On Tuesday, January 25th, President Obama will give the annual state-of-the-union address to Congress and the American people. Since the disastrous midterm elections, Obama's popularity has surged. The president should use this opportunity to tell Americans his strategy for dealing with the US jobs crisis.
Article II, Section 3 of the US Constitution mandates the State-of-the-Union (SOTU) report. In recent years it's consisted of a glib assessment of the nation's condition -- last year Obama reported, "Our union is strong" -- and theaAdministration's legislative agenda, most often a laundry list that bears little resemblance to what that session of Congress accomplishes. Typically the SOTU speech is a snoozer, although in 2002 and 2003, President Bush used the occasion to marshal support for an attack on Iraq.
In last years' SOTU speech, President Obama argued that his administration had saved the US economy; he claimed the worst of the recession was over, but confessed the problem of creating jobs was daunting. He requested job-creation legislation much of which passed. He also asked for health care and financial reform legislation they became law. Nonetheless, the speech wasn't effective because the president came across as professorial.
Obama should view 2011's SOTU as an opportunity to win support for his job-creation agenda. In many ways the occasion mirrors the situation he was presented with on Wednesday, January 12th, at the Tucson memorial service for the shooting victims. He exceeded the nation's expectations by taking what could have been the occasion for a pro forma speech and instead giving a moving address that lifted up Americans and put the tragic events in perspective.
The Tucson speech succeeded because the president adopted a personal tone. He focused on the death of nine-year-old Christina-Taylor Green, observing that Christina saw the political process "through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol that we adults all too often just take for granted. I want us to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it. All of us -- we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children's expectations."
President Obama should learn from his Tucson speech and make the SOTU address simple and personal. The president will be standing in front of the 112th session of Congress, where the House of Representatives is controlled by a raucous Republican majority. His speech could well set the tone of the next two years. Obama needs to take command of the bully pulpit.
After pro forma comments about the need for civility and recognition of our Armed Forces personnel, President Obama should make two points.
The first is that the actions of the Obama administration have stabilized the economy; they've kept banks from collapsing and economic conditions from going into free fall. The US is coming out of "the Great Recession" and that's good news that Obama and Democrats, in general, should take credit for. (The President would do well to give Americans a few concrete examples of how 2009's Recovery and Reinvestment Act has saved the jobs of average folks.)
The second point the president should make is that the US cannot be satisfied with this recovery because we are mired in a jobs slump, where the unemployment rate is 9.1 percent. That's what Obama should focus on for the remainder of his speech: US Gross Domestic Product is up; our corporate profits are up; but our unemployment rate lags behind those of Britain, China, Germany, Japan, and Russia. For most Americans the recession is over but there are 14.5 million workers who cannot find decent jobs.
While the president might want to suggest a few job-related legislative initiatives, what is paramount is that he establish a compelling theme such as Let's make America work for everyone and follow it with a forceful reiteration of a basic premise: Everyone in America who wants a job should be able to find one.
Obama should throw down the gauntlet and say to Congress We've stabilized the economy. Now we need to work together to create more jobs.
To make this point the president should use gripping examples, as he did in Tucson with the story of Christina Green. He should sprinkle his SOTU remarks with the stories of the unemployed. Whenever Obama proposes a specific job-creation initiative, he should amplify the content by showing how it would help a jobless American worker.
What the president doesn't say in the SOTU is as important as what he says. He shouldn't refer to the deficit or the "results" of his Deficit Reduction Commission. And Obama must avoid being professorial or garrulous. He should hammer on one theme: Washington needs to solve the jobs crisis. Americans will understand this and expect Congress to cooperate with Obama. It will both shift the burden of job-creation initiatives onto the Republican-controlled House and address America's number one problem.
President Obama should seize upon the 2011 State-of-the-Union address as a singular opportunity.
Yesterday made a 250 mile drive through rural Minnesota. The roads are horrendous, pot holed and rutted. Early in the morning It was -10 degrees or colder and brigdes and off ramps were iced. Near the city they were sanded and salted, but as I got further out into the country they were not. In Northern Minnesota roads had a dangerous crust of ice. One intersection in particular was glare ice, with no chemicals laid down. (Salt stops working around -10 so chemicals are needed.) A friend who works for a small town told me that these cities had no money for Chemicals, thanks to Tim Pawlenty's cutting aid to towns. My point is that we are in Deep dodo. Nothing the President says or no amount of wingnuttery from the House will change that. We need bold brave measures, but we don't have bold brave leaders.
#2-Put a 30% tariff on all imported manufactured goods. Do it over a period of 3 to 5 years.
Result: Jobs.
2: You can't put tariffs on imported goods. It would violate all our trade agreements. More to the point, the rightwing think tanks and the US Chamber of Commerce would fight this tooth and nail. Look at all the weight the CoC put fighting the relatively modest anti-offshoring proposals put forward in the Senate last fall.
Off-shoring is about corporate profits, not cheaper products--you can't look at competing products and discern foreign content by price alone. And Nike didn't drop any of their shoe prices years ago when they off-shored their production to Asia. All the money went into corporate profits and dividends. Meanwhile, their displaced workers are working as Walmart greeters and bartenders--they aren't capable of paying the tax burden needed to keep this a first-world country.
Nice talking points, though.
The GE contract will maintain (keep employed) around an astounding 2000 people.
Caterpilliar will produce for their contract in China -oops, no jobs there.
Westinghouse is an existing contract for reactors with labor and materials in China. oops no jobs there.
The Boeing contract maintains employment, doesn't add employees. Take note, Boeing just announced layoffs of 1100 and has also laid off a few thousand Desktop and IT jobs with outsourcing to India and China.
Boeing was stated to be a 19 billion dollar deal which is incorrect. That is gull retail and China's discounted price is 11 million. The contracts also are not new as claimed. The began originating in 2007 and all have nonrefundable deposits already paid.
Interesting story on the Boeing tale:
"China's 'new' jet orders anything but"
An accurate headline for the news might have said: Hu finally signs off on old orders for U.S. jets, but Boeing still lags Airbus in China.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2013975730_chinaorder20.html
All in all, the President's figure of 235K new jobs must have included overseas outsourced employees as the figures just do not add up.
China? This part of the article is factually incorrect.
China currently has a 23% unemployment rate.
The U.S. has 9.4%.
China is lagging way behind the UNITED STATES...not the other way around.
China may be doing very well in many areas - but their unemployment rate is not one of them.
The author misspoke, maybe, and meant to say our EMPLOYMENT RATE?
And it depends on how the CHINESE are counting unemployment. Do they count just job-seekers, or do they count everyone who might be employed in a given demographic?
I thought the GOP knew all about it and it would be THEIR responsibility to show the president and the Dems how to do it.
So where's the GOP JOBS PLAN???????????????
they are obviously clueless and haven't spent one second on jobs.