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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Arianna Huffington
There's a Category 5 storm about to make landfall, and the president and the officials in charge of preparing for the approaching disaster don't seem to be particularly worried. Sound familiar?
Just as Katrina exposed critical weaknesses in the priorities and competence of the Bush administration, the unfolding unemployment disaster is threatening to do the same for the Obama White House.
The members of the Obama administration may not be attending a birthday party at John McCain's ranch in Sedona or shopping for expensive Ferragamo shoes in New York as a great American city is destroyed, but their decidedly lackadaisical response to what job losses are doing to multiple great American cities raises the question: Will unemployment be Barack Obama's Katrina?
His economic team's resistance to a second round of stimulus, "lukewarm" reaction to congressional jobs legislation and prioritization of deficit reduction over job creation certainly has the feel of a taking-in-the-damage-from-2,500-feet flyover moment.
"There is no discussion of a package like a second stimulus," said deputy
Of course, the real problem isn't the outside experts; the administration's wrongheaded approach is a classic inside job. Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown summed it up on
Which makes one wonder: What level of unemployment would it take to unmix them? Even 10.2 percent, the highest level in 26 years, after 22 straight months of job losses, doesn't seem to have quickened the pulse of Larry Summers and Tim Geithner.
And it's not like the levees haven't begun to crack, with the real unemployment rate -- factoring in discouraged and partially employed workers -- at 17.5 percent, the unemployment rate for workers aged 16 to 24 at 19 percent, and the unemployment rate for young African-Americans at 30 percent. What's more, the average length of unemployment is at a record high, while the ratio of job seekers to open positions is now 6 to 1.
A new
Congressional Democrats have certainly gotten the message -- and have grown tired of waiting for the
As John Larson, the fourth-ranking House Democrat puts it: "It's jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs. Members of this caucus feel . . . that a jobless recovery is just simply unacceptable to us."
The problem for the
Back in February, when the
"I think we got the Recovery Act right."
Really, Larry? What would getting it wrong look like?
The tone-deafness of that statement rivals the clueless response of a certain clothes-conscious former
I can hear it now: Heck of a job, Larry! Heck of a job, Timmy!
But though the alarm bells don't seem to be ringing in the
For starters, there is increasing agreement that Obama's economic team is not up to the job of dealing with the unemployment crisis. According to Rep. Peter DeFazio, there is a "growing consensus" in the Congressional Progressive Caucus that Geithner should resign -- and that Summers needs to go, too. "We need a new economic team," DeFazio said on MSNBC. "We may have to sacrifice just two more jobs to get millions back for Americans."
And the next day, DeFazio told HuffPost's Sam Stein: "It is pretty embarrassing for a Democratic administration and a
This comes just a few weeks after Sen. Maria Cantwell told MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan that she was "not sure" why Geithner still has a job.
Even more dramatic evidence of the shift came in the House, where members of the
The
When we hear about members of
So, clearly, the winds of change are picking up in Washington and around the country. It's time for the
Among the best ideas currently being floated:
-- Use Wall Street bailout funds left in the TARP program to hail out Main Street (via increased lending to small businesses and using money for public services being cut by states and cities).
-- Enact a one-year payroll tax holiday (creating a moratorium on
-- Expand the
-- Offer businesses a tax credit for every new job created over the next 12 months, or have the government pay a portion of the salary of new workers hired over the same period.
The bottom line: extending unemployment benefits, crossing your fingers and waiting for things to turn around is just not enough.
In the post-Katrina fallout, video surfaced of a final briefing before the storm hit in which federal disaster officials warned President Bush that the hurricane could breach the levees and overwhelm the ability of rescuers to properly respond. Bush famously didn't ask a single question but assured local officials: "We are fully prepared." He later insisted, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
Are we going to get similar protestations from Obama when the unemployment waters continue to rise?
The unemployment disaster has already inflicted great damage all across the country. And the Obama White House will be defined by its response to it.
So what is it going to be: a muscular, multi-tiered jobs plan to deal with reality or "heck of a job" delusion?
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