The President has a speech at this hour where he will call for the consolidation of several federal agencies to shrink the federal bureaucracy and save money, a return to the “age of austerity” Obama that has faded of late as the election nears and populism returns to the fore.

Ron Suskind’s new book is getting some attention for the gossipy tidbits it uncovers, like this one.

Yesterday was the 15th anniversary of the Clinton welfare reform package, which “ended welfare as we know it.” In a sense, we didn’t really know how that would turn out until a time of stress. Unfortunately, for the group of low-income Americans who need welfare, that stress has been part of their lives for almost a decade.

There is now a deal, and Speaker Boehner needs Democratic votes to pass it because of his unruly and recalcitrant TeaParty membership, members of the Progressive Caucus must stop the deal. By stopping the deal at the last minute, the House Progressive Caucus forces President Obama to use his constitutional authority to ignore an illegal law that questions America’s public debt: the debt ceiling.

Kill the deal. Fourteen-four or Bust!

Rewarding the Republicans for their hostage-taking — aside from being bad policy — is disastrous politics. By caving to a bunch of extremely unpopular ideologues, Obama looks weak and feckless, not like “the adult in the room.”

For weeks the White House has downplayed this as an option, but it is hard to believe Rep. Clyburn would make a public statement like this without the tacit approval of President Obama.

I spoke with Barney Frank today about the current debt ceiling debate. He said he would not vote for any bill that raised the debt ceiling which included cuts to Social Security or Medicare benefits, including a chained CPI, which is included in the Gang of 6 deal.

Plenty of smart people have weighed in on the Bank of America settlement with investors on $424 billion worth of mortgage backed securities. BofA will provide up to $14 billion in the settlement – $8.5 billion in cash, another $5.5 billion potentially in the next quarter – which they claim will cover all of the RMBS issued by Countrywide (they admit that Countrywide was the worst deal they ever made).

This was definitely bad policy, but it was President Clinton’s policy, not President Bush’s. The dollar actually depreciated moderately under President Bush. He certainly should have done more to push down its value, which would have corrected the imbalances built up in the Clinton years, but President Clinton has events seriously backward in this piece.

And as Sarah Posner reports today, the long knives are out for Newt among evangelicals. Marvin Olasky, publisher of the evangelical World magazine, writes a long article about Newt’s infidelities, accusing him of the ultimate heresy — colluding with the Clenis: