Last week, Social Security advocates learned something they had long suspected. Arguments for cutting Social Security aren’t really about economics or the deficit. They’re all about waging war on social services.

The Washington Post speculates on why the recovery has fizzled.

New Hampshire received a small piece of good news this week – our unemployment rate fell to 6.4% (from 6.7% in April and 7% in March). That’s the right direction, but we still have a long way to go.

Over the last twenty-five years, I’ve spent my life working to help people here in New Hampshire on issues that make a difference for all of us – from making it easier for families to save for college to fighting the rising cost of health care. Today, the most important way we can help people all across our state is by focusing on creating jobs. Over the past six months in my campaign for Congress, I have traveled to every corner of our district to sit down with workers and business leaders to talk with them about how the government can help them create new jobs.

I toured the community college in Berlin and the paper mill in Gorham; a high-tech startup center in Lebanon and an advanced manufacturing firm that employs 85 people in a world-class facility off a bumpy back road in North Sutton. I sat down with leaders from some of our state’s biggest employers in Nashua and community bankers in Concord. I talked with workers and managers, entrepreneurs and union members, and I heard how they have struggled with cutbacks and layoffs – but also how every single one of them is driven to make it through this recession and to make our way back to new growth and new jobs again.

Here is what I’ve heard:

The disconnect between government spin and personal experience is beyond wearisome at this point. When will we get the plain truth and a plan on how to deal with it?

Americans are more optimistic about the future of the economy than they were last month, according to a new CBS News/ New York Times poll.

For the Democrats in Congress, winning in November isn’t rocket science; it’s about having the will to pursue survival ruthlessly. The key to winning is giving the American people what they’ll like, and not allowing any of the normal Washington obstacles to stand in the way. But, for Dems to act that way depends on them changing both their beliefs and their behavior. Let’s start with the beliefs.

The first belief that has to change is the idea that deficits are a problem for the Federal Government, that Democrats have to minimize to show that they are responsible. This is a myth, a lie, a scare, or a fraud. Deficits are only a problem when inflation begins to appear. If there is no inflation, Democrats should not even give lip service to the idea that deficits are important.

Will the health care mandates stomp on a economic recovery?

According to the CBO, in the third quarter of this year alone, 600 thousand to 1.6 million jobs were directly created or saved by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, reducing our country’s unemployment rate by 0.3 to 0.9 percent. This is an especially important finding for my home state of California, which at 12.3 percent, suffers from the third worst unemployment rate in the nation.

Had I been in Congress at the time, I would have gladly voted for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and as a recent New York Times article by Jackie Calmes and Michael Cooper reveals, “the accumulation of hard data and real-life experience has allowed more dispassionate analysts to reach a consensus that the stimulus package, messy as it is, is working.”

What will it take for Paul Pastorek to stop holding our educational system for ransom?