There’s nothing partisan about a road or a bridge or an airport; Democrats and Republicans have voted to spend billions on them for decades and long supported rebuilding plans in their own states. On Thursday, though, when President Obama’s plan to spend $60 billion on infrastructure repairs came up for a vote in the Senate, not a single Republican agreed to break the party’s filibuster.
That’s because the bill would pay for itself with a 0.7 percent surtax on people making more than $1 million. That would affect about 345,000 taxpayers, according to Citizens for Tax Justice, adding an average of $13,457 to their annual tax bills. Protecting that elite group — and hewing to their rigid antitax vows — was more important to Senate Republicans than the thousands of construction jobs the bill would have helped create, or the millions of people who would have used the rebuilt roads, bridges and airports.
Senate Republicans filibustered the president’s full jobs act last month for the same reasons. And they have vowed to block the individual pieces of that bill that Democrats are now bringing to the floor. Senate Democrats have also accused them of opposing any good idea that might put people back to work and rev the economy a bit before next year’s presidential election.
…Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, bitterly accused Democrats of designing their infrastructure bill to fail by paying for it with a millionaire’s tax, as if his party’s intransigence was so indomitable that daring to challenge it is somehow underhanded.
The only good news is that the Democrats aren’t going to stop. There are many more jobs bills to come, including extension of unemployment insurance and the payroll-tax cut. If Republicans are so proud of blocking all progress, they will have to keep doing it over and over again, testing the patience of American voters.
The New York Times, “Putting Millionaires Before Jobs.”
Yep. Specifically, Republicans. When they fight for no tax increases, they want you to believe that they’re doing so for all income levels. Nope. Just for the wealthy. Just for the fucking One Percent.
They are actually doing it to torpedo Obama’s efforts to improve the economy. It’s political terrorism.
It’s time for a national general strike, a week long disruption of everything, to demonstrate against the insanity of our political system, the mounting inequality these idiots are defending, and the oligarchic control of our government and policies ab the 1%.
Source: inothernews
Although the American people are concerned about restoring our economy and creating jobs, today we are returning to irrelevant issues that do nothing to promote economic growth to put Americans back to work.
- Congressman Jerry Nadler, (D-NY), complaining about the GOP-sponsored bill to reaffirm ‘In God We Trust’ as the official motto of the US, the official motto for the past 55 years, and which is unchallenged at present.
(via Dana Milbank, in House Republicans, keeping the faith - The Washington Post)
Source: Washington Post
We have a lot of kids graduating college, can’t find jobs, that’s what happened in Cairo, that’s what happened in Madrid. You don’t want those kinds of riots here. The damage to a generation that can’t find jobs will go on for many, many years.
Source: soupsoup
Fixing the Economy - A Good Jobs Program - NYTimes.com
There is a crater in the economy where the job market used to be.- NY Times Editorial Board
Congressional caucus leaders want actual jobs for actual unemployed people, not tax breaks for corporations.
underpaidgenius
Last year, one in five American adults worked in jobs that paid poverty-level wages http://t.co/yykFGyb
9/6/11 10:12 AM
With No New Jobs in August, Calls for Urgent Action - Sheila Dewan
As I said a month ago (see Enough) we will look back on July 2011 as the start of the New Depression, when we slid over the edge from recession.
Obama has one chance left, but with the GOP calling him ‘President Zero’ I don’t know if he can convince enough Americans that we need a huge infrastructure investment.
It’s sad to think that a second hurrricane hitting the US and causing huge damage might be the only thing that could get the population behind a jobs program.
Every $1 billion invested in transport infrastructure creates between 27,800 and 34,800 jobs.
Source: bafuture.org
The real value in Mr. Bernanke’s speech is that he explained what really ails the economy — and made the case for a better fiscal response to address those ills. “Good, proactive housing policies” would speed recovery, he said, as would “putting people back to work.”
If Mr. Bernanke advocated specific policies to achieve those aims, he would be violating the etiquette that requires Fed chairmen to leave fiscal details to Congress.
So allow us. The best, proactive way to revive the housing market is to help bankrupt and delinquent borrowers rework their mortgages through principal reductions. It is also important to ease refinancing rules so underwater borrowers who are current in their payments can trade in their high-rate mortgages for lower-rate loans. The Obama administration is considering new refinancing rules, but mortgage investors are sure to resist.
One of the best ways to put people back to work is to fully reauthorize the highway trust fund, a big job creator and vital source of money for improving the nation’s infrastructure. Job creation also requires that federal funds are made available to repair and renovate schools, and to rehire teachers, police officers and firefighters who have lost their jobs in budget cutbacks.
Mr. Bernanke’s Warning - NYTimes.com
The editorial board of the NY Times pick up where Bernake left off. Why didn’t Obama?
Source: The New York Times
A bold jobs plan is also good politics. With more than 25 million Americans looking for full-time jobs, the wages of people with jobs falling, and an economy on the verge of a double dip, the President has to come out fighting on the side of average people.
Besides, Republicans won’t go along with any jobs initiative he proposes – even a tiny one. Better they reject one that could make a real difference than one that’s pitifully small and symbolic.
If Republicans reject it, Obama can build his 2012 campaign around that fight. Maybe he’ll even call Republicans on their big lie that smaller government leads to more jobs.
What would a bold jobs bill look like? Here are the ten components I’d recommend (apologies to those of you who have read some of these before):
1. Exempt first $20K of income from payroll taxes for two years. Make up shortfall by raising ceiling on income subject to payroll taxes.
2. Recreate the WPA and Civilian Conservation Corps to put long-term unemployed directly to work.
3. Create an infrastructure bank authorized to borrow $300 billion a year to repair and upgrade the nation’s roads, bridges, ports, airports, school buildings, and water and sewer systems.
4. Amend bankruptcy laws to allow distressed homeowners to declare bankruptcy on their primary residence, so they can reorganize their mortgage loans.
5. Allow distressed homeowners to sell a portion of their mortgages to the FHA, which would take a proportionate share of any upside gains when the homes are sold.
6. Provide tax incentive to employers who create net new jobs ($2,500 deduction for every net new job created).
7. Make low-interest loans to cash-starved states and cities, so they don’t have to lay off teachers, fire fighters, police officers, and reduce other critical public services.
8. Provide partial unemployment benefits to people who have lost part-time jobs.
9. Enlarge and expand the Earned Income Tax Credit – a wage subsidy for low-wage work.
10. Impose a “severance fee” on any large business that lays off an American worker and outsources the job abroad.
- Robert Reich, The President’s Bold Jobs Bill (Maybe)
Let’s hope. Jobs, jobs, jobs!
Source: robertreich
Stocks Close Down Sharply Over Anxiety on Economy - NYTimes.com
Graham Bowley and Christine Hauser via NY Times
The big stock plunge, though, came around 10 a.m., when the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia reported a sharp drop in regional manufacturing activity in its monthly survey, deepening worries that the economy may dip back into recession.
That report came a day after Morgan Stanley lowered its forecasts for both worldwide and domestic economic growth, partly because it expected cuts in government spending in Europe and the United States to damp recoveries. It described the United States and the euro area as “hovering dangerously close to a recession” and said it would not take much in the form of additional shocks to tip the balance.
The yield on 10-year Treasury bonds dropped to 1.97 percent on the Philadelphia Fed news before recovering to close at 2.07. According to data from Bloomberg, that low during the day was the lowest yield since at least 1962. Global Financial Data, a supplier of historical financial and economic statistics, said it was the lowest since 1950.
“What freaked me out today was that Philly Fed number,” said James W. Paulsen, chief investment strategist for Wells Capital Management. “That was the first number that says recession.”
That sentiment was echoed by Eric Green, an economist at TD Securities. “When you have an economy operating at stall speed facing these headwinds, it does not take much to tip it over the edge,” he said. “You read a report like this and you think we are going over the edge.”
Credit Suisse said in a note that if the Philadelphia numbers proved a national barometer, and that was unknown, “then a recession likely began in August.”
As I predicted, this downturn will not only be a second recession, but in the near future analysts will look back and consider it the conclusive edge of the New Depression.
There is hardly any reason to imagine how it can be turned. The US could — and desperately needs to — ramp up a massive jobs program, but Mr Obama will not have the spine to block all legislation until he gets one.
That sort of obstructionism — which is exactly how the GOP is playing the game these days — will prove necessary.
The Republicans won’t agree to anything from Obama, except massive austerity. They will sacrifice the country for their ideé fixe: to get Obama out of office at all costs.
Playing it safe is not going to cut it. Not proposing anything bold and not trying to do something to definitively deal with our problems would mean that we’re going to have another year and a half like the last year and a half — and then it’s awfully hard to get re-elected.
Christina Romer, professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and former chairwoman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, offers some campaign advice to Mr Obama, cited by Binyamin Appelbaum and Helene Cooper, White House Debates Fight On Economy
It is not a ‘stunt’ — as some of his advisors are saying — to get angry and push for an aggressive jobs agenda that at the present time seems impossible to get through the House. Bang the table every day. Call them names. Make it the single most important issue and talk about it every day. Jobs.
The future of generations is hanging in the balance. These are not abstractions. Imagine it as a crazy person holding a gun to a child’s head, and you have no immediate way to get the madman to put the gun down. Would you walk away, and worry about other things, because you haven’t yet figured out how to get that gun?
These are crazy people holding our country hostage. The fact that they think they are justified to do so, or that God told them to do it, just doesn’t matter.
We have to make jobs the only issue to be discussed. Tie up the work of Congress until they send you a jobs bill you can sign. Accept nothing else. Veto all other legislation until you get a jobs bill. Go nuclear, Mr President.
Source: The New York Times
There is an interesting artifact of the NY Times content management system, one that occasionally sheds additional light on the thinking of the editors.
This morning, for example, there were two editorials about President Obama’s current bus trip and political activities. The first is entitled ‘His Anger Is A Start’ and the second, ‘Fight For A Jobs Agenda’. However, the underlying titles of the HTML pages are somewhat different, reflecting the fact that the pages are often created before a final title is settled. But it is these initial tiles that are displayed in browser tabs, and the URLs associated with the pages. So in today’s two editorials the HTML titles are ‘Waiting For Mr Obama - His Anger Is A Start - NY Times’ and ‘Waiting For Mr Obama - We Need A Jobs Agenda - NY Times’. The URLs match.
So the editors of the NY Times are sending their hidden message, one we can all agree with: we are waiting for Mr Obama. We are waiting for him to get angry and stay angry, and we are waiting for him to create a jobs program. And if he doesn’t do that, or use every power of the presidency to try to do so, he won’t be reelected.
When millions of willing and able workers are unemployed, and economic potential is going to waste to the tune of almost $1 trillion a year, you want policy makers who work on a fast recovery, not people who lecture you on the need for long-run fiscal sustainability.
Unfortunately, giving lectures on long-run fiscal sustainability is a fashionable Washington pastime; it’s what people who want to sound serious do to demonstrate their seriousness. So when the crisis struck and led to big budget deficits — because that’s what happens when the economy shrinks and revenue plunges — many members of our policy elite were all too eager to seize on those deficits as an excuse to change the subject from jobs to their favorite hobbyhorse. And the economy continued to bleed.
What would a real response to our problems involve? First of all, it would involve more, not less, government spending for the time being — with mass unemployment and incredibly low borrowing costs, we should be rebuilding our schools, our roads, our water systems and more. It would involve aggressive moves to reduce household debt via mortgage forgiveness and refinancing. And it would involve an all-out effort by the Federal Reserve to get the economy moving, with the deliberate goal of generating higher inflation to help alleviate debt problems.
The usual suspects will, of course, denounce such ideas as irresponsible. But you know what’s really irresponsible? Hijacking the debate over a crisis to push for the same things you were advocating before the crisis, and letting the economy continue to bleed.
- Paul Krugman, The Hijacked Crisis
Enough. We need jobs, now!
Source: The New York Times
Erratic inquiries of Stowe Boyd, who means well, despite everything.
