So, how about that jobs speech?
I thought the president introduced a great jobs plan Thursday night -- a plan that accomplished a number of important goals:
- The package is of a magnitude that could help a lot of folks get back to work. I agree with Paul Krugman: "if it actually became law, it would probably make a significant dent in unemployment."
- It's a plan that in normal times would be broadly supported by partisans on both sides of the aisle; about 60% of the $450 billion in the American Jobs Act is tax cuts, the rest is largely infrastructure and unemployment insurance, and we've never in our history failed to extend UI benefits with unemployment this high.
- The president pressed the urgency of the moment, the need to rise above partisanship, to stop with the self-inflicting wounds, the political circus, and get down to the people's work, and he did it with some real fight in 'em.
I also really liked the spirit he brought to this and I like the policy agenda, especially:
- Adding another percent to the payroll tax holiday on the employee's side, taking it up from 2% to 3%, which means the tax break for most working people would increase by half. So if you earned $50K, your tax break would increase from $1K to $1.5K. For weeks on these pages I've talked about how renewing the payroll cut would just keep the macroeconomic foot on the accelerator, not push it down further. Well, this renewal/increase presses the pedal down further.
- Hiring tax incentives targeted at small business and at the unemployed.
- FAST! -- well, something like it: $30 billion for school renovation and repair.
- Summer jobs for low-income youth and a subsidized employment program for low-income families.
But then there is, of course, the politics.
Interestingly, Republicans made more favorable sounds than you might have expected. I was on the NewsHour Thursday night with conservative economist Doug Holtz-Eakin and note how at the end of the segment, he offered his opinion that the payroll tax cuts, the unemployment insurance extension, and perhaps some infrastructure could pass. Rep. Eric Cantor made some similar sounds after the speech.
The Republicans are probably chastened by recent visits to their districts where one expect they got earfuls from constituents to stop screwing around and get to work on the damn economy. And no, that won't last and they won't give the president nearly what he's asking for. I also expect some funky horse trading to start soon -- watch for Republicans to insist on corp tax breaks in exchange for some of the jobs measures.
But Thursday night we saw a spirited President present a solid, smart jobs plan to a nation in need of just that. Obviously, a lot more to come on this, but in this town, in these days, I'd call that a very good thing.
This post originally appeared at Jared Bernstein's On The Economy blog.
Gene Karpinski: Cantor's More Pollution, Less Jobs Agenda
•"The GOP plan to discredit government in the people’s eyes is very conscious: “A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.”
• As for belief as opposed to tactics, the party basically really cares only about the rich. Actually, Lofgren doesn’t say “basically.” He says “solely and exclusively.” And he explains how they’ve camouflaged this with talk of protecting small businesses and so on.
There is much, much more. He’s not very happy either about his party’s militarism, its cynical use of religion, its total opposition to doing anything about the environment, and other matters, but most especially its neo-Leninist posture in which political power trumps everything."
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/09/05/congressional-staffer-mike-lofgren-turns-on-his-fellow-republicans.html
but that would be the horse-trading within the horse-trading. Half of the plan already consists of tax breaks for employers. Ah, they're not corporate employers. But didn't republicans teach everybody that it's the small businesses that create jobs?
Never mind.
If we had a surplus, I would support more gvmt intervention but NOT NOW.
Finally ever job created today comes at the expense of 1.1 jobs tomorrow. Same as spending $50k of debt today costs you $52k tomorrow.
Of course gvmt wastes money due to bureaucracies and corruption and grift so it will likely cost us $200k to employ one person at $50k.
And where are the jobs, again?
I see tax cuts--very Reagan trickle down of him--and the above mentioned infrastructure notion.
But any real systemic change to this Wall Street created Depression has gone missing. There is nothing substantive, far reaching, or long term in his proposal. Nothing that changes the way we do business in America, nothing that puts American wages on track to regain their value lost over 30 years that has seen most of America, especially the Middle Class, slide inexorably into extinction.
His 'program' is nothing more than rewarmed trickle down ala Reagan, and that has never worked in 30 years! Where is OUR WPA, our CCC, our Hoover dam?
Would the neocons in Congress pass it? NO. But they won't pass this either, and this stick a knife in the back of Social Security along with a shortage of vision for a more Competitive America.
That is all I want to know t this point.
He could have announced a redeployment of our troops to our 4 southern border states all by himself without Congress, without delay, and without spending more money; but he didn't.
We are quite tired of grandiose plans that would take great leadership and patriotism to execute; we don't have the leadership; the patriotism is no longer there.
Me ? I'm for all 50 states voting to secede from this government and form a new one that is representative of the people it governs; the ability, the character, the willingness, and the will to do that is not only our birthright, it is probably the only thing that is going to save our country, another of which will not come along for ten thousand years or more.
Secede. Freedom.
Phase 1: Checks mailed for $750 per person by Thanksgiving, 2011
Phase 2: Checks mailed for $500 per person by Independence Day, 2012
Phase 3: Checks mailed for $250 per person by Thanksgiving, 2012
PTH is bad policy. To think we are wasting half the miniscule stimulus on it is apalling.
PTH does not help a single person get a job or keep a job.
PTH is a raid on the Social Security trust fund.
PTH is bad stimulus, not even collected into a "refund check".
PTH wastes money that could be used for real stimulus, jobs tax credits.
PTH is as effective a stimulus as flying c-130's over the top 100 cities in America and dumping 20$ bills out the back each week. It also is not even that well targeted.
The money spent on PTH would be better spent on FAST!
PTH is also wrapped in a stinky political fish - renew it and you get to renew the Obama/Bush tax cuts. Stupid on top of stupid.
Doing something new in DC is hard, so the same old mistakes get made, instead of doing the right thing.
PTH is bad policy and should not be renewed.
http://www.ssa.gov/oact/progdata/fundFAQ.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Trust_Fund
One third of the debt is to Social Security. Do you Tea Party types ever intend to pay that debt off?
Shame.
Show every project, every bridge that isn't fixed, every road or airport falling apart.
Don't let him make the news. Make him BE the news (and what he isn't doing about jobs).
Structurally deficient bridges by state.
PTH is bad policy and should not be renewed.