Blog - Articles Tagged 'Stimulus'

Remember that in-the-works Obama jobs proposal I wrote about the other day? Given that deficit hawks in the Senate have recently forced the Democrats to pare a $123 billion jobs bill back to a $33 billion unemployment insurance bill (H.R.4213), and that they have been blocking a $30 billion small business jobs bill (H.R. 5297) for over a month, I expected this new proposal to be pretty mild. But according to a report out tonight from Lori Montgomery at the Washington Post, the bill that the White House is preparing to unveil may cost the government as much as $400 billion in lost revenue:

Having pushed aside energy/oil spill legislation until the lame-duck session, the weeks between when Congress reconvenes from the August recess on September 13 and before they adjourn for election season in October will be focused on one thing -- saving the U.S. economy from slipping deeper into recession. There's a small business jobs bill on tap (H.R. 5297), a vague plan to do something with the expiring Bush tax cuts, and now, according to the Wall Street Journal, a new jobs package from the Obama Administration.

Economist Susan Woodward considers August to be, typically, "a month of unambiguous employment growth." But according to a report released today that she helped to put together with Intuit Inc., small businesses in August, though still hiring, are adding new employees at the slowest rate since January. According to the report, the number of jobs created in August is only one-third of how many were created in April.

Why the downturn? One possibility is that small business owners have put hiring and expansion on hold while they wait for the Senate to break a Republican filibuster and pass the Small Business Jobs and Credit Act of 2010.

Chuck Schumer [D, NY] took time out of his day back in D.C. yesterday to talk with reporters at The Hill about the Senate's legislative agenda for when they come back into session on September 13:

On Friday I wrote about a vote in the Senate on an amendment to the Small Business Jobs and Credit Act that sets up the bill for a successful vote on final passage next week. Senate Republicans have been opposing a provision in the bill to create a $30 billion small business lending fund because, they say, it's too similar to the TARP big-bank bailout program that was pushed through Congress by the Bush Administration in 2008. But on Thursday evening, Senate Democrats, with the help of a couple wayward Republicans, were able to secure passage of an amendment to keep the small-business fund in the bill.

So, naturally, I wanted to compare Thursday's vote on the small business lending fund with the 2008 vote on TARP itself. As it turns out, a total of 22 senators voted both in favor of the TARP program, which leant $700 billion to the big banks to do pretty much whatever they want, and agains the small business lending fund, which would lend $30 billion to small banks to loan to small businesses for the purposes of creating jobs. Here's the list:

After passing the unemployment relief bill, the Senate this week finally made some progress on what will probably be the final job-creation measure to be considered this year -- the Small Business Jobs and Credit Act of 2010.

As you all probably know by now, President Obama has officially signed the unemployment extension bill into law, sending it the state unemployment offices for them to begin implementing. The bill extends unemployment insurance benefits for people who have been jobless for more than 6 months until November 30th. It will also pay benefits back retroactively for the more than 2.5 million people who have had their payments cut off since Congress let extended unemployment benefits expire on June 2nd.

If I had to pick the top three factors in U.S. politics right now I would say the unemployment situation, concern about the deficit, and distrust of the financial industry. Remarkably, Rep. John Conyers [D, MI-14] (pictured) has introduced a bill this session that seems to fall on the popular side of all three of these issues. It would be deficit neutral, dramatically reduce unemployment, and levy a new tax on the riskiest Wall Street transactions. The bill is called the 21st Century Full Employment and Training Act. Here's how it would work.

The 99ers are the true victims of the jobless recovery. Yes, millions of people who have been out of work for months are struggling right now because Congress has let the extended benefits period expire, but a couple weeks from now that will be extended and those people will see their benefit payments return, including retroactive reimbursements for any payments that were put on hold. If they can find a job before the 99-weeks-max benefit period expires under the currently-pending extension (H.R. 5618) on November 30, 2010, in a sense, the system will have worked at helping them weather this crisis. But for those who are not able to find a job by then, they will join the ranks of the 99ers who, so far, have seen nothing but neglect from the people in charge of U.S. economic policy.

As many of you out there are painfully aware, congressional Democrats have been been struggling for weeks to pass an extension of unemployment insurance payments for the millions of people who have lost their jobs in the economic crisis. Republicans have blocked the UI bills repeatedly in the Senate over the past month and did so again today in the House. But between their failing votes on extending the UI lifeline, the Democrats have been having more success with a bill that is designed to actually stimulate the jobs market. The "State Small Business and Credit Initiative Act of 2010" (H.R. 5297) passed the House on June 17 by a vote of 413-0. Today, the Senate voted to break a Republican filibuster of the bill by a vote of 66-33. The House Majority Whip provides this summary of the bill:

After cutting COBRA health care benefits for the unemployed and Medicaid funds for states with budget problems, the House has finally passed their economic recovery bill, the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010.

But they are a day late. The Senate adjourned this afternoon and won't be back to vote on the bill until Monday, June 7. The current unemployment benefits extension that was approved by Congress in April is set to expire on June 2. According to the Department of Labor, more than 300,000 unemployed people will exhaust their current tier of benefits and be left without a lifeline by the time the Senate gets back to take up the bill.

To most liberals and many economists, the first $787 billion economic stimulus bill (H.R.1) didn't do enough to promote job growth and general recovery given the depth of the recession caused by the 2008 financial crisis. The national unemployment rate, for example, is still at 9.5%, and in areas that were hit especially hard by the recession, the unemployment rate is still going up.

So, the Democrats have prepared a second, smaller stimulus bill of about $127 billion in new short-term spending called the American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010, and they are planning to hold a vote on it in the House on today. Late on Wednesday night, the bill was revised. Here's what's in the final bill.

When the Senate whittled down a $174 billion jobs bill from the House to a mere $15 billion bill, one of the many ideas to hit the cutting room floor was a $23 billion fund to prevent layoffs in education. Last week, Sen. Tom Harkin [D, IA] revived the idea and introduced it as a standalone Senate bill.

A couple weeks ago, as Congress was debating whether or not to reauthorize the "Buy America Bonds" program that was created in the stimulus bill to help struggling state and local government borrow money more cheaply and create new jobs, Goldman Sachs ran an ad in the print edition of Politico pushing for the reauthorization to pass. That got some members of Congress thinking -- just how much taxpayer money are the big bailout banks keeping as profit from selling the bonds?

As you've probably heard, today is the one year anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 -- the Stimulus -- being signed into law. The bill injected $787 billion into the economy through tax cuts and new spending to spur job creation, boost the housing market and stabilize state budgets. But has it worked?