Subject: [big campaign] New Huff Post from Creamer -- Need for Jobs Bill
From: [email-masked]
To: [email-masked], [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 8 Dec 2009 11:11:03 EST
List-Id: <bigcampaign.googlegroups.com>

America  Needs a Jobs Bill, and the Federal Deficit Shouldn’t Stand in the  
Way 

Last month’s drop in the unemployment rate and continued  reduction of job 
losses is certainly good news.  It indicates that the  U.S. economy may have 
finally stopped  shedding jobs.  But without  additional government action 
there is little likelihood that the economy will  return to anything 
resembling full employment in the near future. 
There are two reasons why it is critical that Congress  pass a major new 
jobs initiative – one economic, and one political. 
Job Creation and  Deficits 
The recent CBO report concluded that 600,000 to 1.6  million jobs have been 
created or saved to date by the effects of the first  Obama stimulus 
package – and that’s before a large percentage of total stimulus  spending has 
even taken place.   
That means that when the report was released, up to 1.6  million people 
would have been unemployed had Congress failed to pass the  stimulus bill. 
It is quite clear, as economist Paul Krugman wrote, that  the stimulus bill 
was too little of a good thing.   
In fact, at times of economic downturn, no entity other  than the 
government can lead a recovery.  And in the case of a recession as deep as the one 
President Obama  inherited from George Bush, that is particularly true of job 
creation.   
So if the first stimulus bill worked to create or save  jobs, why not do it 
again?  What  stands in the way is the perception on Capitol Hill that the 
deficit is out of  control.   
Of course we’ve seen this movie before.  During the Great Depression, the 
efforts  of the Roosevelt Administration to use government fiscal stimulus – 
and direct  Federal Jobs programs like the WPA – were interrupted by a 
similar concern for  “controlling the deficit.” Even before they were 
interrupted, these efforts were  relatively modest, given the size of the economic 
problem.  But when Roosevelt’s stimulus programs were cut back out of fear of  
the growing federal deficit, the country saw a new increase in  joblessness. 
Recessions – or in the worst case, depressions –  represent an imbalance 
in the capacity of the economy to produce goods and  services on the one 
hand, and the demand for those goods and services on the  other. There is too 
much supply and too little demand.  There is a demand deficit.  This deficit 
is ever so much more  important than the federal budget deficit, because it 
means that we have more  ability to produce wealth –the goods and services 
made by the economy – than  consumers have the ability to buy.   Since farms 
and companies can’t sell as much product as they can produce,  they cut back 
that production and lay off many of people who are employed to  produce it. 
When workers and  plants lie idle, they represent wealth – and well-being –
 that is simply never  created – that we lose forever.  That means that we 
have to get by with less food, less clothing, less  entertainment, less 
education – less of everything that determines the  well-being of our society – 
and each and every individual within it.  
The worst disaster for our economy is the waste of idle  plants and idle 
workers, because for every day a worker is idle, we all lose  wealth – and 
standard of living -- that we will never recoup.  
This deficit  between what we have the ability to produce on the one hand, 
and economic demand  on the other, is the deficit we should really worry 
about. 
During the 1930’s Roosevelt was never able to convince  Congress to pass a 
stimulus program large enough to enable America to  recover fully from the 
depression and achieve full employment.  It took Japanese Emperor Hirohito to 
do  that. The attack on Pearl Harbor created a  national emergency that 
justified deficits unlike anything anyone had ever seen.  Those deficits 
financed a full employment economy and a massive explosion of the  American 
Military that together finally ended the Great Depression once and for  all.  That 
economic mobilization  provided the economic foundation for the longest 
period of widespread economic  growth in our history – which, with a few minor 
interruptions – continued until  the early 1970’s.  
Economically, this full employment mobilization did not  require a war.  
World War II simply  generated the will to make it politically possible.  
Luckily, President Obama’s first stimulus, and his  actions that prevented 
a complete meltdown of the financial system, avoided  another Depression.  
But three  lessons stand out from the Depression experience: 
1). If we want long-term growth, the most important  element is the full 
utilization of our work force.   
2). A relatively large deficit created in pursuit of full  employment does 
not endanger long-term economic  growth. 
3).Allowing concern for the deficit to constrain our  pursuit of full 
employment can endanger economic recovery.   
From an economic point of view, Congress needs to pass a  large scale jobs 
program that focuses on spending, that directly puts people to  work.  Given 
the massive neglect of  the public infrastructure over the last eight 
years, there is an enormous amount  of productive work to be done – either by 
directly paying contractors or by  funding a federal public works program like 
the WPA.  
In addition, the Federal Government should use its  ability to “deficit 
spend” to fill in the massive holes in state and local  budgets.  One recent 
study showed  that if it does not, up to 900,000 additional jobs may be lost – 
both from the  direct unemployment within state and local governments, and 
the loss of jobs  among government contractors.  
To be effective, such a program should not mainly focus  on incentives for 
job creation.  Tax  incentives and other inducements to create jobs simply 
are not as effective on a  dollar-for-dollar basis and their impact is much 
more difficult to track. It  should focus on programs that directly create 
jobs. 
Congress must act as soon as possible, to build on the  momentum of the 
first stimulus, and avoid a “double dip” recession. It must also  take action 
soon, for important political reasons. 
The Politics of Jobs 
If the job picture has not begun to significantly improve  by next November’
s elections, voters will be in a “throw the bums out” sort of  mood.  This 
will be especially true  if Congress fails to pass portions of the Obama 
program – health care reform,  financial reform, clean energy legislation and 
immigration reform.  But even if we have passed the key  elements of this 
critical domestic agenda, if we have not made progress creating  jobs, we are 
likely to see many more Republicans in Congress starting in  2011.   
That result would not only represent a setback for the  overall Progressive 
agenda – it would also make it even less likely that we can  get the votes 
to pass the measures we will need to sustain long-term economic  growth. It 
will increase the ranks of the Party of “No” and the Party that has  now 
raised fear of federal deficits to an article of religious faith. 
Let us remember that the Republicans never hesitated to  create deficits 
when they were in charge.  They generated deficits to finance their wars and 
their tax breaks for  the rich without blinking an eye.  Unfortunately, they 
created deficits at exactly the time in the economic  cycle when you should 
be building up surpluses and paying down debt.   
Deficits are certainly not always a good thing.  They are a good thing when 
you need to  stimulate the economy, not when the economy is growing 
briskly.   
Nor are federal deficits inevitable.  Remember that President Clinton 
handed  Bush and the Republicans a growing Federal surplus. With their wars and 
tax  breaks for the rich, Bush turned those surpluses into long term 
structural  deficits. And that’s not all. 
The Republicans inherited an economic expansion and  turned it into the 
current economic disaster by siphoning all of the fruits of  growth to the top 
2% of the population.  The effect was a stagnant and declining standard of 
living for ordinary  people even as the economy expanded.  In the absence of 
growing disposable consumer income – a massive  explosion of consumer debt 
developed and kept the economic engine going until  the house of cards came 
tumbling down when the huge speculative bubble at the  very top of the 
economy finally burst.  
One year into the Obama Administration, we are still  living with the 
recession caused by Wall Street’s reckless risk-taking.  We are also living with 
deficits that  were created by the Right -- quite intentionally -- to 
constrain the growth of  the public sector.  The Republicans  created a “Catch 22”
 that both caused the recession and then limited our ability  to end it.  
We can’t allow ourselves  to be caught in this Republican trap. 
The polling – and actual voter behavior – makes it clear  that voters don’
t vote against incumbent Members of Congress because of  “deficits.”  
Deficits have far too  diffuse an effect on individual voters to have any real 
impact on voter  decisions.  To the extent “out of  control deficits” becomes 
a real issue in a campaign, it is a proxy for a more  general level of 
discontent about the economy – a sense that the economy itself  – and the voter’
s individual economic circumstances – are out of control.  
What drives voters are their perceptions about their own  individual 
economic prospects and those of their children.  The prices of health insurance 
premiums,  wages, housing prices, mortgage rates, personal income growth – and 
the ability  to get a job – drive these perceptions, not concern about “
deficits.”   
The bottom line is this: the top priority for Democrats  who want to make 
sure that our candidates do well in 2010 is to do everything we  can to 
create jobs.  The Federal  deficit should not be allowed to stand in the way. 
Robert Creamer is a long-time  political organizer and strategist, and 
author of the recent book: “Stand Up  Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” 
available on _amazon.com_ 
(http://www.amazon.com/Listen-Your-Mother-Straight-Progressives/dp/0979585295/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206567141&sr=8-1
) .

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