Posted on 09/02/2011 10:02:05 PM PDT by smokingfrog
When a president asks for a prime-time slot to address a joint session of Congress, he is signaling to the country that he has something very important to say. Next Thursday, President Obama will once again try to make a hard political pivot to the issue of jobs.
Obama will confront two big problems when he stands in the well of the House next week. The first is political: the loss of voters' confidence in his handling of the economy. The second is the economy itself. A new estimate released by the White House on Thursday shows the economy growing at an anemic 1.7 percent and unemployment staying at 9 percent in 2012.
"He has to push forward a plausible, credible jobs package that will target that rate and start to finally bring it down," says Jared Bernstein, the former top economist for Vice President Joe Biden.
Obama previewed the speech Monday, saying he would be "laying out a series of steps that Congress can take immediately to put more money in the pockets of working families and middle-class families, to make it easier for small businesses to hire people, to put construction crews to work rebuilding our nation's roads and railways and airports, and all the other measures that can help to grow this economy."
The president's jobs package will almost certainly include measures for payroll tax relief, business tax credits for hiring and infrastructure projects. Bill Galston, a former aide to former President Clinton, says he thinks the president needs to go even bigger and lay out a growth agenda that includes a solution to the mortgage debt crisis and a long-term vision for fundamental tax reform.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
The only way Obama can pull his chestnuts out of the fire would be to stump for a massive tax reform...essentially the flat tax with no exemptions, ala Steve Forbes. There are, however, two reasons why he won’t do it. a} he is a true believer in socialist tenets and could never bring himself to swallow the medicine, and b) it’s too late for a change like this to effect the economy in time for the 2012 elections. He’s sunk and he knows it, so he’s stretching this out in the hopes no-one will notice that he has nothing.
I'm curious how they'll change the 7.62% bite on one's pay, though......they'll have to do away with it for the "working poor" while keeping it for those damned middle income and 'rich' people...They'll just threshold it and put these people into the 'defined benefit-no contribution, period' class. Disgusting.
GRRRRRREAT thread! BTTT!
Dude! You were on a roll, there. Well done!
FJ
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