(Also at Nevada Progressive)
Yesterday, US Labor Secretary Hilda Solis came here to Las Vegas to explain how the American Jobs Act will make an impact on Nevada’s beleaguered economy once passed.
President Obama’s jobs plan would have a significant positive effect on Southern Nevada’s economy by putting construction laborers back to work, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said today in Las Vegas.
Solis met with the Las Vegas Sun editorial board following an appearance before the Laborers’ International Union of North America at Paris Las Vegas.
Solis said she expects Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan, unveiled to a joint session of Congress on Thursday and detailed in a bill sent to legislators today, to garner bipartisan support because it uses ideas from both sides of the political aisle.
“Economists say anywhere from 1 million to 1.9 million workers in the construction industry (would be put to work),” Solis said. “That would have an immediate impact on places like Nevada, particularly here (in Las Vegas) where the housing boom was the hardest hit.”
Obama’s proposal includes tax breaks for small businesses, economic stimulus programs and a national infrastructure “bank” to fund roads, bridges, airports, seaports, railways, refineries and to upgrade schools. The president has proposed reducing tax deductions, modifying entitlement programs and increasing taxes on the most wealthy to pay for those programs.
It’s a broad ranging piece of legislation that tackles job creation from multiple angles…
Yet House Republicans are already set to reject it and start another possible government shutdown melodrama, even as some progressive Democrats in the House are complaining that it isn’t enough. However, one prominent voice in DC rose to say something that Congressional Republicans really did not want to hear.
“If policymakers want to achieve both a short-term economic boost and long-term fiscal sustainability the combination of policies that would be most effective according to our analysis would be changes in taxes and spending that would widen the deficit today, but narrow it in the coming decade,” [Congressional Budget Office chief Doug] Elmendorf told the panel’s 12 Democrats and Republicans. “The combination of fiscal policies that would be most effective would be policies that cut taxes or increase spending in the near-term, but over the medium and longer-term move in the opposite direction.”
This is a generalized version of precisely what President Obama is proposing — a $447 billion jobs bill that will increase spending on hiring programs, and reduce payroll taxes; accompanied by deficit reduction measures that take effect in 2013, to more than cover the cost of the jobs bill.
As we’ve talked about before, “austerity” does nothing but harm fragile economies in need of investment to recover and grow again. Yet even as top IMF economists point this out to the world, this is what we hear from the Republicans seeking to defeat President Obama next year.
Cheering on the deaths of the uninsured? Arguing over the value of Social Security? And while the Republicans keep playing in “Tea Party Fantasyland”, a record 46.2 million Americans were hit by poverty last year. If there is ever a time to shift into overdrive to focus on job creation and put money in people’s pockets again, it’s now. But instead of offering any credible ideas on that, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, and their enablers on Capitol Hill would rather obsess over “Tea Party” fantasies that would further destroy America’s middle class, like ending Social Security and scrapping health care reform. (No wonder why Perry’s and Romney’s poll numbers are dropping like rocks!)
This is the great disconnect. For far too long, it seemed like far too many policy makers in The Beltway were obsessing over issues that “Middle America” couldn’t care less about while they were out of work and asking where the jobs are. But while President Obama is reaching out to “Middle America” to explain what the American Jobs Act will do to help them get the work they need to rejoin the middle class, Republicans yet again seem to care more about pleasing teabaggers than actually doing their job.
Atdnext
Just a thought, your blog would be easier to read if not in green. It hurts my eyes lol. Just a thought, not a criticism.
Atdnext
First welcome to the Planet. Good piece on the jobs bill. Republicans are pros at, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Albert Einstein
They cannot provide any evidence that tax cuts have created jobs yet they continue to repeat the battle cry. Not one of them will admit that the housing bubble situation was the only reason jobs were created in the Bush administration. Kind of like the old Enron stance, “Virtual money” that was the ATM home, never any cold hard cash value unless you cashed out and did not buy again. Not many people did that. I know, I kept trading up. It was pure chance that I decided to sell high and buy low when moving to Nevada. Again pure chance that I sold high there right before the market failed. I got caught here in Ca but the damage was minimal because I did not come back and buy high again.
It really burns me that they never take responsibility for their failings. And the Tea Party is going to be a major failing on their part because they are going to eat the GOP alive and the Republican party of Goldwater will no longer be viable.
WW 2 did two things. It kept Europe out of the hands of maniacs
And it launched an enormous spending program that finally lifted us out of the last remnants of the Great Depression.
And even if you think WW2 had a minimal effect on “boosting” the economy, the thousands of jobs it created had a major effect.
You spend money to make money. Money creates jobs. Those jobs pay for themselves.
Republicans have been making a ridiculous argument that has never worked in the whole of human history. Ever.
Hi adtnext – welcome to the Planet. Wonderful article, thank you.
I keep hearing how we’re broke then how corporations are sitting on piles and piles of cash. I have a few stocks – they pay a few dividends, but if I were either an institutional investor or even a retiree living on my 401K – would I not be hollering about the hoarding? Where is the outrage from large corporations not getting THEIR dividends from the paper trading they do now that they don’t do anything else?
I believe this is a form of lock-out not against labor but against the nation. If the sole purpose of corporations is to make money for investors, it’s NOT doing that. The face value traded on Wall Street is so volatile that it’s unreliable as a buy-sell means of making money. So again – where is the outrage? I would gather that the “fix is in” – that there is a kind of agreement to hold back money both so it does not go into hiring – screw Obama – and thus also does not go into coffers of stockholders.
So I’m wondering is we could foment a stockholder revolt – lots of people have stock AND vote it – so would it be useful to unleash the people in the middling class to take on this lock-out political strategy? Those especially on retirement investments ought to be fuming.
It’s NOT government keeping you from jobs and money. It’s capital. That has to become one of our messages I think.
What say ye?
Thanks for letting me share my POV here at PlanetPOV, and I continue to look forward to doing more in this community.
Hi atdnext!
Thanks for your article. There is nothing more painfully apparent right now than the repubs’ intentions to block everything in this bill. It is completely transparent. They WANT to make the economy as bad as possible to take back power, and they are willing to sacrifice the American people to do it.
When the President presented the AJA last week, I admit that I was unrealistically hopeful that the Repubs would be forced to pass it, if only for political reasons. I have been disappointed again. There is NO bipartisan support, and they will do what they always do…cut, cap and trash!
Hi atdnext – what a great article!! This austerity thinking has gripped the entire western world – what utter madness 🙄 I live in hope that western governments (most if not all conservative need I say) come to their senses and stop with the nonsense of making over the world to fit their narrow views but I’m not holding my breath. Even in Canada, with a conservative government that has until now been forced to moderate their extremism and govern from the middle, we are slowly seeing a tack rightwards ……… and the economy is slowly grinding to a halt.
It’s about time the Corporate Welfare Bums were thrown off government largesse and attention paid to the vast majority of the population to get them working again – and not in ‘working poor’ mode either.
Welcome to the Planet, atdnext. And thanks for this fine post.
Elmendorf really has it right, doesn’t he? If only he could truly be heard.
The frustrating thing is that there’s a certain level of complexity in the economic problems we face (although not beyond the comprehension of the average citizen, imho) and a lot of folks just don’t want to put in the effort required to master that complexity and make wise choices.