Rep. John Larson (Conn.), chairman of the Democratic Caucus, wants to amend the recently passed debt-limit package to establish a joint select committee on job creation to operate alongside the already mandated Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction.In a "Dear Colleague" letter sent to House members earlier in the week, Larson argued that the nation's jobs crisis is only exacerbating its long-term fiscal problems and therefore demands Congress's immediate attention.
Well, I don't expect many of us think that will get far. And frankly, I don't think more supercommittees is the answer to our problems, anyway. Giving more power to the same group of idiots has historically led only to groups of more powerful idiots.
I'm not exactly sure how "austerity" got on the menu during this recession, but now it seems to be the only thing on that menu. The only time most politicians in either party mention "jobs" is when they're trying to blame the other side for there not being any, but nobody, not the House, not the Senate, and not the states (which, to be fair, have a lot less flexibility in the matter) have done much of anything to actually create or save any. And no, I don't think the White House has been nearly as focused on jobs as they could or should be, as they themselves admit with their new "pivot to jobs" language.
So far, the closest thing we've gotten to anyone actually trying to create or maintain jobs, post-stimulus, is some free trade deals that may or may not even come with assistance for Americans that lose their jobs because of those same trade deals. I'm not even sure what adjectives to plaster onto a policy failure that big.
Yes, I'm pessimistic. For good reason, I think. This recession has demonstrated over and over that political leaders are readily able to focus when it comes to helping "the markets" in terms of the largest banks and largest investors, but assistance for workers, small business, and even state governments has always been a contentious, barely discussable thing.
Remember when politicians all tsk-tsked at Japan over their "Lost Decade," a period of economic stagnation that was prolonged by foolish government decisions and/or indecisions? Yeah, nobody's tsk-ing anymore. At this point the prospect of long-term economic stagnation here, driven primarily by an obsession with austerity and with protecting the wealthy and the corporate from any slight, seems almost assured. We're going to keep high-income taxes at an all-time low, and then act shocked that revenues are steeply down and deficits are steeply up, apparently. We're going to keep ourselves intentionally mired at the edge of recession, unemployment and wage stagnation, then be surprised that golly gee, that tax base doesn't seem to be what it once was ... and where did that whole middle class thing go?
A serious question: If unemployment hit ten percent, instead of nine, would another "stimulus" happen, or would it be blocked? It used to be that nine percent was an apocalyptic number, but now it's just the new normal, so it would be fascinating to get politicians to start naming what number they would think was intolerably bad. I think you could have tent cities on the grounds of the National Mall and we still wouldn't get either a stimulus or other rational policy measures. If the stock market starts to go bad, though, that we'll be all over. We're at the point where maybe we should start hoping that Bank of America goes down the tubes, because only that would attract enough attention to the rest of the economy to result in actual action.
I suppose it goes without saying that yes, the Republicans bear the majority of the blame for all these things. Their policies are the ones we're following, simply because of their ability and willingness to block anything else. The president's advisers have not helped, and do not at this point have a record that might inspire confidence. Every Democrat who toes the corporate conservative line?accepting premises like "the deficit is out of control!" or "people are out of work, so let's cut Medicaid and Social Security!"?is also to blame.
At the moment, the political world is focused squarely on the 2012 elections, and who can pander mostest and bestest without actually accomplishing anything of note. As I said before, I'm feeling especially pessimistic right now, but I'm not sure even the optimists among us think that any of these candidates will be turning their eye to what the American economy might look like, by the time that election day finally rolls around.
So what would it take, to get a true focus on jobs? I don't know, but I shudder to think of how bad things would have to be before it happened.
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