If I had a nit to pick with Obama’s deficit reduction plan, it’s that he’s framing increasing taxes on the wealthy in the service of reducing the deficit — traditionally a Republican goal — rather around the idea that progressive taxation builds a healthier democracy. But he’s on the right track.

How do I know? Because David Brooks hates it.

Weekly unemployment claims spiked up again today, and the NY Fed’s survey of regional manufacturing, a key indicator of the economy, was down sharply relative to expectations. This is a crisis time in the economy, and big solutions are needed to arrest the slide.

President Obama announced in his weekly address a plan to open part of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska to oil drilling. Through an executive order, the President would also extend leases in the Gulf of Mexico for oil concerns that were subject to the moratorium on deepwater drilling after the BP oil disaster, as well as speeding up evaluation of resources in the Atlantic, extending other leases in Alaska and building incentives for oil and gas companies to use land they own on existing leases on land and sea.

It was inevitable that oil-producing states would get representation like this. And yet every state is a gas-consumer state. Every state is a taxpayer state. Every state has constituents who give their money to the government so a sliver of it can be handed over to the same billionaires who charge $4 a gallon for gasoline. And these billionaires are the same people who think being denied that corporate welfare is actually un-American.

There’s a set vote on the tax cut bill on Monday. Nothing else has been scheduled to move today. Bernie is not really blocking anything. This puts Sanders’ speech into the Congressional record; I’m not sure there’s an additional purpose.

But that’s not to say it isn’t important.

President Obama is holding a press conference in moments, amid signs that his deal with Republicans on the Bush tax cuts is falling apart. Joe Biden visited the Hill to try and save the policy, but Democrats and allies from across the political spectrum are opposed. Mary Landrieu, of all people, called the deal “almost morally corrupt” and termed it “the Obama-McConnell plan.” The Congressional Progressive Caucus want a “no strings attached” policy with UI and the tax cuts on the first $250,000 of income extended.

The Interior Department moved forward today with new offshore drilling rules without moving up the end of the moratorium.

On June 9, Senator Mary Landrieu questioned Interior Secretary Ken Salazar at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing in which she proclaimed that the Obama administration’s six month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico would result in more job losses than the BP oil spill itself. Today’s New York Times brings us the reality behind Landrieu’s hissy fit, and, surprise, surprise, she could not have been more wrong.

The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee has voted to have its own commission investigate the BP disaster. The Committee finds that necessary, according to Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu, because Obama hasn’t appointed a representative from the oil industry to his own commission. The conflict of interest is apparently not obvious to Landrieu.

Landrieu says that BP’s liability will be “hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars, and BP’s going to pay every penny. When I pressed her on the long-term damage done to fishermen and the community – one person told me that last time oil hit his oyster beds, it was there for 10 years – Landrieu immediately swatted back that number and said “we don’t know.” She says that if a fisherman “made $50,000 last year, BP’s going to write them a check for $50,000.”

But this disaster will last for well more than one year, and likely well beyond a decade.

Sign our petition to the Senate: make BP pay every penny for its destruction of the Gulf.