Let’s review the bill together! The legislation is an amalgam of two different efforts. A bill co-sponsored by Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) would give unions and industries greater ability to file claims against illegal Chinese trade practices on a case-by-case basis, and would allow the Commerce Department to factor in currency manipulation into any tariffs the US puts up as a result. This would increase duties against Chinese products, which are being effectively subsidized by currency manipulation. The Congressional Budget Office estimated last year that such a measure would collect $125 million in new tariff revenues, but the main impact would be to put political pressure on China to revalue its currency.

The House failed to pass a stopgap continuing resolution to fund the government today, as Democrats mostly held together to reject the bill, which included a cut to a clean vehicles loan guarantee program to offset disaster relief funding.

The reason that the minority Democrats had leverage at all was because House conservatives refused to vote for the stopgap bill, which funds the government for two months in Fiscal Year 2012 at the level of spending agreed to in the debt limit deal. Those 48 conservatives wanted to break the deal and cut spending to a lower level than the agreed-upon amount. And John Boehner couldn’t whip them to his side.

The biggest problem with the White House’s definitional strategy on the American Jobs Act was that Democrats didn’t really give it the full-throated support it needed to draw that contrast. By the end of last week, the White House was circling the wagons on that, and Democratic leaders stepped out to say that the jobs plan would have the support of the caucus. But those initial grumblings really hurt the unified message.

Are we on the way toward the same problem with the deficit reduction plan delivered today, similarly designed to draw contrast between taxes on millionaires or cuts to vital programs? So far, this looks a bit better.

The fact that Schumer took this to the floor means that he obviously sees political opportunity here, but also that this is not a fanciful notion. We really could have another government shutdown threat on our hands.

The infrastructure bank will be just another tax haven for the rich. They don’t pay taxes, and you pay them interest on the money they should be paying in taxes. Win-Win, except for you.

Perhaps there’s a limit to how many caves can occur in a week, because Democrats are actually taking a stand on the FAA authorization mess. The backstory here is that House Republicans basically left town without extending the FAA, which has been in partial shutdown since last week. As a result, 4,000 FAA personnel are on furlough, construction contracts are on halt (putting another 70,000 temporarily out of work), airport inspectors are flying around on their own dime without pay, and $200 million a week in taxes are going away, into the hands of the airlines, who are pocketing the money. All because Republicans don’t want Delta Airlines workers to be able to unionize, basically.

There were no guests to represent the victims of this deal, and there will be tens of millions of them. CNN invited no one who could explain or argue what a terrible deal this would be for the nation. The nation’s economy, the elderly, the poor and the unrepresented are about to take a serious drubbing, but thank the gods both Democrats and Republicans, Congress and the President will willingly administer the beatings and continue them until morale improves.

I find this almost unbelievable, and I expect a walkback anytime now, but Grover Norquist told the Washington Post editorial board today that letting the Bush tax cuts expire would not constitute a tax increase for the purposes of his anti-tax pledge.

Democratic leaders like Chuck Schumer complain that the Tea-GOP leaders are deliberately trying to tank the economy to improve their electoral prospects. True enough, but the Democrats are helping them by embracing the same anti-growth, anti-employment theories pushed by the Tea-GOP.

Speaking of people saying different things at different venues, here’s Chuck Schumer yesterday at the Economic Policy Institute, demanding that Congress work to create jobs