President Obama is preparing to propose a jobs bill which will seek to address the chronic unemployment in the US, likely through a combination of payroll tax cuts, extending unemployment benefits and some public spending. To describe this proposal by the president as a day late and a dollar short would be extremely generous. Obama is already two years late and several billion dollars short in his efforts to generate employment.
For Obama to begin talk of legislation to create more jobs following signing off on a Republican debt ceiling deal which has had the predictable, and predicted, result of causing the country to move ever closer to another recession seems almost surreal, as if the President seems almost unaware of the damage his failure to stand up to the right wing extremists who now constitute the Republican Party has done.
This bill almost certainly has its origins both in Obama's need to address the problem of widespread unemployment as well as for the President to regain the political upper hand in the jobs debate. While it is good that the President is concerned about unemployment and preparing to try to address this problem, albeit through proposals that will inevitably end up being too modest to make a significant difference, it is troubling that this far into his term, Obama is still searching for a way to both help develop jobs and to demonstrate that he is genuinely concerned with the widespread unemployment that has existed since he took office.
There are many things about Obama's presidency that are inexplicable, not just to those who criticize him from the left, but to those who are frustrated with the president's seeming inability to play an ongoing leadership role in addressing the country's economic ills. The most puzzling of these is Obama's failure, either through words or action, to prioritize jobs and employment, despite coming into office during a time of significant unemployment. The need for Obama, after more than two and a half years in office, to again signal his concern over jobs further underscores this. The fact that he is seeking to do this through a modest uncreative piece of legislation makes it even clearer that, for whatever reason, the President still does not quite understand how to address the problem.
Two and a half years into his term, after seeing his party lose control of the House of Representatives and conceding to the Republicans on an enormous range of spending and tax issues, Obama's options on job creation are so limited that no bill that is politically possible can make much of a difference. This leaves the President in a very difficult position but one which is substantially of his own making.
There is very little Obama can do now to show his concern, presuming it is real, for job development. At too many junctures during his presidency Obama has refused to make job creation a priority. His initial stimulus bill was, by most accounts, too small to have had a substantial impact on job creation. Obama spent months working on a health care bill, but never explained why reforming health care was helpful for strengthening the economy and facilitating job growth. Moreover, for the first two years or so of his presidency, Obama allowed the right wing narrative on deficits to take hold, thus again implicitly allowing job creation to become a lower priority as cutting spending became the Republican mantra, one insufficiently rebutted by the White House. By proposing this jobs bill now, Obama almost draws more attention to his powerlessness than to his concern about jobs. If the bill passes, by the time it gets out of congress, it will probably be little more than another tax cut for businesses and, of course, have very little impact on the overall employment picture.
For Obama to genuinely demonstrate his concern about jobs, he will need to do more than offer the occasional and predictable legislation. He will need to both propose major measures which will involve committing substantial resources to job development, and sell these measures to the American people. Obama cannot do this by operating within the Republican defined framework of austerity and reduced spending. Seeming to agree with the far right that reigning in spending is the top priority and that only through doing this can we get the country moving again, precludes taking job development seriously. However, this is precisely what President Obama has done, if not through his words than through his deeds.
It is not too late to change this, but it is getting there. Moreover, only through strong, confrontational and forceful action and rhetoric will Obama succeed in making job development a priority. For almost the first three years of his presidency, we have not seen this, so it is unlikely to emerge now. Nonetheless, Obama may have a lot to gain by being seen as a leader on jobs rather than somebody who is just trying to make it seem like he cares.
Follow Lincoln Mitchell on Twitter: www.twitter.com/LincolnMitchell
Robert L. Borosage: On Jobs: Tell It Like It Is
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I've given up trying to understand his priorities.
He took office with the US losing over 700,000 jobs PER MONTH and we have now had 17 consecutivÂe months of private sector jobs growth. He saved the US auto industry. Yes, we need far more, but to say he has done nothing, is simply not true.
President Obama has passed remarkable reforms that include common sense regulationÂs to protect consumers with three major bills (credit card reform, health care reform and financial reform).
He stopped the combat missions in Iraq. He started what may be the biggest foreign policy change in the US since WWII by taking a support role in Libya... which as it turns out was wildly successful without losing a single American life and while spending far less than previous interventiÂons.
I'm so fed up with the left whining that President Obama didn't snap his fingers and implement your perfect utopian society. He has furthered progressive goals more than any President in decades and yet you cry like he has done nothing, or worse, like he's worse than Bush (which I've actually heard from a supposed liberal). Grow up and get a grip on reality.
"Whining" about the "left" isn't any more attractive or "grown up" than any other form of "whining".
Most complaints I hear from the left suggest he didn't 'fight'. Or suggest that if he'd only said something different. Or that he is just another Republican, without a single acknowledgement for his accomplishments. Or because he didn't give them everything they wanted...again without a hint of recognition that he has moved us towards many progressive goals.
That is why I call it whining. If, on the other hand, complaints were to be made about how we can move forward. Or a better solution. Or even what he could have done better that would have had better results. In all of these cases, I like to think I engage first, and cite whining second.
And even in my post above, I FIRST note just a few of the reasons bashing from the left is uncalled for. Only after pointing those out, do I state my frustration with some of the commentary from the left. It's as if they don't care about his accomplishments or whether they are steps in the right direction, or even whether those accomplishments were remarkable achievements given the environment. Instead, the only care is that he didn't do things exactly as they'd dreamed.
I wish he'd decide not to run, Michelle apparently hates it, and let
Hillary, Dr. Dean, etc. take it on. I was a strong supporter but I
think he's politically deeply wounded. Sure, lots of it unfair,
nasty attacks like by Fox, but he and staff have made some
tactical mistakes that have added up. Nothing like
the Strategic Mistakes of Bush/Cheney, but enough
to help grow those who can't stand him from maybe
30% to well over 40%.
He could always run again years later when people will
appreciate the mountains of problems he faced. We
avoided another GOP Depression but he has not sold
that well or often enough. Iraq and Afganistan are
also very disappointing $$$$$$$
Dennis Kucinich is looking better to me too. Short,
probably a few things he could have said better and with
less haste, but on the mark on our foreign policy and Wall
St. GREED $$$$
Very, very true. His entire presidency has had me, and thousands of others, wondering: Why did he do THAT!?
He does, and says, things that are just so illogical and out of character for a Dem president. I've said it before and I'll say it again, we have a Republican in the WH wearing a Dem suit.
what I find most interesting is how folks like yourself are soooo good at second-guessing what the President is doing. you speculate what the jobs bill "is about", yet in reality you don't really have a clue, other than "you won't like it".
you pick one issue, never bothering for one moment to realize that the President has a lot of things on his plate, far beyond just the limited items you're interested in.
did you ever stop and notice (since you brought up the midterms) how many Progressives right here on the pages of HP said "they were sitting out the midterms to punish Obama". we certainly saw how well that "punishment" worked out, didn't we?
you're obviously not a student of history, because if you were, you'd realize that the present session of Congress directly mirrors the Congress of 1994-1996. do you remember what happened in 1996? voters were sick of the rightward tilt of Congress, and in 1996 reelected a Democratic majority, as well as a Democratic President.
if you could get past your griping and hand-wringing, perhaps you'd see the sky is not falling.
As is typically the case, the knee jerk reaction to a poor situation did not help in any way.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/aug/23/obamas-immigration-shake-up/
And it has support in both the House and Senate.
Plus you have to consider conservative Dem's like Sen. Lincoln, who was eventually defeated as she was in bed with the GOP too often.
If he changes his sales and messaging technique, yes.
If he can control the narrative, yes.
If he lays out 'goals' instead of specifics, no.
If he's bold and isn't afraid to lose, yes.
But let's be fair....he had to compromise on the stimulus, giving half in the form of tax cuts. It was bound to not produce what it should have. He also hinted at a second stimulus and that all went down the tubes with the deficit/debt debate taking over.
His health care reform has a number of extremely positive aspects that are major breakthroughs. No, it has no public option. No bill would have passed with a public option, in spite of anything Obama might have said or done. Once the PR battle was lost, so was the public option.
I agree on the big banks, although there were some consumer protections passed by Congress.
He agreed to extend the Bush tax cuts in order to be able to extend unemployment benefits. The R's would go along with bifurcating the Bush tax cuts - keeping those for middle incomes and eliminating those for upper incomes. He was faced with a poor choice. The Congress should have taken the unemployment extension up before the November 2010 elections, and not having done so set a poor stage.
I agree that other reforms Obama promised have not been forthcoming - but NO President does everything they promise. It's not that simple.
I'm surprised and disappointed he hasn't ended the wars.
The president's one shining success so far in his presidency? His fundraising for re-election. As his war chest edges toward $100 million, with 14 months to go, we are finally seeing Obama the Action Figure. Finally an issue that fully engages him. This kind of stepping up to the plate is why we elected him in the first place. We desperately needed someone who could Do What Needed To Be Done.
Maybe we should have just briefed him a little more on what we had in mind.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-robertson/the-obama-jobs-plan-offsh_b_933038.html
Nope.