July 2011

This week, I led a meeting in the Roosevelt Room at the White House with leaders of a host of rural organizations to discuss the White House Rural Council. The White House Rural Council, which was established by President Obama on June 9, 2011, will build on this Administration’s unprecedented efforts to spur job creation and economic growth in rural America.

Along with Jon Carson, the Director of the Office of Public Engagement and Doug McKalip of the White House Domestic Policy Council, we discussed the Council’s efforts to improve coordination among federal agencies. We focused in on ways to help better leverage existing federal resources in rural America – and on how to facilitate private-public partnerships that can move the needle in building stronger rural communities.

The meeting was a chance for me to listen to our rural partners on the issues that need to be addressed and discuss potential solutions. Some of the key issues raised included the need to coordinate more with our federal partners on health care, broadband, and other critical infrastructure; how to increase the availability of capital and lending to rural businesses and families; efforts to remove barriers to young and beginning farmers; and strategies for establishing better partnerships with states, tribes, local governments and the private sector. Many of the leaders gathered also expressed appreciation for the renewed focus on rural America and the importance the White House has placed on these issues.

Congress is weighing into the roiling dispute between states and giant Internet retailer Amazon.com over collecting sales taxes on online purchases. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) is introducing legislation that would require Internet-only retailers to add sales taxes to customers' bills, just as their competitors with brick-and-mortar stores do. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) plans to introduce a similar measure in the House. The congressional effort is aimed at closing a legal loophole created by a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court decision that freed online and catalogue sellers from the obligation of collecting the sales tax if their businesses had no physical presence in the state where a buyer lives.

With an August 2 deadline to raise the debt ceiling looming, the showdown in Washington is leading the news. Last week, July 18-24, attention to the issue accounted for a full 29% of the newshole making it by far the largest component of overall coverage of the economy (which has filled 35% of the newshole).

As Democrats and Republicans have debated the issue, which party and what figures have been viewed as the key players by the media. An analysis by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism finds President Barack Obama is getting by far the most attention. Of the debt ceiling stories from July 1-24 in which someone has prominently figured (featured in at least 50% of the story), Obama has been a major presence in 59% of the stories. All other Democrats made up another 15%, meaning the party is a major focus in fully 75% of the debt ceiling stories. By contrast, Republicans have been a primary focus in 33% of the stories—less than half as many as Democrats. (A story can prominently feature more than one figure). And unlike Obama, who has been by far the dominant democratic figure, several prominent Republicans have shared the attention.

The biggest story in Washington now, of course, is the debate over the debt limit. Telecommunications policy plays a role in this debate -- specifically on a decision to include spectrum auctions as a way to raise revenues for the federal government. But this debate remains very fluid, so we'll hold off for now on a full update. Instead this week we'll focus on jobs.

On July 18, the Wall Street Journal reported that the wireless industry is booming as more consumers and businesses snap up smartphones, tablet computers and billions of wireless applications. But for the industry's workers, the story is less rosy. Employment at U.S. wireless carriers hit a 12-year low of 166,600 in May -- about 20,000 fewer jobs than when the recession ended in June 2009 and 2,000 fewer than a year ago. While the industry's revenue has grown 28% since 2006, when wireless employment peaked at 207,000 workers, its mostly nonunion work force has shrunk about 20%. "The disconnect between employment and industry growth reflects the broader head winds lashing the U.S. job market, as consolidation, outsourcing and productivity gains from new technology and business methods combine to undermine job growth.," writes WSJ's Anton Troianovski.