Why does the Right think that it's the Government's job to create jobs?

[HailGreen28]

Been wondering this for some time, but isn't the right supposed to be all about the free market and free enterprise... why is it that every time I turn around all I hear is that Obama isn't doing enough to create jobs? Isn't that what businesses are supposed to do? Since when did the Right take such a socialistic bent that they expect all the new jobs in this country to have a government sourcing?

Is it just cause the government is the easiest scapegoat? I mean, we've been told that keeping the "Bush" tax cuts and loopholes would stimulate the economy and get employers hiring. Well, where is our utopia? It's been a decade of low taxes!

Mind you, while the jobs are missing businesses are booming. Record profits are not at all rare for many industries in this poor economy. So why doesn't anything trickle down.

My guess is that it's the government's fault because... well, I guess we need more regulation or less regulation or less taxes... clearly, record profits should be correlated with a stagnant economy, low employment, and reduced opportunity. It's Obama's fault that corporations aren't hiring because... well, if more people were hired then more people would be taxed, that would mean higher revenues for the government and that would be like a tax hike!

Hiring people equals raising our taxes people!

... but seriously, well... not too seriously... since when is the government the right's answer to all our job creation concerns?

Same reason the left comes down hard on right-wingers personally hold family values. When a party tries setting itself as above the other on an issue, expect the other party to come down hard on an opponent coming up short.

The left tried setting themselves apart that they could create jobs. The right is sticking it to them, just like the left does them on morals.

[Wrong Direction]

Notice how this guy uses the monthly average of private sector employment for the pre-Obamacare months (67,600) but includes public sector jobs in his averages of post-Obamacare job numbers (6,500). It is true that hiring slumped in the Summer of 2010, but it is almost entirely the fault of Government layoffs. The private sector actually did fine in these months.

Third, how can this author make such assumptions about the health care law without mentioning any other outside factors that might influence job growth over the course of these months? Stimulus funds started circulating in the economy sometime between April and May of 2009. High gas prices, the monstrous tornados in the middle of the country, the Japanese tsunami...all have impacted our economy for the worse, as has the European debt crisis, which is the primary reason for the giant fluctuations in the stock market recently.

...

The last point I'll make, outside of all these factors, the most important factor in my mind is that consumer wages have been stagnant for the past 30 years, unemployment is extremely high, the value of everybody's home is underwater, and rather than spending, consumers are having to pay off their debt. Thus, the economy has very little demand, which means businesses aren't expanding. And we're in this nasty cycle that will take a long time to recover from.

Good post NoVaO. Upon further review (just checked the BLS site), the article I posted is somewhat misleading. There are a few things I take away from the data, and other observations.

1. Federal government payrolls have gone down significantly for a couple of reasons. First, temporary census workers were laid off. This (at a glance) appears to be roughly 50% of the decline. Second, the stimulus is starting to run out.

2. Even with the better than represented in the article I posted, private sector job growth at 130k on average just doesn't get it done. This is not fast enough to overcome in the labor force. Basically, we're at break even on the private sector side, and still at a net negative in the total non-farm payroll side.

3. Much of the decline in government jobs is happening at the local level. This is a combination of a couple of things. First, the recovery act forestalled some of these layoffs. We could argue whether this is a good thing or not. On one hand, the feds cannot subsidize local governments forever. If there's fat at the local level, it too needs to be cut. On the other hand, with tax receipts so low, it's possible local jobs need to be cut beyond just the fat.

4. A semi-related observation, but the young and the poor are disproportionately hurt by this downturn. In this regard, this provides some correlation with health reform. I'd argue that there's probably a strong correlation with the raise in the minimum wage as well, as even Democrat economists are on record pointing out that higher minimum wages results in less jobs for the young and poor.

5. To your last point, I'm on record here saying that the biggest failure from Obama to date has been his lack of a real solution to the housing crisis. Housing is one of our economic engines, and it's been in flames for 3+ years now. Obama did inherit this, but he's failed to address it.

6. There will be big debate on where to go from here, and where Obama went wrong in the first place. I personally don't see how a traditional government spending program, with all of the associated red tape and add-on costs, can move the economy quickly. I would much rather a bold plan to fix housing, for example (not that it's that easy), rather than a hodgepodge of road and tennis court building, and more buyouts for states who should be responsible for their own budget issues.

[Larry]

Problem is that I don't think it's possible to fix housing. At least not any time soon.

Problem is (well, OK, part of the problem, and the insoluble part, IMO) tha housing prices were artificially inflated, and then a lot of people borrowed against those inflated prices.

To me, the only thing that will fax that problem is to wait until the true value of real estate rises to match the amounts of those bubble-inspired mortgages.

And that's going to take years.

To me, it's a lot easier for the government to give people artificial jobs, than it is to get somebody's house out from under water.

[ABQCOWBOY]

Why wouldn't the Right expect more jobs out of this Administration? This was the platform that this President and this administration ran on. Heck, a better question to me is, "Why doesn't the Left think the same?" The left elected this President based on those promises did it not? Why would this question be so out of bounds to ask?

The Right, IMO, never believed that the President and this Administration could fulfill it's promises in this area. However, it's not out of the question for the right to ask about results promised. Especially based on the idea that this Administration wants more funding to further, what has been failed policy with relation to job creation, among other things.

I don't see anything wrong with asking this question.

[twa]

Jobs?

I'm still waiting for them to lower gas prices

[Jumbo]

Jobs?

I'm still waiting for them to lower gas prices

Have faith in the system. Patience.

:pfft:

[Wrong Direction]

Problem is that I don't think it's possible to fix housing. At least not any time soon.

Problem is (well, OK, part of the problem, and the insoluble part, IMO) tha housing prices were artificially inflated, and then a lot of people borrowed against those inflated prices.

To me, the only thing that will fax that problem is to wait until the true value of real estate rises to match the amounts of those bubble-inspired mortgages.

And that's going to take years.

To me, it's a lot easier for the government to give people artificial jobs, than it is to get somebody's house out from under water.

Unfortunately, Obama's stuck in between on housing. His mortgage program had no teeth, but did exist. Plus he supports low rates, which disincents banks from loaning.

You may be right, by the way, but with such an obvious drag on the economy, if we're ever going to throw around trillion dollar stimulus bills, I'd rather them have done so by really focusing on housing instead of the ways he did it, and apparently the way's he'll propose again Thursday.

[gbear]

http://washpost.bloomberg.com/Story?docId=1376-LR3TM21A1I4R01-0DB739SON15F98SDA7GR8J580S

Serive orders are up and prices for services are up.

Am I the only one who yesterday saw a report saying service orders were up? So Manufacturing orders are up, service orders are up, new hires are way up (330,000 last month despite roughly even with losses if one includes Verizon strikers as unemployed and government layoffs), decrease in average productivity (my guess is new hires don't work as fast as those who have done it for years), corporate profits aren't suffering. Am I wrong in reading these signs as a retooling of the American workplace towards new businesses or new business models for existing companies?

Maybe I am out to lunch on this, but on the whole the economy looks to be set to finaly shake things off. Here's hoping politics doesn't screw us up. Side note, I wonder if the news will note the addition of 45,000 jobs next month as the verizon workers returned? Those 45,000 shouldn't have been counted as job losses for the last month, but they were and the news was how flat the jobs were with a net of 0. Not that 45k is huge, but it's not 0. So will the 45k be in the numbers bump for this month to give another positive nudge with the next monthly employment news?

[Burgold]

Have faith in the system. Patience.

:pfft:

Hey, gas has dropped over fifty cents per gallon around these parts.

thinks :kickcan:

Edit: That is an interesting article, gbear.

[gbear]

I just wonder why no news or editorial looks to put all of the recent news together. Individually, the news articles are neutral or negative if one just reads the headlines. It's the combo of what in the news which should be the bigger news. Atleast that's how I take it all. The service sector improvement is huge as it is a mamoth size chunk of our economy. I know economists keep saying we need to grow demand. Well, services and manufcaturing have both shown upticks in orders, for the same time period no less. I think if the news were presented as a whole picture, people might start to show some confidence. I almost think we are back to time where "Only thing we have to fear is fear iteslf" applies. I will grant unemployment is hellishly high, but a large impediment to hiring is uncertainty (read as fear) about the direction the economy is going.

Of course this service news was released yesterday morning when I first saw it, and I didn't see it again in any major news rag till this morning and with a more negative slant at that.

[NoVaO]

2. Even with the better than represented in the article I posted, private sector job growth at 130k on average just doesn't get it done. This is not fast enough to overcome in the labor force. Basically, we're at break even on the private sector side, and still at a net negative in the total non-farm payroll side.

No argument from me here. Private sector job growth hasn't been strong enough...in fact, this has been true for 11 years now.

3. Much of the decline in government jobs is happening at the local level. This is a combination of a couple of things. First, the recovery act forestalled some of these layoffs. We could argue whether this is a good thing or not. On one hand, the feds cannot subsidize local governments forever. If there's fat at the local level, it too needs to be cut. On the other hand, with tax receipts so low, it's possible local jobs need to be cut beyond just the fat.

Government layoffs at the state and local level have been a huge thorn in the side of job growth. In fact, while the stimulus act did save jobs at the state and local level, that didn't actually stop the layoffs. It just prevented the layoffs from being deeper. When you combine the cuts in spending at the state and local level, those cuts off set a lot of the benefits the stimulus provided. So not only was the stimulus too small to begin with (something you probably disagree with), but some of that money pushed into the economy was simply canceled out by spending cuts and layoffs at the state and local level.

4. A semi-related observation, but the young and the poor are disproportionately hurt by this downturn. In this regard, this provides some correlation with health reform. I'd argue that there's probably a strong correlation with the raise in the minimum wage as well, as even Democrat economists are on record pointing out that higher minimum wages results in less jobs for the young and poor.

I don't buy the minimum wage argument. One can make the case an increase in minimum wage would put more money in the pockets of consumers, which would increase demand in the market. Remember, even Wal-Mart advocated for an increase in the minimum wage because they noticed a slow down in consumer spending prior to the 1st and 15th of every month, and then a surge in consumer activity immediately after pay checks were issued. A higher minimum wage would increase consumer spending.

In addition, in surveys from small businesses, I'm not seeing cost of labor as a huge impediment to hiring. The No. 1 issue right now is a lack of sales. And this number has increased substantially since the financial collapse.

5. To your last point, I'm on record here saying that the biggest failure from Obama to date has been his lack of a real solution to the housing crisis. Housing is one of our economic engines, and it's been in flames for 3+ years now. Obama did inherit this, but he's failed to address it.

No argument here. Obama's housing policies haven't been effective. And I actually think there are things he can do on housing that won't require him having to go through Congress, things he can do through an executive order.

6. There will be big debate on where to go from here, and where Obama went wrong in the first place. I personally don't see how a traditional government spending program, with all of the associated red tape and add-on costs, can move the economy quickly. I would much rather a bold plan to fix housing, for example (not that it's that easy), rather than a hodgepodge of road and tennis court building, and more buyouts for states who should be responsible for their own budget issues.

I'd love to see a bold plan to fix housing as well. But I'm also for a giant investment in infrastructure. Our current infrastructure looks like one of a third world country compared to China and other countries overseas.

This is something both labor and business is behind, a rare case of bipartisanship. Money is dirt cheap right now. The labor is sitting on the sidelines. There is actual work that needs to be done. I can't see any reason not to do it.

And I don't just want to see roads re-paved. Sure, roads need fixing and bridges need to be re-built, but I'd like to see projects that actually encourage economic growth. You have these letters to the President from Republican politicians asking for funding so infrastructure can be built in their districts for the benefit of a certain industry or so they can attract certain private sector companies to their districts...well, lets give it to them. Use an infrastructure bank to choose the projects that are most worthy of funding, so there are no bridges to nowhere.

I also like the program that rebuilds our school and makes them more energy efficient. The policy is here:

http://web.epi-data.org/temp727/Fix%20America%27s%20Schools_Today_FINAL.pdf

As for aid to the states, I understand it may be temporary, but state and local governments are bleeding jobs and hurting the recovery. I think we should stop that bleeding. Perhaps we are delaying the inevitable, but there is also hope that revenue for these states recover enough to where layoffs can be avoided, or at least recover enough to limit the number of layoffs they eventually have to make.

---------- Post added September-7th-2011 at 10:08 PM ----------

http://washpost.bloomberg.com/Story?docId=1376-LR3TM21A1I4R01-0DB739SON15F98SDA7GR8J580S

Serive orders are up and prices for services are up.

Am I the only one who yesterday saw a report saying service orders were up? So Manufacturing orders are up, service orders are up, new hires are way up (330,000 last month despite roughly even with losses if one includes Verizon strikers as unemployed and government layoffs), decrease in average productivity (my guess is new hires don't work as fast as those who have done it for years), corporate profits aren't suffering. Am I wrong in reading these signs as a retooling of the American workplace towards new businesses or new business models for existing companies?

Maybe I am out to lunch on this, but on the whole the economy looks to be set to finaly shake things off. Here's hoping politics doesn't screw us up. Side note, I wonder if the news will note the addition of 45,000 jobs next month as the verizon workers returned? Those 45,000 shouldn't have been counted as job losses for the last month, but they were and the news was how flat the jobs were with a net of 0. Not that 45k is huge, but it's not 0. So will the 45k be in the numbers bump for this month to give another positive nudge with the next monthly employment news?

I think there are some positive signs in the economy, but those signs don't really point to recovery -- they point to no double dip recession.

I was kind of annoyed when reporters failed to mention the impact those strikers had on the jobs report, but it is what it is. And 45,000 jobs still would come in below expectations.

A couple of other things...

1. The European debt crisis clearly has had an impact on the U.S. economy, and that is a situation largely out of our control.

2. The debt ceiling debate was a huge road block in our recovery. I saw a stat that the debt ceiling debate resulted in the second largest drop in consumer confidence in our nation's history, with Hurricane Katrina being the only thing topping it. The debate was toxic, and my own partisanship aside, if Republicans weren't in control of the House, that debate would not have happened and our recovery would be on better footing. Unfortunately, that is not the case and the result of that debate was more of a pox on both your houses even though the Republicans may have fared a little worse in polling.

[grhqofb5]

Not going to read the entire thread or bust out my textbook on economics. Some of you regulars in the tailgate start these types of threads for the purpose of asking a question that you already have the answer to. Do you really believe that's what the republican party expects? To create an army of government droids to build dams, bridges, tunnels, and parking lots? Or do you believe that the republican party expects the "government" to create the proper economic climate conducive to job creation? Policies that encourage growth of business, investment in technology, competition in business, spending, etc. Shouldn't that just be a universal concept? Every chief executive should bear the burden of steering this ship in that direction, without pointing the finger.

[NoCalMike]

When a bubble economy pops, it has horrible effects, but it also represents a great time to change the way things are done. Unfortunately, it looks like both parties will be plenty happy just re-inflating the same bubble so the numbers will good on a spread sheet and then can be trotted out as "fixing the economy"

Someone made a comment about housing prices being artificially inflated, that is totally 100% true. When the housing market was at it's peak, the prices were ridiculous, a lot of cities did not have the jobs with the types of salaries to support those prices, so most people buying houses were either commuting from bigger cities, (for example a lot of people buying houses in Sacramento were actually Bay Area natives who bought in Sacramento and made the 80min commute to work) or people buying everything on credit and horrible loans.

There needs to be checks & balances in place to prevent this type of bubble over and over.

[Wrong Direction]

So not only was the stimulus too small to begin with (something you probably disagree with), but some of that money pushed into the economy was simply canceled out by spending cuts and layoffs at the state and local level.

Yeah, I disagree about the size of the stimulus. I think it addressed the wrong problem, and inefficiently at that.

I don't buy the minimum wage argument. One can make the case an increase in minimum wage would put more money in the pockets of consumers, which would increase demand in the market. Remember, even Wal-Mart advocated for an increase in the minimum wage because they noticed a slow down in consumer spending prior to the 1st and 15th of every month, and then a surge in consumer activity immediately after pay checks were issued. A higher minimum wage would increase consumer spending.

In addition, in surveys from small businesses, I'm not seeing cost of labor as a huge impediment to hiring. The No. 1 issue right now is a lack of sales. And this number has increased substantially since the financial collapse.

Small businesses have a finite salary pool. They're not sitting on huge amounts of money when the minimum wage is lower. Instead, they're likely to use that same salary pool to hire more workers. So, from a demand perspective, roughly the same amount of money is likely to be put into labor, and thus into demand, regardless. The difference is more people would be employed.

From a paper on the subject:

http://www.economics.uci.edu/files/economics/docs/workingpapers/2006-07/Neumark-08.pdf

The studies surveyed in this paper lead to 91 entries in our summary tables (in some cases covering more than one paper). Of these, by our reckoning nearly two-thirds give a relatively consistent (although by no means always statistically significant) indication of negative employment effects of minimum wages—where we sometimes focus on results for the least-skilled—and fewer than 10 give a relatively consistent indication of positive employment effects. In addition, we have highlighted in the tables 20 studies that we view as providing more credible evidence, and 16 (80 percent) of these point to negative employment effects. Correspondingly, we have indicated in our narrative review that, in our view, many of the studies that find zero or positive effects suffer from various shortcomings.

There are many conflicting opinions on this issue, but I believe one thing is constant...people who get and maintain minimum wage jobs don't stay at the minimum wage all that long. They're promoted to higher wages. If true, isn't it good to get as many people into the labor pool as possible?

I'd love to see a bold plan to fix housing as well. But I'm also for a giant investment in infrastructure. Our current infrastructure looks like one of a third world country compared to China and other countries overseas.

This is something both labor and business is behind, a rare case of bipartisanship. Money is dirt cheap right now. The labor is sitting on the sidelines. There is actual work that needs to be done. I can't see any reason not to do it.

I really think infrastructure spending is a matter of national priorities, but not a matter for sustainable stimulus. A bold stimulus plan would address our largest inefficient or broken sectors. Now, that's housing, healthcare and energy. Each of these have huge impact across the economy and each of them have inflated costs for various reasons. If you want to stimulate demand, I'd rather save everyone money on their energy/gas bills and healthcare costs, and try to fix a major economic engine in housing. Instead, Obama's focus seems to be on areas that won't have much of a short term stimulating effect, and very little long term stimulating effects.

For example, if we were to allow association health plans to be created and sold across state lines, healthcare costs for millions would go down as soon as January. If we invested in our energy infrastructure, we'd start with an ROI similar to building new roads, but we'd also get the benefit of lower energy/gas prices because of that investment's effect on international markets. Every man, woman and business would be paying less...leaving more cash for demand. I think we generally agree on housing as well. Heck, if Obama would just send the three free trade agreements to Congress, estimates are that tens of thousands to 100,000 jobs would be created. But he hasn't.

I don't know what Obama's going to propose tonight, but I haven't heard much of anything on energy and nothing on health. I definitely don't have confidence that he'll propose a useful stimulus. Instead, I think it'll barely move the needle (maybe bringing unemployment to 8.6-8.7%).

And I don't just want to see roads re-paved. Sure, roads need fixing and bridges need to be re-built, but I'd like to see projects that actually encourage economic growth. You have these letters to the President from Republican politicians asking for funding so infrastructure can be built in their districts for the benefit of a certain industry or so they can attract certain private sector companies to their districts...well, lets give it to them. Use an infrastructure bank to choose the projects that are most worthy of funding, so there are no bridges to nowhere.

After I wrote the above, I saw this paragraph. I think my point is that roads and bridges aren't going to do nearly as much to promote growth as other stimulus.

I also like the program that rebuilds our school and makes them more energy efficient. The policy is here:

This reminds me of the EHR spending from the original recovery act. It's a nice idea as a priority, just like building roads and bridges, but as a matter of stimulus, this is a fail. If Obama focus on roads, bridges and schools, he'll have once again missed the urgency of the problem.

As for aid to the states, I understand it may be temporary, but state and local governments are bleeding jobs and hurting the recovery. I think we should stop that bleeding. Perhaps we are delaying the inevitable, but there is also hope that revenue for these states recover enough to where layoffs can be avoided, or at least recover enough to limit the number of layoffs they eventually have to make.

We may be able to agree here. If the feds can help maintain state jobs by paying, say 20% of the cost for employees at risk, this would potentially be a relatively productive way to spend money in the short term. On the other hand, states have their own major issues that need to be fixed, and I almost would rather see them pressured to fix their self-inflicted budget problems than rely on the feds to prop up their failed models. Along these lines, if the feds would block grant Medicaid, states could design their own programs and likely save more than enough money to save most jobs, all while likely even saving the feds money too.

I think there are some positive signs in the economy, but those signs don't really point to recovery -- they point to no double dip recession.

I was kind of annoyed when reporters failed to mention the impact those strikers had on the jobs report, but it is what it is. And 45,000 jobs still would come in below expectations.

This is a low bar, and certainly not success. 0 jobs is a nice headline, so everyone ran with it. 45,000 jobs gets us about 15% of the way to what we need, and they'll be back next month. Mentioning that is akin to mentioning a first quarter tackle on the 30 yard line for a gain of two yards on first down by a rotating D-Lineman whose team just won the super bowl.

1. The European debt crisis clearly has had an impact on the U.S. economy, and that is a situation largely out of our control.

This is hard to quantify, but somewhat true most likely.

2. The debt ceiling debate was a huge road block in our recovery. I saw a stat that the debt ceiling debate resulted in the second largest drop in consumer confidence in our nation's history, with Hurricane Katrina being the only thing topping it. The debate was toxic, and my own partisanship aside, if Republicans weren't in control of the House, that debate would not have happened and our recovery would be on better footing. Unfortunately, that is not the case and the result of that debate was more of a pox on both your houses even though the Republicans may have fared a little worse in polling.

The recovery wasn't on very good footing before the debate. At some point, someone in Washington has to stand up for our long term fiscal sanity. The sooner this happens, the less-bad the eventual crisis will be.

[NoVaO]

Small businesses have a finite salary pool. They're not sitting on huge amounts of money when the minimum wage is lower. Instead, they're likely to use that same salary pool to hire more workers. So, from a demand perspective, roughly the same amount of money is likely to be put into labor, and thus into demand, regardless. The difference is more people would be employed.

From a paper on the subject:

http://www.economics.uci.edu/files/economics/docs/workingpapers/2006-07/Neumark-08.pdf

There are many conflicting opinions on this issue, but I believe one thing is constant...people who get and maintain minimum wage jobs don't stay at the minimum wage all that long. They're promoted to higher wages. If true, isn't it good to get as many people into the labor pool as possible.

Then I take it you are for the Earned Income Tax credit? Ronald Reagan proposed the EIC as an alternative to raising the minimum wage. He sought a way to help lower income Americans without increasing the burden on business, so the EIC was born. Of course, that would mean no more complaining about the 47% of Americans who don't pay federal income taxes because the EIC eliminates the federal income tax liabilities of many lower income Americans.

For example, if we were to allow association health plans to be created and sold across state lines, healthcare costs for millions would go down as soon as January.

The health care bill basically does this, though it does it in a way so insurance companies can't simply park in the state with the lowest amount of regulations. The bill sets up a national exchange to go into effect in 2014, for insurance companies to compete across all 50 states.

If we invested in our energy infrastructure, we'd start with an ROI similar to building new roads, but we'd also get the benefit of lower energy/gas prices because of that investment's effect on international markets. Every man, woman and business would be paying less...leaving more cash for demand. I think we generally agree on housing as well.

I don't think Obama disagrees with this. Energy infrastructure was a big part of his first stimulus, though the investment needs more funding.

Heck, if Obama would just send the three free trade agreements to Congress, estimates are that tens of thousands to 100,000 jobs would be created. But he hasn't.

The reason why those trade bills haven't been sent to Congress is that the administration wants more funding for job training and help for workers who's jobs get outsourced to another country. But even with that additional funding, I'm very skeptical that these trade deals would result in a net jobs increase for America. These deals would be great for corporations looking for cheap labor though.

I don't know what Obama's going to propose tonight, but I haven't heard much of anything on energy and nothing on health. I definitely don't have confidence that he'll propose a useful stimulus. Instead, I think it'll barely move the needle (maybe bringing unemployment to 8.6-8.7%).

Well, I don't think health care needs to be in there since we passed a massive health care bill last year and we won't know the impact of that bill until it goes into effect.

I think Obama will be proposing measures that Republicans have been on record of supporting in the past. Things that have had bipartisan support in the past. So I think his plan will be heavy on tax cuts, which I disagree with. I'd like to see him go much bigger on infrastructure.

The total cost of the package is estimated to be around $300 billion, which is nowhere near enough to what we actually need, and around half the package is geared toward policies that are already in place.

This reminds me of the EHR spending from the original recovery act. It's a nice idea as a priority, just like building roads and bridges, but as a matter of stimulus, this is a fail. If Obama focus on roads, bridges and schools, he'll have once again missed the urgency of the problem.

I disagree on the schools, and one reason why is because most infrastructure projects need to time for planning, so the money doesn't go out immediately. That's fine for the long term, but the economy does need some short term cash infusion, and rebuilding schools is infrastructure spending that can be done almost immediately and it probably has a higher ROI than just repaving roads or rebuilding bridges. Plus, you can save local governments money by making these schools much more energy efficient.

We may be able to agree here. If the feds can help maintain state jobs by paying, say 20% of the cost for employees at risk, this would potentially be a relatively productive way to spend money in the short term. On the other hand, states have their own major issues that need to be fixed, and I almost would rather see them pressured to fix their self-inflicted budget problems than rely on the feds to prop up their failed models. Along these lines, if the feds would block grant Medicaid, states could design their own programs and likely save more than enough money to save most jobs, all while likely even saving the feds money too.

States have their own issues, but they are largely in the shape they're in because of what's going on in the national economy.

Giving block grants to the states is just allowing them to cut people off the roles of medicaid. I don't think it's a net win when jobs are saved due to the cutting off of many people's health care. And I don't think the states would ever be able to come up with a program they could fund without the help of the federal government.

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3409

This is a low bar, and certainly not success. 0 jobs is a nice headline, so everyone ran with it. 45,000 jobs gets us about 15% of the way to what we need, and they'll be back next month. Mentioning that is akin to mentioning a first quarter tackle on the 30 yard line for a gain of two yards on first down by a rotating D-Lineman whose team just won the super bowl.

I agree, but I just found it kind of annoying.

This is hard to quantify, but somewhat true most likely.

Its impact shows up more in the stock market, but the huge drops hurt consumer confidence and may make business more hesitant to invest.

The recovery wasn't on very good footing before the debate. At some point, someone in Washington has to stand up for our long term fiscal sanity. The sooner this happens, the less-bad the eventual crisis will be.

You're right about the recovery, which makes it even more foolish to be playing political brinksmanship. They "stood up for our long term fiscal sanity" in exactly the wrong way, and they turned that position into an ideological battle over the role of government with their position on taxes. Our long term fiscal standing would be in much better shape had House Republicans negotiated in good faith with Democrats on tax reform than trying to go with a spending cuts only approach.

[Wrong Direction]

NoVaO, I've got the kids for now, but I'll try to read and reply later. Hopefully our responses become shorter.

[Wrong Direction]

Then I take it you are for the Earned Income Tax credit?

Technically, no, I'm against the EIC. However, that's because of the ridiculousness of our tax code and the gaming of the system, not necessarily the idea of providing a credit to the working poor.

The health care bill basically does this, though it does it in a way so insurance companies can't simply park in the state with the lowest amount of regulations. The bill sets up a national exchange to go into effect in 2014, for insurance companies to compete across all 50 states.

...

Well, I don't think health care needs to be in there since we passed a massive health care bill last year and we won't know the impact of that bill until it goes into effect.

I'm 90% sure I'm right on what I'm about to say, but am hedging because you seem like an intelligent person. I don't believe the ACA allows for a national exchange, per se. That would require federal administration. It is administered by the states and requires states to enter into agreements with each other if they want to allow exchanges beyond their borders. Therefore, it's subject to federal and multiple state mandates, and must have an agreement in place that all states and the feds agree to every single time a new state agrees to join, as opposed to the best deal something like a major trade association could negotiate on behalf of it's millions of members. One is heavy handed government. The other is allowing the marketplace to get the best deal in the interest of its members.

Oh, and realistically, healthcare won't be included except at the margins. However, better reforms are still badly needed.

I don't think Obama disagrees with this. Energy infrastructure was a big part of his first stimulus, though the investment needs more funding.

I'm on record here, but in a nutshell I think Obama gives this issue lip service much like his educational reforms. If he wanted something really bold, it would be obvious. It's far from obvious. He hasn't gone nearly far enough here, IMO.

The reason why those trade bills haven't been sent to Congress is that the administration wants more funding for job training and help for workers who's jobs get outsourced to another country.

You know what...then he should stop telling Congress to approve them. He's held them up through three years, including 2 with full Democrat control. More lip service. Actions speak louder than words, as your friend Tony Pente likes to say.

I think Obama will be proposing measures that Republicans have been on record of supporting in the past...So I think his plan will be heavy on tax cuts, which I disagree with. I'd like to see him go much bigger on infrastructure.

Now we've seen what he says is his plan. I fail to see how it'll be effective. The small business tax cut is miniscule as a % of what people are paid, so this cut does little to improve businesses risk, which is why both D's and R's have opposed it when he's proposed it in the past. It'll do some good, but not live up to its billing. Indeed, it'll mostly incent minimum and low wage type of hiring (which isn't necessarily bad).

The total cost of the package is estimated to be around $300 billion, which is nowhere near enough to what we actually need, and around half the package is geared toward policies that are already in place.

...

I disagree on the schools, and one reason why is because most infrastructure projects need to time for planning, so the money doesn't go out immediately. That's fine for the long term, but the economy does need some short term cash infusion, and rebuilding schools is infrastructure spending that can be done almost immediately and it probably has a higher ROI than just repaving roads or rebuilding bridges. Plus, you can save local governments money by making these schools much more energy efficient.

Yup, I wanted him to be bold on housing and provide better infrastructure investment. Your argument on schools is ok to me. As you've described, it's certainly better than roads in terms of being "shovel ready" (which I still doubt even in this case), but not incredibly meaningful in terms of additional value added. Overall, his plan looks like a waste of time to me.

States have their own issues, but they are largely in the shape they're in because of what's going on in the national economy.

Giving block grants to the states is just allowing them to cut people off the roles of medicaid. I don't think it's a net win when jobs are saved due to the cutting off of many people's health care. And I don't think the states would ever be able to come up with a program they could fund without the help of the federal government.

State's largest issue is Medicaid and Obama just forced them to expand that program through the ACA. The left talks about Medicaid block grants as cutting people off of their roles, but that is not accurate. There are many ways for states to diminish costs which aren't allowed by the feds.

You're right about the recovery, which makes it even more foolish to be playing political brinksmanship.

We'll just need to agree to disagree on this. I believe that if the Democrats supported immediate meaningful cuts, the R's would have happily raised taxes a little bit. The R's have been offerred a false choice, and it will remain false until the D's put their name to meaningful spending changes.