Creating Jobs Is Not "Wasteful"

By Sen. Jeff Merkley

U.S. Senator from Oregon

This week the Senate is debating whether to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a bill we absolutely need to help arrest our economic freefall. Economic policies championed by the Bush Administration largely focused on tax cuts for the big corporations and the wealthiest among us. Not only did these policies fail, they helped create the crisis we now find ourselves in. Yet many in Congress believe we should go down that road yet again in hopes that this time it will be different. Even worse, they are obstructing a recovery package focused on creating jobs, investing in our future economic competitiveness, and providing middle-class tax relief. Indeed, provisions aimed at working Americans are now characterized as "wasteful spending."
It is as if the Bush team set a house on fire and then blocked the fire trucks trying to put that fire out.
On Monday, Republican leaders in the House put out a list of items in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act they deemed to be "wasteful spending." Many of the projects they demonize create jobs, invest in our children and protect our citizens.
One project they're attacking hit close to home. They're calling funding to restore forest health and prevent wildfires in National Forests wasteful. Coming from Southern Oregon, I can tell you firsthand they are dead wrong.
I grew up in Southern Oregon. My father was a sawmill worker and a logger and his job put food on the table. Right now Douglas County, where I was born, has an unemployment rate of 12.8 percent. That's the highest it's been in decades and well above the current national average. Douglas County is home to many of Oregon's timber workers and they need the stability of a good paying job. The money that would be allocated to counties like Douglas to restore forest health and prevent forest fires would put these folks back to work.
Let me explain. Due to federal mismanagement, there are millions of acres of choked and overgrown second-growth forests. These forests are a complete menace. They are diseased and are very little use for strong ecosystems. Moreover, they are a huge fire hazard. Thinning these neglected forests is essential for restoring forest health and generating thousands of rural jobs.
Let me emphasize this: this provision will create thousands of rural jobs. This is a win-win for our rural economies and our ecosystems.
Preventing wildfires is something that desperately needs to be done in any economic condition and now has the added benefit of providing jobs in areas that need them most. How Republicans can call job creation for hardworking millworkers like my dad "wasteful spending" is a mystery to me. To the contrary, like school or bridge repairs or broadband internet access, thinning overgrown forests is the best kind of economic recovery investment: it creates jobs in the short-term while addressing a critical and long-neglected priority. The funding would improve the health of dangerously overgrown second-growth forests, helping protect our forests from disease and preventing wildfires that are devastating to rural communities and enormous sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
Funding the protection of our forests isn't the only thing critics are calling wasteful spending. They are attacking funding for Amtrak, which is underfunded, has recently increased ridership, and is a major economic engine of the East Coast in particular. They are attacking funding for public computer centers at community colleges, programs which create jobs now and provide workers with the skills they need to compete in a technology-driven economy. They are even attacking funding for flood reduction projects off of the Mississippi River - just three and a half years after Hurricane Katrina and inadequate levees led to devastation in New Orleans.
Whether motivated by a knee-jerk opposition to anything the government does or a desire to play politics and try to give the new Obama Administration a black eye, the opponents of this bill are opposing job creation and repeating the mistakes that led to the Great Depression. Economists across the political spectrum recognize that government spending is vital to create economic activity in a recession, and many even say the price tag is too low. Whether it's logging to reduce wildfire hazards, teaching children, laying new light rail tracks, or preventing floods along the Mississippi, people will be paid to do these jobs - that's not wasteful spending, that's the whole point.
For eight years, we weren't investing in our economy. We were running up record debt but we weren't creating jobs or bringing families into the middle class. Some in Congress see the past eight years and think we were on the right track, all current evidence to the contrary. I vehemently disagree.
I believe the key to putting our economy back on track is to put Americans back to work by investing in infrastructure and green energy jobs and building a pathway for our children and economy to compete and innovate through education. We can address the short-term crisis and re-build our economic foundation for the future. America voted for a change of direction last November, not more of the same. Republicans should listen to the American people and work in a bi-partisan fashion to help get our country on the road to recovery.

Operation Zero Cred

By Bob Cesca

Political Author, Blogger, and New Media Producer

You've probably noticed that the debate swirling around the president's recovery bill has reached new levels of mortal terror and chaos. Even a casual excursion around the liberal tubes and you'll find posts that read like the worst parts of the Bible. There's a palpable vibe in many progressive circles that the president is on the brink of an epic fail.
After all, this is one of those do-or-die moments in American history and the panic level is rightly proportional.
But while urgency is appropriate, we're losing the initiative.
We all have our own ideas about what the recovery bill is supposed to look like. The Republicans are threatening to filibuster, and we can't trust Harry Reid to stop them. Rush Limbaugh, the very serious leader of the Republican Party and alleged sex tourist, has ordered his dittoheads to blitz the Democrats with angry phone calls. Concurrently, Democrats, liberals and progressives, for all we've learned in the last eight years, are losing the framing battle -- "stimulus package" sounds like a weird service offered at a porn store and, in that context, a trillion dollar "stimulus package" sounds, you know, painful. Meanwhile, centrist Democrats like Ben Nelson appear to be ransacking the bill. Other Democrats have bugged out of Washington entirely.
We're looking at fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Forty years of darkness. The dead rising from the grave! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!
Come to think of it, some of that Ghostbusters stuff might actually come true if a beefy and expensive recovery bill isn't passed, and right soon.
So how do we get there?
The first step in getting a handle on all of this mayhem is to understand that this is unprecedented in terms of size, scope and strategy -- only rivaled by the New Deal. Then again, for all of the obstacles he faced, FDR didn't have to negotiate his way through cable news, a hostile press, far-right talk radio, the blogotubes and an army of dittoheads taking their orders from an impotent burnout whose stated goal is the failure of the economy. In other words, while there are very smart economic solutions being pitched by Paul Krugman and others, the price tag, politics, optics, media and discourse are all brand new.
This is massive, this is complicated, this is unlike anything we've ever seen.
Nevertheless, the president hasn't faded, which is good considering the Herculean enormity of what's confronting him. President Obama, as we witnessed throughout the campaign, has a narrative build and a cadence in his speech-making that's almost perfectly duplicated in how he leads and how he manages a crisis. And based on his public appearances this week, he's actually gaining strength -- amplifying his voice and fortifying his position.
The second step is the big one. The progressive netroots have yet to seriously blitz Congress on this thing. The central reason for this lack of activism was summarized by Chris Bowers and Atrios who are asking: If we blitz Congress, what the hell do we support exactly? There are so many ideas in terms of what the recovery bill should look like, which iteration do we get behind?
There are obviously no easy answers. But regardless of the differing ideas about the details of the recovery bill, there's one thing that most of us can agree about: the Republicans can't be trusted on the economy and they can't be trusted to meddle with the recovery bill.
The president wrote in the Washington Post today:

In recent days, there have been misguided criticisms of this plan that echo the failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis... I reject those theories...

In addition to being a clear message to Congress, this sounds like a mission statement -- for the administration and for us. Reject the Republican economic theories.
To that point, there's no debating the Republican record on the economy. Their allegiance to Reaganomics and free market deregulation have led us to the brink of, well, dogs and cats living together and mass hysteria.
Nevertheless, there they are on cable news and the Sunday shows acting as if they know something. At the same time, they've proved themselves to be dishonest, bad-fath actors in this thing. They've spread lies about fake CBO reports, while also ignoring an actual CBO report on the Senate bill indicating that it would, in fact, succeed in stimulating economic growth. They've spread lies about nonexistent ACORN line items in the bill -- line items that only exist inside of Michelle Malkin's twisted dome. I mean, they met with Joe the Plumber on the Hill this week to discuss the economy. Joe the Plumber. About the economy. Because they're very serious people who ought to be taken very seriously.
And so they should be summarily shut out of this process -- whether or not the president wants them out.
The Republicans have zero cred.
And that's the message we can unify around: ZERO CRED.
Operation Zero Cred.
From there, considering the unprecedented dollar amount of the recovery bill, it might be impossible to herd every cat. But perhaps, in the process, we'll at least marginalize the Republicans just a little more. And that will surely mean a larger, more robust recovery bill.
So as the saying goes: We are the ones we've been waiting for, and all that.
Don't write or send e-mails. Written screeds can be conveniently lost, deleted or shredded. Telephones, on the other hand, make loud beeping and ringing noises and you'll know right away that there's a real life human being on the other end of the line who has to listen to what you have to say.
Phone numbers for your senators here. Phone numbers for your congressmember here.
The message:

"The Republicans have zero credibility on the economy."

Paraphrase President Obama:

"Please reject the Republican theories that got us into this mess in the first place."

Feel free to toss in the following:

"Make the Republicans stand and filibuster if they want to filibuster. No cloture votes!

Don't get into specific details of the bill. Our message needs to be consistent and unified: Zero Cred. The Republicans have zero credibility. We reject their ideas and we reject their theories.
Let's do this.
BobCesca.com
Order my book: One Nation Under Fear, with a foreword by Arianna Huffington. Also available in stores.

Economic Stimulus Bill: Sound Policy vs. D.C. "Bipartisanship"

I appeared on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show last night at the top of the show to discuss the legislative wrangling over the economic recovery package - and why Democrats seem so interested not in passing the bill, but in attracting the majority of the Republican Party to support it. You can watch the clip here.

Rachel and I discussed a question that I asked a few weeks ago: How much should taxpayers have to pay for political aesthetics? As I noted back then, the Obama administration concedes to reporters that it could pass an economic recovery package right now, without making any policy concessions to Republicans, such as substituting more tax cuts for more infrastructure spending. And yet, Obama and Democrats are doing just that - making concessions to Republicans in hopes that a majority of Republicans will support the final bill. And so again, how many billions of dollars in inefficient tax cuts must taxpayers be forced to finance in order to help Obama attract extra Republican votes that he doesn't actually need?

What's so bad about this question even being on the table is that since I wrote my original post, Republicans themselves have publicly acknowledged that Democrats do not have to make any concessions to them in order to pass the bill.

As the Boston Globe reports:

With diminished minorities in both chambers, Republicans are unlikely to find the votes to block the bill. In the House, there are enough Democrats to pass it without any additional support. In the Senate, Republicans could derail the bill, but only if united; two Republicans crossing over to support Obama would allow Democratic leaders to thwart a filibuster. "Most of the Republican caucus has acquiesced to the political reality that the stimulus is going to happen," said strategist Phil Musser, who has advised Republicans in both the House and Senate. "The question is how much political support it's going to happen with."

"There's widespread consensus here," the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said Friday at the National Press Club. "Everybody believes that government action is necessary, and this is coming out of the mouth of somebody who doesn't normally advocate government action as the first resort."

So, let's review all the verifiable facts:

FACT: Economists on both the right and left agree that spending on infrastructure is a better guaranteed way to create jobs and stimulate GDP growth than enacting new tax cuts. FACT: Top congressional Democrats acknowledge that spending on infrastructure is a far better way to stimulate the economy than tax cuts.

FACT: Even top Republican pollsters acknowledge that the public strongly supports prioritizing robust spending on infrastructure over more tax cuts.

FACT: The Obama administration acknowledges that it can effectively pass whatever economic recovery package it wants - including one that is robustly progressive in seriously prioritizing spending on infrastructure over tax cuts.

FACT: Senate Republicans and Republican Party strategists acknowledge the same thing that the Obama administration acknowledges: Namely, that Democrats have the political capital to pass almost anything they want.

FACT: Despite this reality, Obama has both pushed Congress to add conservatives' ineffective tax cut proposals to the recovery bill, and reduce funding for job-creating transportation infrastructure in order to fund new tax cuts.

FACT: House Republican leader John Boehner says House Republicans are opposed to the stimulus, unless it is loaded down with corporate tax cuts.

FACT: Next to George W. Bush himself, House Republican leader John Boehner is the single most irrelevant individual in American politics when it comes to this economic recovery package. Why? Because House rules do not permit a filibuster, and therefore the Democratic majority can pass whatever it wants in the House.

FACT: Despite John Boehner's stunning lack of any political power or relevance, both the media and top Democrats continue to act as if he has near-veto power over the economic recovery package. The Huffington Post notes that the Beltway media is breathlessly reporting on Boehner's every declaration, and - for some odd reason - President Obama is spending time meeting with Republican House members, trying to get them to support an economic recovery package.* Again, this is happening despite Boehner and House Republicans having absolutely no actual legislative power to shape the stimulus package.

OK, so knowing all of this, we get to the key question: Why do Democrats seem more interested in attracting majority Republican support they clearly do not need than in passing a bill that uses taxpayer money most effectively to stimulate the economy?

As I told Rachel, my guess is that it has something to do with Obama wanting Republicans to join him in politically owning the economy. That is, he likely believes that if most Republicans end up voting for the economic stimulus, that somehow means they won't criticize him when the economy continues to (inevitably) falter in 2009.

What this misunderstands, of course, is that Obama is not a senator anymore - and that means he can't dodge political hot potatoes like the economy. Whether he likes it or not - and whether Republicans vote en masse for the stimulus bill or not - he will soon be the one who politically owns the economy. Fair or unfair, that's just how it works in American politics - the president gets the credit and blame for the economy's success and failure.

Knowing that basic Political Science 101 reality, it seems to me that the smarter course of action is to make sure the economic recovery package is structured as effectively as possible to make sure every single dollar is best used to boost the economy. The better the recovery package is - the more direct spending it includes on proven job-creating programs - the more likely it will be to boost the economy, and thus, the more likely Obama will be to get credit for that economic success. Alternately, the worse the recovery package is - the more it is loaded down with ineffective tax cuts - the less likely it will be to boost the economy, and the more likely Obama will be to get the blame for that failure, whether Republicans voted for it or not.

This is the Republicans trap - and it is pretty smart political strategy. They get to advocate for policies that appease their base and satisfy their corporate donors. If they succeed in getting those policies amended into the stimulus bill, they will help sabotage the effectiveness of that bill and then have a perfect attack point with which to bludgeon Obama on the economy. If they fail in getting those policies amended into the stimulus bill, they will be able to say that's the reason the economy is not doing well in 2009. And one these outcomes are guaranteed, whether they vote for the bill or not.

What's not guaranteed is the effectiveness of the strategy - that's up to Democrats and Obama. If they fall for the trap and they continue watering down the bill with the very right-wing tax cuts that the public rejected during the 2008 election, they will make the GOP strategy look brilliant. But if they stop playing games with an opposition that just got drubbed in the election - and if they pass a robust spending plan without regard to how many extra GOP votes they get - they will at least hold out the possibility that the recovery package will ultimately boost the economy (and thus their political support), if not in 2009, then soon after.

The problem may be the deeper conflict between Obama's two key sets of campaign promises. On the one hand, he promised a huge agenda of new progressive spending. On the other hand, he promised bipartisanship. As we are seeing, those two goals create a fundamental conflict - not in the country at large, as polls show, but in Washington, D.C., where the term "bipartisanship" has little to do with true bipartisanship among the American public. The Republican Party in Washington - despite polls and the election mandate - simply will not agree to support the kind of robustly progressive spending that Obama campaigned on.
Thus, Obama has to choose between his campaign spending promises and his odes to bipartisanship - and unfortunately, it looks like he's trying not to make a choice at all. He's proposing a plan that tries to split the difference between GOP-backed tax cuts that Democrats acknowledge are ineffective, and progressive spending proposals. Policy-wise, the net effect is a weaker stimulus package than the moment requires. Politically, the effect is to help resuscitate a Republican Party and conservative movement that should be left to wither away. Indeed, the only way the GOP can claw itself back to political relevance is to garner attention from Obama and the Democrats - and sadly, it seems Obama seems intent on helping the GOP get back in the game.

As I told Rachel in concluding our interview, this situation is particularly sad from a historical perspective. If Franklin Roosevelt's main concern during the Great Depression was getting the majority of the Republican Party to support his proposals, we probably wouldn't have Social Security. Same thing for Lyndon Johnson during the 1960s - if he was primarily worried about getting GOP support for bills he signed, we probably wouldn't have the era's landmark civil rights laws nor Medicare.

I'm not saying that bipartisanship shouldn't be welcomed - but I am saying it shouldn't be the first and foremost goal.

Bipartisanship should come as a welcome - but, at this moment of wide Democratic majorities, legislatively irrelevant - product of good policy. It shouldn't be the other way around. Policy shouldn't be crafted first and foremost to garner Washington's faux bipartisanship, because at least one half of that bipartisan equation - congressional Republicans - aren't interested in representing any kind of public consensus. They are, in a sense, legislative terrorists, and as our government always tells us, you can't negotiate with terrorists. When you do, what happens is that good policy is sabotaged into mediocre or bad policy - all in pursuit of meaningless political aesthetics (And the good news is that at least some congressional Democrats get this and are pushing amendments that move the economic stimulus bill in a far more progressive direction).

Last I checked, nobody remembers by how many congressional votes our nation's greatest statutes passed into law. What we remember is the policy. To subvert that policy in pursuit of the image of bipartisanship and praise from the Beltway media is to waste this real but fleeting window of opportunity.

* UPDATE: Some good breaking news - word just off the newswires is that Obama told House Republicans he's not giving in to more tax cuts. That's great - although I still think Obama shouldn't be spending any of his time - and political capital - helping House Republicans seem even vaguely relevant.