Obama's Job Push To Be Ineffective

Since the loss of their 60-vote super-majority, PresBo has been grasping for something, anything to help revitalize his sagging Presidency. Health care reform isn't it, obviously, and with most people concerned about unemployment and the economy, PresBo has decided to turn his eyes that-a-way.

He is proposing a "jobs bill," which is essentially just a smaller version of the $787 billion stimulus package. He is also proposing a few tax breaks and other gimmicks... but nothing substantive.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0110/32126.html

Specifically, the president wants to give a tax break to businesses that hire workers, eliminate the capital gains tax on small business investments and use $30 billion in Troubled Asset Relief Program money to encourage community banks to lend to small businesses.

The president’s package also would pump more government money into “green jobs” and infrastructure projects and extend unemployment benefits to those still out of work.

Some of these provisions are provably ineffective, and others are actually counterproductive. For example, studies have shown that most people find a job near the end of their unemployment benefits... so extending unemployment benefits isn't going to help that jobless rate at all, and may be exacerbating it. I mean, think about it... if you subsidize something, you get more of it.

So, in my opinion, the package outlined by the President to "create jobs" will not accomplish that. But don't take MY word for it... how about listening to some economists who reviewed the plan?

“He’s trying to turn his microeconomic policies into some macroeconomic solution. He’s grasping at straws,” said Peter Morici, an economist at the University of Maryland.

"We are just going to have to ride this out over the next six months. If things don’t get better in trade with China, we aren’t getting out of this,” he added.

Gus Faucher, director of macroeconomics at Moody’s Economy.com, is not so negative, but he’s not exuberant either.

“I think the package will make a difference around the edges,” Faucher said. “But, at the end of the day, it will take a strong economic expansion to get job growth going again.”

This push is as I described it earlier, a desperate attempt to "reconnect" with a public that he has ignored throughout his first year... and continues to ignore. He doesn't really WANT to create jobs or improve the economy, otherwise he'd be trying something besides debt-financed spending programs.