The jobs bill emerging in the Senate is pathetic, both as a response to joblessness and as an example of legislation deemed capable of winning bipartisan support.
An $85 billion proposal put forward Thursday morning by Max Baucus, the chairman of the Finance Committee, and by Charles Grassley, the committee’s top Republican, scarcely began to grapple with the $266 billion in provisions for jobs and stimulus that President Obama proposed in his budget. It was not even in the same league as the modest House-passed $154 billion jobs bill.
Worse, about half of the proposal had nothing to do with new jobs. The single largest chunk, about $31 billion, went to renew expiring tax breaks that are generally useful but unrelated to jobs. Another $10 billion would renew an expiring Medicare payment formula so doctors wouldn’t face a pay cut.
And, by Thursday afternoon, many Democrats said they could not support the lopsided proposal. So the majority leader, Harry Reid, decided to hold a vote on a stripped-down, $15 billion version in late February. The rest of the package, plus many other job-creation ideas, would be left for another day.
With 14.8 million Americans unemployed — more than 40 percent of them for more than six months — the smaller package is so puny as to be meaningless. Most of the $15 billion would cover the cost of a payroll tax holiday in 2010 for employers that hire unemployed workers. Since there are more than six unemployed workers for every job opening, a tax break for hiring is worth a try. But the proposed credit is too small to have a noticeable impact. At best, it would create about 250,000 additional jobs from April through the end of the year, according to an analysis by Moody’s Economy.com.
An even bigger problem is that the hiring credit is unlikely to work as intended unless it’s paired with other federal support to generate and maintain consumer demand — mainly extended unemployment benefits and more fiscal aid to states. No matter what Congress does to lower the cost of labor, employers won’t hire unless they believe demand will be sufficient to sell whatever the business produces. Absent unemployment benefits (which will expire at the end of February if Congress does not extend them) and aid to hard-pressed states, there are, as yet, no compelling signs that consumer demand will hold up this year.
At a minimum, a credible jobs package must extend unemployment benefits through 2010. Piecemeal extensions only ensure that lawmakers will have to return to the issue repeatedly, creating avoidable uncertainty for unemployed workers and for businesses that rely on the consumer demand generated by jobless benefits.
A credible package also must provide fiscal aid to states, which continue to be slammed by falling tax revenues just as more people need help. Without more aid, states will have to cut spending and raise taxes to close an estimated $142 billion budget gap for fiscal year 2011, which starts on July 1 for most states. Last year’s gap was $125 billion. Next year’s is anticipated to be $118 billion.
What senators don’t understand or choose to ignore is that state budget cuts mean layoffs. State and local governments are among the nation’s largest employers, responsible for 15 percent of the labor force, about the same share as the health care sector and far larger than manufacturing or the financial sector. Since August 2008, states and localities have eliminated 151,000 jobs.
State budget cuts also end or reduce payments to private contractors and to recipients of social programs. That reduces demand, which leads to more job loss.
The $15 billion Senate proposal may win Republican votes, but better-than-nothing is not nearly good enough. Neither is a pledge to do more later. A full response to joblessness is already overdue.
Comments that I found relevent
It has become increasingly clear to me, as more and more of the issues that are actually important to the people of The United States get derailed by the power politics of Washington, that the United States Senate has been reduced to nothing more than an obstructionist body and should be abolished. Abolishing the Senate, or at least denuding it of its status as a co-equal branch of Government (or at least co-equal with the House), seems like a reasonable measure at times like these, when issues affecting huge swaths of the population of the country can be upended and diverted by power-plays perpetrated by small-state politicians. Politicians who have benefitted from the inefficiencies of a Federal system designed hundreds of years ago for a country less than a tenth of its current size. In fact, the independent state-hoods of many of the Plains and western states should be reconstituted, and amalgamated into territories that better reflect the concerns of a country with such a large population. A state of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming for example, would better reflect the profile of the population of that territory, and put it more in line with the other states that actually have to contend with the concerns of a large population. The same goes for North and South Dakota, and Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma, and so forth. In our current time, the structures and concerns of the past are outmoded and ineffective, and should be reconsidered.
The Senate as a body has proved itself time and time again to be a drag on the will of the People, and unless it can be re-balanced to more accurately reflect the character of this country, should be sidelined, or simply removed.
The Senate as a body has proved itself time and time again to be a drag on the will of the People, and unless it can be re-balanced to more accurately reflect the character of this country, should be sidelined, or simply removed.
What small business owners in the manufacturing industry agree upon:
We have no work. We have no orders. We do not need tax breaks for hiring people who would sit idle. We do not need tax breaks for purchasing machinery that will sit idle. Such incentives will only be advantageous once we have work but not the capital needed to expand back up to where we were three years ago.
We need work. We need markets. Unfair foreign competition and the governments "service economy" mentality is killing us. If you want to add value, you have to process something. (The food industry knows this. Just like a dollar of potatoes, oil and salt becomes eleven dollars of potato chips, ten dollars of silicon can become a one hundred dollar solar panel).
New initiatives for technically educating the workforce is nice. But the bulk of our work force is sitting home idle, well educated and qualified as they are.
Give us technical initiatives and programs to fund them. Advanced solar power. Artificial intelligence. Materials science. Nanotechnology. Communications. Superconductivity. Short term space programs. Programs to free up air traffic controllers from their manual work. Advanced ground traffic control. Disaster prediction. Telerobotics. Nuclear power plant control and safety. New transportation initiatives. The list could fill a book.
Involve people whose expertise lies beyond the realm of getting themselves elected.
We have no work. We have no orders. We do not need tax breaks for hiring people who would sit idle. We do not need tax breaks for purchasing machinery that will sit idle. Such incentives will only be advantageous once we have work but not the capital needed to expand back up to where we were three years ago.
We need work. We need markets. Unfair foreign competition and the governments "service economy" mentality is killing us. If you want to add value, you have to process something. (The food industry knows this. Just like a dollar of potatoes, oil and salt becomes eleven dollars of potato chips, ten dollars of silicon can become a one hundred dollar solar panel).
New initiatives for technically educating the workforce is nice. But the bulk of our work force is sitting home idle, well educated and qualified as they are.
Give us technical initiatives and programs to fund them. Advanced solar power. Artificial intelligence. Materials science. Nanotechnology. Communications. Superconductivity. Short term space programs. Programs to free up air traffic controllers from their manual work. Advanced ground traffic control. Disaster prediction. Telerobotics. Nuclear power plant control and safety. New transportation initiatives. The list could fill a book.
Involve people whose expertise lies beyond the realm of getting themselves elected.
We need a good temporary fix for our unemployment situation in the form of public jobs programs to work on our infrastructure, and in the meantime, Congress needs to do something about all the unfair trade agreements that take our jobs. All the job bills in the world won't do any good over the long run without fixing the primary cause of so much unemployment and underemployment in this country.
It must be made counterproductive for companies to offshore jobs and there should be a moratorium on all work visas for foreignors. The American government has been shirking its duty to the people for too long; a part of their job is to regulate business and commerce in a way that benefits the people of this country. They have been doing just the opposite for years. Too many rewards are handed out to businesses for offshoring jobs, and it's about time Congress realized how perverse that is. To me it's economic treason.
It must be made counterproductive for companies to offshore jobs and there should be a moratorium on all work visas for foreignors. The American government has been shirking its duty to the people for too long; a part of their job is to regulate business and commerce in a way that benefits the people of this country. They have been doing just the opposite for years. Too many rewards are handed out to businesses for offshoring jobs, and it's about time Congress realized how perverse that is. To me it's economic treason.
These are the rotten fruits of bi-partisanship. For the good of the country President Obama must end his silly,idiotic quixotic quest of bipartisanship, with the disrespectful, despicably racist Republicans. It's time President Obama faces up to the truth: the Republicans do not give a rat's behind for ordinary Americans. The only reasons Republicans are in government are to protect Corporate interests and enrich themselves and their friends...that's it. So, President Obama get real, soon, the people need a real president, with a real spine.
Thus Neighborhood Playgrounds got play equipment, softball fields got laid out, picnic tables were built. I learned to Ice Skate on a WPA pond, and warm up next to a WPA enclosed Iron Furnace. The workers who built this stuff understood it was temporary work for just about minimum wage, and as soon as private hiring resumed, the projects would be completed and closed down. Normal WPA wages were $22.00 per week for a maximum of 35 hours work. Didn't matter whether you dug out skating ponds, painted post office murals or wrote travel guides for your state. None of the work was in competition with Private Industry, and all of it produced things of value in the Public Domain. FDR's notion was that people were better off working than collecting relief payments, he understood that working was about being part of community. He wanted the work product to be attractive, a source of pride -- but he did not want the projects to be so large and permanent that workers would see them as long term. Thus the quite low wages, that left incentive to keep looking for private employment.
Both the President but most of all Congress needs to be reminded about how these "Jobs Projects" really worked. Today much of our problem is the loss of memory or knowledge of the History of Great Depression Era projects, and as a consequence, citizens cannot lay on decision makers the expectations they should.
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