administration, would devour 2,278 acres of wooded mountains in southern Logan County. The operation would fill six Appalachian valleys with 110 million cubic yards of debris, burying more than seven miles of headwater streams over the next 15 years.

Most of the project has been stalled in recent years by a series of lawsuits filed by community activists. But the EPA under the Obama administration has also taken a great interest in the project. Today they took that interest a step further, issuing a “proposed determination” that could lead to restrictions on the extent of the mining — or a veto of the permit altogether.

Among the EPA’s concerns surrounding Spruce No. 1, officials said the mine “will cause adverse impacts to drinking water, native aquatic and water-dependent communities in the Spruce Fork watershed.” Runoff from the project is likely to include selenium and other pollutants, which will “adversely affect the naturally occurring aquatic communities.” All told, the mine will result in “the cumulative loss of water quality, aquatic systems, and forest resources.”

That the EPA has the authority to stop such a project is not in question. The Clean Water Act empowers the agency to restrict or prevent dumping when the debris “will have an unacceptable adverse effect on municipal water supplies, shellfish beds and fishery areas (including spawning and breeding areas), wildlife, or recreational areas.” But laws are only as good as their enforcement, and EPA officials under the Bush administration spent eight years looking the other way as permit after permit was approved for mountaintop removal mines.

The reason is clear. The coal industry is a juggernaut of influence on Capitol Hill. And its defenders were quick on Friday to blast the EPA’s intervention as a threat to jobs in one of the most destitute nooks of the country. The National Mining Association, for example, argued that the EPA’s decision “adds further uncertainty for jobs and economic security throughout Appalachia.”

Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.V.), the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee who represents Logan County, agreed, calling the EPA’s move “an unprecedented, unjustified and undeserved decision.”

“The owners of the Spruce Mine worked in good faith over the course of many years with State and Federal permitting agencies, including the EPA, and the permit was issued after the conclusion of a full environmental impact statement,” Rahall said. “To come back now and pull the rug out from under this mining operation is unconscionable.”

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) weighed in as well, calling it “wrong and unfair for the EPA to change the rules for a permit that is already active.”

He’s right about one thing; the move is unprecedented. Under the Clean Water Act, the Army Corps of Engineers makes most permit decisions, but the EPA can step in to delay pending permits — or veto existing ones — if the agency has reason to believe the disposal sites will harm water supplies or ecosystems. EPA has used its CWA veto authority just 12 times since 1972, the agency claims, and never before has it done so for a project that was already permitted.

EPA officials defended their decision Friday, arguing that the agency is simply fulfilling its obligations under the CWA. “We must prevent the significant and irreversible damage that comes from mining pollution — and the damage from this project would be irreversible,” Shawn Garvin , EPA regional administrator for the Mid-Atlantic, said in a statement. “EPA has a duty under the law to protect water quality and safeguard the people who rely on these waters for drinking, fishing and swimming.”

Environmentalists were quick to throw their support behind the move as well. Ed Hopkins, director of environmental quality at the Sierra Club, said the news is indication that evidence-based decision-making is returning to the EPA after eight years in the wilderness under the Bush administration. “The best available science tells us that proposed mines like the massive Spruce Mine would pollute waterways, destroy mountains and devastate communities,” Hopkins said in a statement.

The EPA’s proposed determination will be published in the Federal Register on April 2, with a 60-day public comment period to follow.

“We hope that the agency follows through on this recommendation,” Hopkins said.

Moments ago, the Senate adjourned for a two-week-long spring recess. The last act of business was to schedule a cloture vote on a House-passed measure to extend COBRA and unemployment benefits through April 30. The vote is slated for Monday, April 12 at 5:30 p.m.

Under current law, the deadline to file for additional unemployment insurance benefits arrives April 5. Without congressional action, an estimated 1 million jobless folks would lose their UI benefits in April.

The office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said they would extend the benefits retroactively.

How real is the taint of incumbency this year? The New York Times points out today that even Sen. Robert Bennett (R-Utah), among the most conservative lawmakers in the upper chamber, won’t have an easy ride on his bid for reelection in November. The reason?

The dissatisfaction with Washington sweeping through politics is not only threatening the Democratic majority in Congress, it is also roiling Republican primaries. The Tea Party movement and advocacy groups on the right are demanding that candidates hew strictly to their ideological standards, and are moving aggressively to cast out those they deem to have strayed, even if only by participating in the compromises of legislating.

Bennett — whose conservative credentials include efforts to scale back Social Security benefits, weed out illegals aliens in the census and halt gay marriage in Washington – is third in recent polls behind “Anybody-but-Bennett and Undecided,” the Times notes, citing Bennett’s internal polls. “His fate is being watched,” the Times adds, “not only by grass-roots conservatives testing their ability to shape the party, but also by many elected Republicans in Washington who are wondering, If Bob Bennett is not conservative enough, who is?”

This trend, of course, isn’t exactly good news for the Democratic majority. Fueled by an underemployment rate approaching 20 percent, the wave of voter dissatisfaction has crested on the message that the federal government — with its Wall Street bailout, its stimulus bill, its health care reforms, etc. — is spending too much without offsetting the costs. So Republican incumbents in a number of districts are finding themselves more threatened by primary opponents than Democratic challengers, as Bennett’s case exemplifies.

It’s worth noting that many of the heroes of these small-government, anti-spending advocates, including Ronald Reagan, also ran up the largest debts.

Behind Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), the Republicans this morning have continued to block a $9.2 billion proposal to extend COBRA health benefits, delay a 21 percent cut in Medicare doctor payments, and extend the filing deadline for unemployment benefits (not to be confused with the creation of additional UI benefits).

Because Coburn has prevented efforts to adopt the measure by unanimous consent, Democratic leaders last night filed for cloture on the bill — setting in motion the series of votes that would allow Senate lawmakers to pass the bill despite Coburn’s objections. Trouble is, it’s Friday before a two-week congressional vacation, and a good many lawmakers have already left town. Indeed, the office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said this morning that just 11 Republicans are available to vote.

The flight of living, breathing senators means that the cloture votes likely won’t happen before Congress returns to Washington 18 days from now, the Reid spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, COBRA benefits expire April 1; a 21-percent cut in Medicare doctor payments is scheduled to take effect that same day; and the filing deadline for UI benefits arrives April 5.

Senate lawmakers will tweak the bill to make the extensions retroactive, Reid’s office said.