The American Jobs Act

[BigV]

Here's a video of President Obama's speech to a joint session of Congress where he introduces his American Jobs Act.

To create more jobs now, the President is sending Congress the American Jobs Act – a set of ideas supported by both Democrats and Republicans that Congress must pass right away. The purpose of the American Jobs Act is simple: put more people back to work and put more money in the pockets of working Americans. Here’s how:

First, it provides a tax cut for small businesses, not big corporations, to help them hire and expand now, and provides an additional tax cut to any business that hires or increases wages.

Second, it puts more people back to work, including up to 280,000 teachers laid off by state-budget cuts, first responders and veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, and construction workers repairing crumbling bridges, roads and more than 35,000 public schools, with projects chosen by need and impact, not earmarks and politics. And, it expands job opportunities for hundreds of thousands of low-income youth and adults through a new Pathways Back to Work Fund that supports summer and year round jobs for youth; innovative new job training programs to connect low-income workers to jobs quickly; and successful programs to encourage employers to bring on disadvantaged workers.

Third, it helps out-of-work Americans by extending unemployment benefits to help them support their families while looking for work and reforming the system with training programs that build real skills, connect to real jobs and help the long-term unemployed. It bans employers from discriminating against the unemployed when hiring, and provides a new tax credit to employers hiring workers who have been out of a job for over 6 months.

Fourth, it puts more money in the pockets of working and middle class Americans by cutting in half the payroll tax that comes out of every worker's paycheck, saving families an average of $1,500 a year’ and taking executive action to remove the barriers that exist in the current federal refinancing program (HARP) to help more Americans refinance their mortgages at historically low rates, save money and stay in their homes.

Last, the plan won’t add a dime to the deficit and is fully paid for through a balanced deficit reduction plan that includes closing corporate tax loopholes and asking the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share.

I listened to the speech and found it inspiring and informative. It is a realistic plan containing elements that have been successful in the past, items that have been politically acceptable to all sides in the past, and ideas that give us something to work toward instead of bicker over. I believe this can succeed.

I believe it can succeed in the sense that many people can be put to work under the auspices of this act. This isn't the single package that will solve everything wrong with our economy, though that criticism will certainly be used as a fig leaf for not supporting it. Indeed I heard several "prebuttals" this week outlining why it (whatever "it" the President presents) won't work. I'm certain that it will face opposition and equally certain that opposition can, should and will be overcome. Doing something positive is how we'll improve our situation, and this act has lots of positive things to do.

[TheMercenary]

His speech was crap. It dripped with the same ole grandstanding BS. Why didn't he just say, "Millions of shovel ready jobs!', or "Stimulus"? Anyway you look at it the president does not control the budget, Congress controls the budget. His whole speech dripped with re-election rhetoric... pandering to his base and telling the Union Thugs, and others what they wanted to hear. Blaaaaaaa......

[classicman]

Originally Posted by BigV

I listened to the speech and found it inspiring

I believe it can succeed in the sense that many people can be put to work under the auspices of this act.

It certainly was an inspiring speech. As I said in the other thread, The man is an amazing talker.
I'll wait to see exactly how its getting paid for before passing any judgement.

[BigV]

His speech was not just fine, it was excellent.

He didn't say that because he was speaking intelligently, not in sound bites, not in bumper stickers, not in talking points. You might have heard that, but that's not what he said.

You're right, the President doesn't control the budget. However, the payment for this act is built into it--no increase in our debt.

As for the rest of your hysterical name calling, I won't dignify them by further acknowledgment. Telling lies, even loudly and often does not make them true. You want to talk like a grown up, I'll be here. Meanwhile, I'll continue discuss the facts and their relative merits with others in a sane and civil way.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by classicman

It certainly was an inspiring speech. As I said in the other thread, The man is an amazing talker.
I'll wait to see exactly how its getting paid for before passing any judgement.

An outline of the payment plan was described in the last bullet point up there. He said (paraphrasing here) tossing out chunks of the tax code that grant exemptions for those with the most money and (anticipating here) a plan to finally retire the "temporary tax cuts" from the Bush administration would be a big part of what backfills this spending.

We'll see, for sure we'll all see.

[Aliantha]

I hope it can help your economy out, but personally, the AU dollar being so unusually high compared to the US dollar is a good thing for us except when it comes to exports, which in turn is a good thing in some ways, because exporters are being forced to find internal markets which in turn is of course beneficial to the country.

We're still exporting large scale items such as raw minerals etc through mining, and our beef industry is strong with the wool industry finally picking up thanks to a bit of great publicity from Charlie and Cam, but our smaller exporters are the ones that're finding it harder to sell their goods. Again, this is good in some ways but makes it tough in others.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by BigV

An outline of the payment plan was described in the last bullet point up there.

President Barack Obama's promise Thursday that everything in his jobs plan will be paid for rests on highly iffy propositions.

It will only be paid for if a committee he can't control does his bidding, if Congress puts that into law and if leaders in the future — the ones who will feel the fiscal pinch of his proposals — don't roll it back.

Underscoring the gravity of the nation's high employment rate, Obama chose a joint session of Congress, normally reserved for a State of the Union speech, to lay out his proposals. But if the moment was extraordinary, the plan he presented was conventional Washington rhetoric in one respect: It employs sleight-of-hand accounting.

Link

We'll see, for sure we'll all see.

[Spexxvet]

I heard it said, recently "the only tax cut the republicans don't like, are the tax cuts that Obama does like"

I still think that it is incumbent on the private sector to reduce unemployment, not government.

[DanaC]

It's the government's job to shape the context and climate for job creation though.

[Spexxvet]

It's funny, though. Business wants government to stay out of the way, until they want to make more profit. Then it becomes everyone else's job to help out business. "Privatize profit and socialize loss".

[infinite monkey]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

It's funny, though. Business wants government to stay out of the way, until they want to make more profit. Then it becomes everyone else's job to help out business. "Privatize profit and socialize loss".

FTW

Isn't that in the Republican Credo?

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

snip--
I still think that it is incumbent on the private sector to reduce unemployment, not government.

Incumbent in what way? The *duty of* the private sector? I don't agree with that, nor do I believe that it is the duty of the public sector to reduce unemployment (by direct hiring. making policies that are compatible with job growth, as DanaC says, that's a different thing and well within the purview of the government.). Incumbent is just not the right word, and I don't mean to be snippy.

I do believe that the private sector has vastly more potential to reduce unemployment by hiring more people than the government does. Yes, it's true that the single largest employer is government, but it is dwarfed by the aggregate private sector. That private sector though is made up of many many individual employers. Those individual employers don't have the same motivations to hire that the government does. A private employer hires someone new when the demand for work exceeds their ability to do that work with the staff on hand.

Let me repeat that. Employers hire new people when they can't deliver all the work they have with the staff they have. It is demand driven. I heard a small business owner say it this way this morning: "I hire someone when I'm working 90 hours a week. That's when it's time to hire someone new." That makes total sense to me. A tax credit/benefit/break/doodad that slightly reduces the cost of a new employee (which can be high, one of the MAIN REASONS that an owner will work 89 hours a week before deciding to actually hire a new worker) has an effect, but it is marginal at best. Sadly, that's how things work between government and business. Government (which does have an explicit interest in reducing unemployment) wants more people working, but depends on business to hire those people can only use incentives and disincentives to guide, to urge, to encourage such behavior. But look back a couple sentences...a business hires primarily based on demand, not on minor reductions of the expense of hiring. The government's ability to effect and affect such actions is indirect at best. But they sure get all the heat for the lack of success of such actions.

[BigV]

What do you say classicman about how the American Jobs Act will be paid for? The AP story you linked to is getting nearly universal coverage, due mostly to the fact that it was very early out of the gate. Here are my thoughts.

Clearly, any government spending is paid for by taxes. Of course. Further exploration of this inevitably involves some other factors and we'd be wise to explicitly identify them. Debt, Deficit, Borrowing, Taxes, let's start with these.

Deficit. Since our country is currently operating at a deficit, ALL SPENDING is deficit spending until our country is operating at with a budget surplus. All government spending, including defense, debt service, medicare, just everything, and this program too. The proposal is to pay individuals and companies for various kinds of work and the funds to make such payments will come from mostly from borrowing, and some from tax collections.

Which brings us to debt and borrowing. We, Americans, have a going concern here (so to speak) as a country, we have work that needs to be done; we have contracts we've entered into that obligate us to pay; we have taxes that are due to us (the government); we have earned benefits we've promised to pay, etc etc. Our cash flow is negative. We're spending more than we're collecting. For you and me, this is a death spiral if we persist in it too long. You and I have options, like bankruptcy, or credit cards if it continues beyond our savings cushion. Governments have other options, like borrowing (similar to credit cards for you and me), and printing money (to identify the main ones). You and I can't print money. The government can. And has, it has done both to finance our spending choices to this point. The effect of the money printing has been zero until recently. The only negative result of the printing has been to cause our credit rating to be diminished a little bit. The effect of borrowing has been much more persistent and much more objective. We've accumulated a great deal of debt.

And at the other end of that cash flow pipeline is tax collection. We do collect taxes. The taxes we collect will be used to pay for our spending, and that includes all the debt service (interest to treasury bond holders), all the payroll for all the government employees, all the contracts we've entered, etc.

So. This act will be paid for by taxes, period. The taxes we collect will be used to pay for this program and for all the other things we've committed to to this point. What we haven't discussed yet is the timing of this payment. And there's the undefined area where talking points and pundits etc will be shouting past each other in the coming hours and days.

To be continued...

[classicman]

Grrrr - just has a very long post vanish because I got logged out. I fucking HATE that.
I am not a good communicator in writing and spent a lot of time responding. Short version follows....

the private sector has vastly more potential to reduce unemployment by hiring more people
Employers hire new people when they can't deliver all the work they have with the staff they have.
The government's ability to effect and affect such actions is indirect

agreed.
One thing the Gov't can do relatively easier is create demand. This can be done by giving people money. (tried that, didn't work)
This can also be done by spending on needed services like INFRASTRUCTURE.
Some of stimulus I was directed at that. I think that was a good plan which was horribly executed. There is too much skimming, kickbacks, waste, fraud ... and preferential treatment given to friends of politicians and whatnot.

[classicman]

Post 13 seems like a circular rambling. I'm not getting what you are trying to say.