Groundhog's Day Budgeting: Again, Obama Underfunds Job Growth

[Better Believe It]

Groundhog's Day Budgeting: Again, Obama Underfunds Job Growth
by John Nichols
February 1, 2010

The 2009 stimulus bill that was supposed to spur job creation at a sufficient rate to prevent double-digit unemployment might have done so if it had been approved at the level and with the focus intended by the serious players in the U.S. House who initially crafted a real response to the recession.

Unfortunately, under pressure from the Obama administration, which wanted to keep the price tag below $900 billion for reasons of spin, the better part of $100 billion in spending for jobs was squeezed out of the legislation. Then, in order to win the votes of three supposedly moderate Republican senators, the measure was rewritten in order to divert $326 billion from job creation to tax cuts.

The result of White House caution and Senate compromise was a stimulus measure that provided too little money to avert a spike in unemployment that has given the United States the highest official jobless rate in a quarter century and an unofficial rate (including those who have given up seeking work and those who are severely under-employed) that rivals the figure for some years of the Great Depression era.

Despite claims by the Obama administration and its congressional allies that last year's stimulus was a success, they are effectively acknowledging its failure with the decision to propose significant new spending for job creation. Unfortunately, the $100 billion initiative that the White House is advancing as part of its $3.8 trillion budget still falls far short of what Congress and the administration could have, and should have, allocated last year for job creation.

.... the president and his aides still do not get it. This is a Groundhog's Day budget – it repeats the mistakes of 2009 in 2010 – and the consequences could be severe for workers, for their communities and for a party that seems to have forgotten then lessons of the New Deal era that yielded its greatest electoral triumphs.

Please read the full article at:

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/524796/groundhog_s_day_budgeting_again_obama_underfunds_job_growth

[DJ13]

1. If the people were as important to the WH as the banks

They would not hesitate to expend vast sums helping us out.

And Congress would work around the clock for a few days hashing out emergency funding like they did for the bailout.

[Berry Cool]

2. Damn!!!!

When are they going to unapologetically spend money on CREATING JOBS...not CUTTING TAXES in the desperate hope that doing so will cause EMPLOYERS to create the jobs FOR them??????????????

:banghead: