Here's today's Morning Edition. Full day in Washington today. The default clock's ticking one day louder.
Check back later for today's Underbuzzed and Outlook.
TODAY
- Pres. Obama holds a twitter town hall this afternoon.
- House debates defense-spending bill.
BUDGET / ECONOMY
- Have Democrats boxed in Speaker Boehner with their offer on entitlements?
- Boehner announces his refusal to compromise.
- Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) offers 50-50 split. Good luck with that.
- Pssst: Big business doesn't really care about the deficit. There's lots of spending they like.
- Pssst: House Republicans don't really want to cut spending. Just spending on YOU.
- Pssst: Democrats aren't really holding the line on Social Security. They've put benefit cuts on the table.
- House GOP seeks to cut highway/mass-transit funding by one third.
- Conservative think tank says our defense spending should be like the Soviet Union's...which bankrupted the Soviet Union.
- Rep. Bobby Schilling (R-IL) says stimulus should have spent more on infrastructure. Funny he didn't say so at the time.
- Even if lawmakers meet the new deadline for a debt-ceiling deal, it might not be soon enough to prevent a downgrade.
- One theory for why Obama doesn't want a short-term deal on the debt ceiling.
- Ezra Klein: GOP opposition to closing tax loopholes pulls the fig leaf from GOP tax orthodoxy.
- Klein sees Obama opening the door to a big cave on revenues.
- GOP debt rift between House and Senate comes down to politics.
- Opinion: Obama has joined the GOP in misleading the public on the deficit and debt ceiling.
JOBS
- Speaker Boehner admits that spending would be a plan to create jobs -- and rules it out.
- House GOP refuses to include relief for lost jobs in trade-deal talks.
BROKEN GOVERNMENT
- VIDEO: Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) says Reagan could never be elected now. Too liberal.
WALL ST. / BANKS
- Goldman Sachs ramps up its lobbying. Because more is better.
- Banks are fighting a new rule letting regulators claw back pay from execs of failed institutions.
CLASS WARFARE
- Most Americans don't get that spending not only gooses the economy, it helps us pay down the debt (because that's what happens when the economy recovers!)
- Dodd-Frank allowed shareholders to stage protest votes on executive pay.
- Sen. Leader Reid (D-NV) holds test vote on taxing the rich; GOP senator calls it "pathetic."
- Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-NY) claims gutting Wall St. rules is "compassionate." But for whom?
- Philadelphia will close 26 school cafeterias, many in poor areas.
- Thousands of school districts are trimming class times. Hurting those who need it most.
- Hospitals are slashing staff, while increasing executive pay.
- Closing one tax loophole would raise $4 billion a year -- from just 25 hedge-fund managers.
- Chart: US corporate taxes are among the lowest in the world.
- Flashback: Undocumented workers pay more in taxes than some massive corporations do.
HEALTH CARE
- Chart: The rising cost of health care is pushing up the cost of education, too.
- Remember the Tea Party's number-one priority? So where is a bill repealing health-care reform?
- Repeal-and-replace was always blowing smoke.
- Connecticut legally mandates paid sick days.
- Seventeen states have reduced payments to health-care providers who treat the poor.
BIG OIL
- Exxon's excuse for false claim about sealing pipeline: They forgot their homework.
- Are oil subsidies a bellwether for debt talks?
LATINOPHOBIA
- New report finds anti-immigrant laws shoot states in their feet.
ISLAMOPHOBIA
- Now Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is trying to purge Islam from prisons.
RIGHT-WING MEDIA
- UK to investigate Murdoch's crime-victim phone hacking.
NEW JERSEY
- Gov. Christie vetoes aid for the poor while boosting spending on schools in rich district.
WISCONSIN
- VIDEO: National money flows into the recall battle; Dems are up with a new ad.
2012
- VIDEO: RNC uses car-crash video as analogy for Obama economy.
- GOP runs into unexpected trouble in the battle for the Senate.
- Ohio law turns finding your voting place into a fun scavenger hunt!
- Is New Mexico's Latina governor a Republican vice-presidential possibility?
MITT ROMNEY
- Why is Romney's fundraising lagging behind his 2008 pace?
MICHELE BACHMANN
- Bachmann likes parenting foster kids. She just doesn't like funding them.
- Is Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) a Bachmann foreign-policy adviser?
TIM PAWLENTY
- Would be only president never to have lived outside his state.
- VIDEO: Democrats respond to Pawlenty's ad on the Minnesota shutdown.
RICK PERRY
- The NY Times writes up the Perry-Bush animosity.
THADDEUS McCOTTER
- Will Rep. McCotter's (R-MI) pro-union record come back to haunt him? Or get thrown overboard?
NEWT GINGRICH
- The fiscal conservative's campaign is a million bucks in debt.
(What I'm reading: Greg Sargent's Plum Line, Think Progress, Matt Yglesias, The Wonk Room, Talking Points Memo, TPMDC, Taegan Goddard's Political Wire, the Washington Monthly, the National Journal, Ezra Klein, Politico's Playbook and Huddle, Dave Weigel, Wonkette, Firedoglake, the NYT Caucus, Daily Kos, Crooks and Liars. What my iPod has me listening to: I'm an Adult Now by Pursuit of Happiness.)
Follow Senior Producer Jonathan Larsen (@jtlarsen) on Twitter