President Obama is nominating Princeton University economics professor Alan Krueger to head his White House economics team.

The president announced Monday that he plans to tap the labor economist as chairman of the White House's Council of Economic Advisers (CEA).

Conservatives aren’t giving up on their plans to destroy the public school system. Their weapon of choice: Vouchers that would allow parents to use public money to send their kids to private school. The result, as they well know, would be to suck money out of the already underfunded public school system and undercut the system's ability to provide quality education. That would lead to even more students and money leaving the system, which would further worsen the situation—and so the downward spiral would go.

Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren, who is likely to challenge Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), on Thursday launched an exploratory committee and website.

There is little chance Mr. Obama will stop giving big speeches. There is an expectation that any president should lay out his proposals and ideas to the nation.

As the two men campaigned near each other, White House aides were not above their own digs at Mr. Perry, including his threat in 2009 that Texas might leave the United States.

A trio of well-known conservatives have organized a so-called “super PAC” to aid Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination, according to sources familiar with the move.
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Under Federal Election Commission rules, super PACs can raise unlimited donations but have to report the identity of their contributors and detail their expenditures.
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It’s also an affirmation that Bachmann, Romney and Perry comprise the top tier of the Republican presidential field and are ramping up for a costly battle for the nomination over the next six months.

Perry, Romney offer contrasting approaches to job creation in GOP race

Re: Gov. Rick Perry (Texas, R), Presidential Candidate

Perry’s stump speech includes a line that, as president, he will try to make Washington “as inconsequential in your lives as possible.”

The harshest criticism of Perry's remarks seemed to be coming from former officials of the George W. Bush administration. Bernanke was nominated as Fed chairman by former President Bush, a self-identified conservative whose political team has had friction with Perry. Bernanke was renominated by President Obama.

Straw Poll, 2011

Six candidates, hundreds of reporters and thousands of activists will descend on a patch of asphalt in Ames, Iowa today for the first major moment of the 2012 presidential race.

“It’s not a lack of plans or policies that is the problem here,” Mr. Obama said Monday in his first public comments on the economy since Standard & Poor’s downgraded the country’s credit rating last Friday. “It’s a lack of political will in Washington. It’s the insistence on drawing lines in the sand, a refusal to put what’s best for the country ahead of self-interest or party or ideology. And that’s what we need to change.”

In Houston on Monday, the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, of California, vowed, according to television reports, to fight to protect Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security from Republican spending cuts. Mrs. Pelosi spoke of additions to the entitlement programs that were signed by President Lyndon Johnson, adding: “With the stroke of a law that they hope to pass, there are those who would repeal, would eliminate, those securities.”

Of the 60 members of the House Tea Party caucus, 32 voted in favor of the final debt deal and 28 voted against it.

A majority of Republicans who agree with the tea party movement give House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) positive reviews for his role in debt negotiations

Obama signs debt bill into law, averting default

Aug. 2 (last day of deadline)

“Seen in isolation . . . this is not a good bill,” said Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.). Yet, he added, “despite its many flaws, this legislation must pass.” He complained that by failing to increase revenue by ending tax cuts and loopholes for the wealthy while slashing domestic spending, “this legislation incorporates some policies that are profoundly unfair to middle-income Americans.”