A couple weeks ago, we saw the enormous lobby culture massing around swipe fees, the relatively obscure issue that determines where billions of dollars go between banks and retailers. The important thing to start with is that this was already determined through a public process. Last year, Congress held a vote, Dick Durbin got over 60 of his colleagues to support him, the measure survived reconciliation, passed into law, and the Federal Reserve began to implement the rule. The system, therefore, worked. What banks are doing is trying to roll back the clock on the reform. They were paying attention to other matters in FinReg and now they have circled back to this. Because they have money and influence, they think they can just nullify a year’s worth of policymaking.

I’m not sure there’s anyone who believes that the Obama Administration will suddenly reject a budget bill that came out of a bipartisan process. The Administration has encouraged the Gang of Six. They’ve sat in on negotiations. They’ve put their credibility on the line, by saying that Democrats and Republicans have to come together on a balanced approach. Now, if the bipartisan negotiations produce an unbalanced result, will they simply dismissed it? I don’t see that happening at all.

Every liberal that was momentarily cheered up by Obama’s deficit speech should have known better, known that by ceding so much rhetorical and policy ground to conservatives, his speech was going to produce this result.

So, we have the President making bipartisan noises about Social Security reforms, but on the specifics, he only mentions lifting the payroll tax cap, and he rejects completely that it should become part of the budget debate since it’s not a driver of deficits.

Of the sixteen members asked by the White House to attend the Blair House meeting, Congressional leaders have offered four.

Good thing the White House is taking the imminent government shutdown so seriously. President Obama designated Joe Biden as his lead negotiator with Congress on a long-term plan to set spending for the rest of the year. They had a meeting Thursday, and I’m not certain they followed up on Friday. And now, Biden’s headed to Russia, Finland and Moldova for a week.

Republicans want to hide behind the President in doing anything that cuts Social Security or Medicare. Surely they will turn right around the next election and accuse Democrats for implementing the cuts; consistency ain’t their strong suit. But it’s crucial to them that Democrats, not Republicans, kick off that conversation. The White House is basically resisting that push, and wants everybody to jump in the boat at the same time. This has been their longtime theory of governing – let Congress take the lead, say nothing definitive publicly, work behind the scenes. But the end result is exactly the same.

I’d expect several trial balloons about what the President will discuss in the State of the Union, and we already have one informed by his recent speeches: “competitiveness.” I agree with both Krugman and Robert Reich on this; if competitiveness is used as a frame to call for new investments, particularly in infrastructure and education, while fending off right-wing austerity, then great. If it’s a way to suggest that manufacturing companies should cut payrolls, or America should pass a bunch of corporate-written free trade agreements, or that we should do whatever’s on the mind of the Jeffrey Immelts of the world, then, well, not so great.

I’m not sure there was any doubt, but just in case you thought that the Senate would act on an imminent bill from the House to repeal the entire health care law wholesale, the Senate Democratic leadership is here to tell you that they won’t. They frame it in a letter to John Boehner, signed by Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer, Patty Murray and Debbie Stabenow, that they refuse to take up any bill that repeals consumer protections, specifically citing the closing of the prescription drug “doughnut hole” for seniors. On January 1, a new provision of the Affordable Care Act discounts the cost of brand name drugs for seniors who reach that coverage gap by 50%, with the full closure phased in later.

I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating. . . Obama is using the unemployed as an excuse to get what he has wanted all along. And what he wants is to extend all the tax cuts.