How Obama Can Create Jobs and Decrease Unemployment

[StarfarerBill]

By Steven Hill, Director, Political Reform Program, New America Foundation

With the nation's unemployment rate at 10 percent, the highest in a generation, President Barack Obama could learn a thing or two about job creation by heading down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

On display is an exhibit of New Deal-era paintings that show men building roads, laying pipe, and shoveling snow. The artists were paid by the New Deal to paint these portraits; and the people in them were paid by the New Deal to construct public-works projects and the nation's infrastructure.

New Deal programs were known by an alphabet soup of acronyms--WPA, CCC, NIRA, FERA, AAA, and more. Almost every community in the United States has a park, bridge, or school constructed during the New Deal, built by the calloused hands and strong backs of Americans who were working directly for the government.

With the US unemployment rate surging to historic proportions, why has the White House avoided New Deal-type programs that could keep Americans employed? Aside from a small summer employment program for young people, Mr. Obama seems unwilling to create jobs on the public payroll. But feeling the urgency of the dismal job market, recently he proposed using some leftover money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), originally allocated for bailing out failing banks, to lend to small businesses to create jobs. He also proposed modest increases in spending on infrastructure investment and home-weatherizing, also targeted to create jobs. That's in addition to last February's economic stimulus, which provided billions for investments in energy efficiency, broadband access, and other areas partly to stimulate job growth.

But that spending hasn't been adequate enough to produce many new jobs or even maintain existing ones. So what else should Obama do?

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-hill/how-obama-can-create-jobs_b_411301.html

[mmonk]

1. The answer is obvious. He is not a Democrat out of the New Deal mold.

The German plan is better than ours but I assume still means people are underemployed. But it is better than nothing and softens downturns.

[chimpymustgo]

2. Obama's efforts: "timid and unimpressive".

-edit-

But like so many of Obama's initiatives on so many fronts, his administration's efforts seem timid and unimpressive. China is spending billions in stimulus funds on public works projects. Indeed, China plans to spend $300 billion in the next decade to build a high-speed rail network, while the United States has allocated only $13 billion over the next five years. Europe and Japan already have been spent tens of billions to produce the world's most extensive high speed rail lines.

-edit-

[Lasher]

3. I wish we would have had a New Deal Democrat running in the primaries.

We didn't. And don't say Kucinich, after the way he jumped the shark with Ron Paul.

[mmonk]

7. He still would have been in the New Deal mold.

But it is all moot as the media would never choose him.

[OHdem10]

6. He is a member of DLC . Some DLCers disdain New Deal.

The bught into the Free Market Fundamentalism and see New Deal
as tired old programs. Joe Lieberman is an example. Is he
not one of the President's Mentors.

[WillyT]

4. K & R !!! - Plus, Here's A MUST SEE For You:

Link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/ccc/

:kick:

:hi:

[mmonk]

9. Thanks. This is a good link for DU'ers who are ok with DLC policy

to take a look at and try and understand what motivates us that don't like those policies.

[Coyote_Bandit]

5. This President

lacks the guts, the political skill, and the principled commitment to the welfare of flesh and blood citizens to enact such New Deal work progams.

[KharmaTrain]

8. The New Deal Didn't Work Overnight...

In many cases benefits weren't really felt until after WWII. Different times call for different measures. The New Deal had the advantage of an industrial base this country no longer possesses. WPA jobs put many American factories back to work, but the results took years to ripple through the economy.

There is a definite need to address infrastructure problems, but many are state and local in nature. We don't need to build roads as much as fix the ones we have. While federal money can help with this, it's state and local authorities that do the heavy lifting. Our labor force is also different today than 80 years ago...we've gone from a manufacturing economy to an informational one. There are lots of people with degrees that aren't applying them or have limited opportunities. As more and more jobs went off shore, the job infrastructure in this country has shrunk...in short there aren't the good jobs in this country to sustain the economy. It's become more systemic now that credit is tight that has hurt both spending and investing.

I see the need to loosen credit for small businesses...seed the new industries, including millions of green jobs, that could revitalize the economy on all levels. Instead of a WPA, there needs to be a "Manhattan Project" to find ways to ween this country from its oil addiction. It's providing low cost loans and grants to ramp up research, development and production of the private sector that will rebuild the economy from the bottom up. Robert Reich talked about this with Ed Schultz the other night...the government can't be the sole employer but can be the catalyst for new companies and industries to develop and flourish.