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View Full Version : Who Would Win Under Obama's Jobs Plan



Conley
09-09-2011, 07:44 PM
If it were 2009, and President Obama enjoyed a comfortable margin of support in both houses of Congress, his latest jobs plan would probably sail into law, with the freshly minted stimulus money headed out of Washington tomorrow, or maybe the next day.

This time, after all, he proposed a little something for everybody. His plan includes traditional Keynesian spending on roads and bridges that engineers insist are in urgent need of repair. There are generous tax cuts for small businesses, many other companies and most ordinary workers, which seem sure to appeal to conservatives. The unemployed would get a lift, and Obama would likely keep tapping Main Street voters on the shoulder to remind them how he'd put teachers back to work and make sure cops and firefighters continue to man their posts.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Who-Would-Win-Under-Obamas-usnews-263488345.html

This an interesting summary...seems a little biased pro-Obama. I do think he should have done something like this years ago when he had the chance instead of throwing money and banks and Wall St. I don't think we have another half-trillion to spend right now, so some of this stuff has to be cut. No explanation on how to fund it and I agree that companies aren't going to want to spend if they think their taxes are going to go up. Really though even with a tax assurance they still aren't going to hire because the economy could break down further at any point. Only someone bold would want to expand their commitments right now....could take a chance in RE and the markets but it is a big risk. Not as if cash is safe either though. Ugh.

Conley
09-09-2011, 07:49 PM
Construction workers. No industry has suffered more than construction, with nearly two million workers losing their jobs since the recession began at the end of 2007. Obama wants to hire back some of them, by spending $15 billion to refurbish foreclosed homes, $25 billion to modernize 35,000 schools, $5 billion to upgrade community colleges and $50 billion to improve roads, railways, airports bridges and other parts of the nation's infrastructure. He'd also use $10 billion in federal money to seed an "infrastructure bank" that would draw private funds used to invest in more rebuilding projects. Economists generally applaud this kind of spending, because it fixes problems that would go unaddressed if the government didn't tackle them, while boosting the economy and helping improve the backbone of business.

Prospects: Weak. When Republicans complain that Obama's plan contains "more of the same," this is what they're talking about. The 2009 stimulus plan that they routinely deride contained about $100 billion in transportation and infrastructure spending, which Republicans contend did nothing to help the economy. It probably did help some, but the difficulty of being able to point to tangible results makes this kind of spending unpopular among many in Congress.



Maybe you guys saw some evidence of that 100B, I didn't see a darn thing. Makes me reconsider this whole thing...I want IS shored up but not if that money is just going to disappear down a black hole, bridges to nowhere and Teamsters or wherever it all went last time around.

Juggernaut
09-09-2011, 07:57 PM
Black hole sounds about right, even Alan Greenspan complained about poorly targeted spending. Corruption is more like it. About a third of the spending will go to union thugs.