OBAMA 2.O / MIDDLE CLASS CHALLENGE
terity but how much austerity to
apply to a sputtering economy,
it’s hard to imagine what kind of
rebooted jobs plan the president
could propose for his next term
while staying within the bounds
of political reality.
“In the short term, we are in a
pretty difficult spot,” said John
Schmitt, an economist with the
left-leaning Center for Economic
and Policy Research who studies
economic inequality and unemployment. “Even if there was a
serious commitment on the part
of the administration towards
a jobs program of some sort, it
would run into a lot of trouble in
the Congress.”
Without a clear and politically
viable policy objective for jobs,
the administration is likely to
continue the piecemeal approach
to economic recovery that it took
for most of the president’s first
term, observers say.
Obama’s landmark 2009 stimulus bill pumped billions of dollars
into the ailing economy, stemming
the loss of hundreds of thousands
of jobs each month. The bill addressed the short-term fallout in
the private sector by cutting taxes
and pouring money into infrastructure projects and expanded
HUFFINGTON
01.27.13
unemployment insurance benefits.
But since then, additional
spending has been all but off the
table. Obama has repeatedly proposed more infrastructure spending, but the White House has
routinely given up such demands
in negotiations with congressional Republicans.
The lack of stimulus since the
initial package — aside from the
“The answer is very clear: We need
substantial additional stimulus
to support the economy. We are
choosing as a country not to do it.”
repeated extensions of long-term
unemployment insurance — has
exasperated left-leaning and centrist economists.
“The answer is very clear: We
need substantial additional stimulus to support the economy,”
said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-of-center think
tank. “W e are choosing, as a country and as a town [Washington],
not to do it, with millions of jobless workers.”
To address the decline in manufacturing jobs, the Obama administration has undertaken a number of modest initiatives, such as
launching a manufacturing insti-