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WASHINGTON Republicans lawmakers on Tuesday started trying to kill a brand-new U.S. rule prohibiting banks and credit card companies from requiring customers who open new accounts to sign an agreement that they will not join a group lawsuit in the event of a dispute.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Monday finalized the new rule banning "mandatory arbitration clauses" requiring consumers to forego class-action suits and instead settle disputes in negotiations overseen by arbitrators frequently hired by companies.

The rule immediately ran into fierce opposition by Wall Street and Republicans who control both Congress and the White House. They have long criticized the consumer agency, which is run by a Democrat, Richard Cordray.

Senator Tom Cotton, a member of the Banking Committee, has already announced he is drafting a resolution to kill the rule. His fellow Republican Senator Pat Toomey, chair of the subcommittee on financial institutions and consumer protection, said he is considering a similar step.

Republican lawmakers plan to eliminate the rule, using a law that allows Congress to undo new regulations with simple majority votes in both chambers and a signature from the president.

Analysts and consumer advocates have said the agency's rule may survive the Congressional challenge. Still, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is contemplating a legal challenge and Trump administration officials are also looking at ways to kill the rule.

Isaac Boltansky, a policy analyst for the investment firm Compass Point Research & Trading, said the rule has a slightly better than 50 percent chance of surviving in Congress.

Joe Valenti, who tracks the issue for the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress, said the House of Representatives was unified against the rule, which opponents have argued benefits class-action lawyers, not consumers.

"It comes down to the Senate," said Valenti, noting that the rule would survive if only three Republicans in that chamber switched sides.

That is possible, said Ed Mierzwinksi, the consumer program director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups. He noted that Senate Republicans have struggled to gather enough votes for majorities and the calendar is swollen with pressing legislation and confirmation hearings.

In addition, Mierzwinksi said, senators may be leery of appearing to side with Wall Street against consumers. He noted that Wells Fargo & Co used clauses in its account-opening agreements to block customers from suing over its phantom account scandal.

Supporters of the rule say mandatory arbitration denies citizens their day in court and is rigged in favor of big firms. They say litigants banding together in a class-action lawsuit have a better chance of getting companies to answer publicly for illegal activities and that fears of such a suit can discourage law breaking.

The consumer protection agency wrote the rule after conducting a lengthy, multi-year study of the issue. Opponents of the rule say the study is flawed and that arbitration is cheaper and faster than class-action lawsuits and produces better awards for consumers.

OTHER CHALLENGES

The Chamber is exploring a prompt legal challenge to the rule, said Matt Webb, senior vice president for its legal reform institute.

Another possible challenge could come from the acting comptroller of the currency, Keith Noreika. He is laying groundwork to invoke an untested provision of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law that allows the council of the country's top financial regulators to nullify a consumer agency rule if they decide it threatens the safety and soundness of the banking system.

Rohit Chopra, senior fellow at the Consumer Federation of America and former CFPB assistant director, said a lawsuit will probably fail because the law says the agency can restrict arbitration as long as it hews to its study.

He said the Dodd-Frank provision that the comptroller's office is looking at was meant to keep risks to the financial system at bay.

"To suggest that this rule would cause a financial crisis is ridiculous on its face," he said.

(Reporting by Pete Schroeder; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and David Gregorio)

WASHINGTON President Donald Trump is increasingly unlikely to nominate Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen next year for a second term, and National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn is the leading candidate to succeed her, Politico reported on Tuesday, citing four people close to the process.

A day ahead of Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen's testimony to Congress on the state of the U.S. economy, two of her colleagues cited low wage growth and muted inflation as reasons for caution on further interest rate increases.

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Republicans strike back at new US ban on forced arbitration - Reuters

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July 11, 2017, 4:01 PM EDT

House Republicans rejected Donald Trumps steep budgets cuts for the Environmental Protection Agency as members of the presidents party instead offered a trim in spending for the environmental regulator.

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The White House had proposed a record 31 percent cut to the agencys roughly $8 billion budget, telling lawmakers it wanted to cut 3,200 jobs and shrink or eliminate a wide swath of programs, including those aimed cutting lead poisoning and improving the health of the Great Lakes. Instead, congressional appropriators released a bill Tuesday that would slice the agencys budget by 6.5 percent to $7.5 billion.

While the overall fate of spending bills in Congress is unclear, GOP Senators have also indicated they wont go along with Trumps plan. The House bill is scheduled to be considered by a panel of the Appropriations Committee Wednesday, the first formal step of many before it could make it to the presidents desk for signature.

"Trumps proposed budget was a fantasy. It is hard to imagine that many sane lawmakers could support it," said Frank ODonnell, president of Clean Air Watch. "Trump is so weakened politically that he has no political capital to use on this issue."

The $31.4 billion bill also includes more modest reductions in spending for the Interior Department, which runs the national parks, protects endangered species and plays a primary role in permitting oil, gas and coal development on federal lands and waters.

House Republicans are drafting a set of spending bills that largely rejects Trumps overall call for $54 billion in domestic agency cuts, while they propose giving nearly $20 billion more to the military than Trump requested. Lawmakers of both parties had already warned EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt that the administrations plans for the agency werent going to stick.

Read More: Trump Spurs Bipartisanship as Lawmakers Vow to Stop His EPA Cuts

"These are all proposals we are unlikely to retain," Representative Ken Calvert, the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee in charge of the agencys budget, told Pruitt at an earlier budget hearing.

The bill would still provide funds to help the administration offer buyouts to EPA employees and reflects the administrations goal to rein in outdated, unnecessary and potentially harmful regulations at the EPA, the committee said in a statement.

Separately, an appropriations bill funding the Energy Department acquiesces to Trumps call the kill off the agencys experimental research arm known as ARPA-E, and takes steps to eliminate the agencys loan guarantee program. The bill, slated for a key committee vote Wednesday, also slashes funding for renewable energy and energy efficiency by almost $1 billion, though thats still nearly $500 million more than what Trump proposed.

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House Republicans Reject Trump's Bid to Slash EPA's Funding - Bloomberg

HARTFORD >> House Republicans on Tuesday unveiled a new budget proposal amid growing calls for the General Assembly to end the current stalemate and pass a two-year state spending plan.

The GOP budget unlike a competing proposal from majority Democrats contains no tax increases. It also maintains school aid, caps future borrowing and abandons Gov. Dannel P. Malloys plan to extract $400 million in teacher pension payments from municipalities.

We need to vote on a budget that addresses all the issues that have led to perpetual deficits over the last seven years, said House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, R-Derby.

The massive tax increases that Democrats have rammed through without a single Republican vote have failed to solve our problems, Klarides said.

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House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, D-Berlin, said the Republican proposal contains some good ideas and predicted House members on Tuesday will begin work on a new budget and hope to pass a spending plan by the end of the year.

Some of these [GOP] proposals are interesting and we will look at them, Aresimowicz said. But some are problematic.

The latest GOP budget comes as Malloy continues to operate the state under a limited executive order that will soon cause massive across the board spending cuts, including significant reductions in municipal aid, school funding, transportation projects and social services.

Joe DeLong, executive director for the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, said the time for budget proposals is over.

Its deja vu all over again, Delong said, quoting Yankee great Yogi Berra. We have seen enough dueling budget proposals. We think there are a lot of good ideas but its time to get the job done.

The Republican budget released Tuesday marks the most comprehensive spending plan by the GOP House caucus.

The House GOP plan seeks to limit state borrowing to $1.3 billion per year, a major drop from the $2.2 billion the state borrowed in 2015. It also calls for eliminating hospital property taxes and altering health insurance and pension plans through statutory changes, which means passing new laws or amending existing ones.

Republicans would also eliminate the cap on motor vehicle tax rates, reduce the state workforce, offer communities some mandate relief, preserve municipal aid and generate $768 million in savings over the next two fiscal years by freezing wages.

The GOP said its budget would eliminate a $5.1 billion budget deficit over the next two years.

Klarides said the employee savings can be achieved without opening existing union contracts or retirement plans.

The changes we would make are all through state statute changes, Klarides said. They do not have to be negotiated.

Aresimowicz questioned that assessment. Some court cases say you cant change benefits once people retire, he noted.

House Democrats recently offered a budget that relies on revenue increases, namely a higher sales tax and a 10 percent surcharge on food and beverage. Malloy, a Democrat, has rejected new tax increases.

The difficulty in passing a budget is rooted in math Republicans and Democrats are tied in the state Senate and Democrats hold a slim 79-72 vote majority in the House.

Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman, a Democrat, can break a tie vote in the Senate, giving Democrats ultimate control of the chamber if they hold on to all members of their caucus.

That narrow balance of power was not lost on Klarides, who pointed out in past years, when Democrats had comfortable majorities in both chambers, party leaders could allow members to vote against a budget and still pass the spending plan they wanted.

We would have a budget now if Democrats had enough votes, Klarides said. So that tells you people are out there who are not happy.

DeLong also noted the political difference this year. The is the first time in years the Connecticut General Assembly has had to work with someone else to get this done, he said.

Aresimowicz said a budget led by Democrats will soon emerge.

We have made good progress understanding other peoples proposals, Aresimowicz said. I am confident we will have a budget agreement by the end of the month.

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Connecticut House Republicans release new state budget plan - New Haven Register

As progressive populists have been flexing more muscle within the Democratic Party, some Democratic CEOs have decided to fight back. Unfortunately for the CEOs, their checkbooks havent bought them the ability to land a punch.

Last week, Silicon Valley billionaires Mark Pincus and Reid Hoffman launched Win the Future, an effort to advance the agenda of an ethos that is pro-social, pro-planet, and, most grating to the lefts ears, pro-business. Their political ambition for WTF is to act like its own virtual party within the Democratic Party, shaping the platform and launching candidatessimilar to what Senator Bernie Sanders is doing in his quest to gain control of the party, through his Our Revolution political action committee and Sanders Institute think tank.

Story Continued Below

Pincus makes no bones about his desire to sideline the Berniecrats. Im fearful the Democratic Party is already moving too far to the left, he told the tech industry news site Recode. I want to push the Democratic Party to be more in touch with mainstream America.

Those words were greeted with incredulity and widespread mockery throughout the increasingly cocksure left. The rich peoples social milieu is to think that the swing voter is kind of like them, which is to say progressive on social issues and regressive on corporate power, and thats not actually where the bulk of median swing voters in America are, said Jeff Hauser of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Social Security Works Alex Lawson went in for the kill: The weakness of the Democratic Party is not due to an underrepresentation of venture capitalists and tech company board members. WTF, indeed.

The lefts reactions to Pincus and Hoffman, however, were tame compared with the near-universal derision and personal invective that has in recent days been aimed at Mark Penn. On Friday, Pennthe founder of a private equity firm who is best known as the chief strategist and pollster for Hillary Clintons failed 2008 Democratic presidential primary bidpublished a New York Times op-ed (co-authored by a Democratic Trump supporter) counseling Democrats to move to the center and reject the siren calls of the left.

In progressive circles, Penn is the personification of the third way, 90s-era neoliberal policies that they argue drove working-class voters to Donald Trump two decades later. Moreover, some progressives argue, hes a political incompetent who drove Clintons 2008 campaign into a ditch by fundamentally misunderstanding what voters wantand hasnt learned much since.

Penn is used to being wrong, wrote New Republics Sarah Jones, Barack Obama ran to [Clintons] left at the time and is mostly absent from Penns version of history, despite uniting the partys factions and winning the general election twice. Esquires Charles Pierce was unsparing: If this guy gets within 10 city blocks of your campaign headquarters, call the local hazardous waste unit immediately.

If the Penns, Pincuses and Hoffmans of the world are to survive the Democratic civil war between the populists and the pragmatists, they must learn fast that their money and stature are not assets, but burdens to overcome. And more substantially, they must develop ideas that serve the public good, not just their own bottom lines.

***

The progressives swipes at the Democratic corporate class might be dismissed as the usual griping from the online peanut gallery if our CEO saviors came equipped with compelling ideas that compare favorably with whats being peddled by the populist left. But the CEOs showed up with little more than cocktail-napkin policies that excite almost no one.

Penns policy advice to win back working class voters is full of dissonant left-right pairings, which may work in a focus group, but lack coherence. Youd expect the left to cheer Penn when he writes, the new tech-driven economy has been given a pass to flout labor laws with unregulated, low-paying gig jobs, to concentrate vast profits and to decimate retailing. But he confusingly juxtaposes this with a hysterical claim that the old brick-and-mortar economy is being regulated to deathas if government regulation, not the inherent convenience of e-commerce, was the source of the retail industrys woes. Likewise, Penn actually accepts the populists political diagnosis on trade: Democrats should recognize that they can no longer simultaneously try to be the free-trade party and speak for the working class. They need to support fair trade and oppose manufacturing plants moving jobs overseas. But then he ties it to a big tax cut for multinational corporations, arguing Democrats should link new taxes on offshoring with repatriation of foreign profitsthats wonkspeak for letting corporate profits that had been parked abroad to escape taxation come back to America at a discounted tax rate.

Over on the West Coast, the WTF brigade began its centrist advance by encouraging Twitter users to post and retweet ideas with a #WTFagenda hashtag, with the best ideas to be slapped on Beltway billboards. (One week in, the groups Twitter feed has about 650 followersa paltry number that has to sting the Silicon Valley whizzes.) But the WTF leaders are putting their thumb on the scale with their own suggestions.

Most of what the founding team members posted is inoffensive to the left, but isnt particularly original or innovative: such as Healthcare is a right, not a privilege and Congress: Fire Trump ... or Youre Fired. But Pincus raised eyebrows with an out-of-the-box proposal to Offer every [A]merican an engineering degree for free. On Twitter, Jamison Foser, of NextGen Climate, noted that the idea is narrowly tailored to serve the interests of Pincus and his fellow Silicon Valley CEOs: Limiting this to engineering makes it seem like tech billionaires dont care about education or inequality: just want to pay engineers less.

The self-serving proposal validated Matt Stollers BuzzFeed takedown of WTF, and the Democratic Party generally. The New America fellow and former policy adviser to Sanders places WTF in the long history of wealthy, highly connected, and powerful people trying to fix Democratic politics going back to the Atari Democrats of the 1980s.

Stollers essay summed up the progressive populist view of establishment Democrats, who have repeatedly positioned themselves to curry favor with big business, to push away questions of regional inequality, labor rights, small business rights, family farms, and genuinely open markets for goods and services. He argues Democrats need to go in the exact opposite direction, since, Changing politics is about refocusing democratic deliberation on the places where power exists. And right now, power exists exactly where Hoffman and Pincus made their fortunes: Silicon Valley.

Of course, the economic power that has accumulated in Silicon Valley has not always been easily leveraged into political power. When Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg rallied his fellow tech executives behind the pro-immigration effort FWD.us, the $50 million project ran into a brick wall of Republican partisanship and anti-immigrant, right-wing populist sentiment. Tech leaders found out that while most Americans eagerly consume their apps and devices, that doesnt mean they are perceived to be the political good guys. Their agenda was not presumed by critics to be an altruistic attempt to give immigrants a crack at the American Dream, but a selfish ploy to hire coders at lower wages. Now Silicon Valley is learning its motives are considered suspect by elements of the left as well.

This is what the centrist CEOs, from Silicon Valley and elsewhere, need to grasp: they are facing a force that wants their kind banished from the Democratic Party. Thats not hyperbole; Hauser told HuffPost that Pincus and Hoffman should become forces within the Republican Party rather than water down the message of the Democratic Party.

Pincus, in an interview with Fast Company, responded to the criticism with a dismissive shrug: We just want to help, and Im sorry if were not the best messenger. I cant help it.

But if the disrupters want to successfully disrupt, thats the wrong answer. The answer is to become better, more credible messengers. That will require CEOs to do two hard things:

One, become policy wonks. Work with public policy experts to develop fresh, substantive ideas that tackle the pressing issues of the future and outshine Sanders heavily ambitious, light-on-details democratic socialism.

Two, become class traitors. Shine a light on bad corporate practices. Offer proposals to rein in irresponsible behavior and to ensure everyone pays their fair share in taxes.

Pincus and his partners could take a cue from Penn: the lightly regulated gig economy is causing great uncertainty about the future of work. The populists left main responsestronger unionsmakes sense on paper but has gotten little traction from the workers themselves. Unionization in America is at an all-time low, accounting for only 6.4 percent of private-sector workers. That wont turn around on a dime, no matter what new laws, if any, are enacted. If our Silicon Valley gurus have some better ideassophisticated ones that benefit from their intricate knowledge of the tech industry, but are not ruses to fatten corporate profits at the expense of labornows the time to share.

Democrats dont need business leaders demanding a pro-business agenda. Democrats need business leaders who can show how smart regulations can help workers, consumers and executives simultaneously. Democrats need business leaders who can make the case that taxes on wealth and carbon pollution wont stifle entrepreneurship. Democrats need business leaders who can offer their expertise in shaping policy relevant to their field, while having the humility to understandas our current CEO president does notthat business expertise in a single industry is not equivalent to public policy omniscience.

For the nations CEOs to save America from the zero-sum populism of both the right and the left, its going to take far more than a few sanctimonious swipes, bullet point proposals and hashtag campaigns. These corporate honchos need to internalize that for many Americans, they are the problem, and they will have to work double time to prove they can be part of the solution.

Bill Scher is a contributing editor to Politico Magazine, and co-host of the Bloggingheads.tv show The DMZ.

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How to Lose a Fight with Progressives - Politico

A national organization will establish a local presence this evening. The New Leaders Council (NLC), a nonprofit focused on bringing fresh names and faces into progressive politics and other leadership positions, launches its Columbus chapter tonight during a happy hour at Strongwater in Franklinton.

We want people who dont look like or do the kinds of things that those kinds of people who are already in politics engage in, said John Tannous, NLC Columbus Co-Director. Right now if you want to get involved in politics in Central Ohio, you need to tread this really narrow path of certain kinds of jobs, volunteering for certain kinds of people. Ideally, itd be great if you had a certain name, and if you dont have connections in that space, there is no way for you to get involved.

I think what we want to do is create an onramp for people who are really passionate, but they dont know the right people. They dont know how to get involved, he added.

Its an effort thats been in the works on the national level for over a decade. The NLC reaches out to those outside of the political realm and trains them on how to apply progressive politics in ways that are meaningful to the individual, creating a pathway for the unengaged to become informed and active in politics. This could mean running for office, becoming a campaign aid, learning effective advocacy tactics, or applying progressive ideas in entrepreneurship.

Training is offered through their six month Institute, which gathers progressives for one weekend each month and covers a range of topics, including entrepreneurship, fundraising, and communications, among others. Graduates then enter a community of alumni, some of whom end up becoming mentors, panelists at NLC events, or even lobbyists at their state capitals.

To start the change locally, NLC Columbus is inviting progressives of all backgrounds and levels of engagement to join their program. And while there is no litmus test for what exactly progressive means, Tannous said the typical member believes in strong democracy, equal opportunity and social justice.

Co-Director Colleen Lowry thinks of NLC as a pushback against heavily-funded conservative efforts to train and run right-leaning candidates. Organizations like the Heritage Foundation, a D.C.-based conservative think tank boasting an annual budget of $30 million, has graduated well known policy leaders Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.

No equivalent exists on the progressive side, and NLC itself keeps a budget of roughly $1 million. Its self-sufficient, though, incorporating training on fundraising in its curriculum and applying that directly to raise the money needed for the next class.

While NLC has a fraction of the funding the Heritage Foundation receives, its managed to graduate more than 4,200 progressives from its 48 chapters, and 700 of them have run for office or are making plans to. Of the alumni, 53 percent are women, 57 percent are non-white, and 11 percent identify as LGBTQ, indicating a future of diversified candidate slates for local and state elections.

There are obviously a few exceptions, but for the most part a lot of our elected officials are older, white, and male, Lowry said, and I really think that our generation has the ability to change that, to switch up that narrative.

NLC leaders and potential fellows will have their launch party happy hour tonight, July 11, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Strongwater, 401 W. Town St.

For more information, visit newleaderscouncil.org.

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National Progressive Training Organization Launches Local Chapter Tonight - columbusunderground