The President is sounding like a fighter these days. He even says he’ll be proposing a jobs bill in September – and if Republicans don’t go along he’ll fight for it through Election Day (or beyond).
That’s a start. But read the small print and all he’s talked about so far is extending the payroll tax cut and unemployment benefits (good, but small potatoes), ratifying the Columbia and South Korea free trade agreements (not necessarily a job-creating move), and creating an infrastructure bank.
An infrastructure bank might be helpful, depending on its size.
Which is the real question hovering over the entire putative jobs bill – its size.
Some of the President’s political advisors have been pushing for small-bore initiatives that they believe might have a chance of getting through the Republican just-say-no House. They also figure policy miniatures won’t give aspiring GOP candidates more ammunition to tar Obama as a big-government liberal.
But the President is sounding as if he’s rejected their advice.
That’s good policy and good politics.
Good policy because any jobs bill has to be big enough to give the economy the boost it needs to get out of the gravitational pull of the Great Recession.
Right now all the old booster rockets are gone. The original stimulus is over. The Fed’s “quantitative easing” is over.
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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.
