Obama Jobs Address Also a Deficit Address
The President has requested a joint session of Congress on September 7 at 8pm (amusingly conflicting with the next GOP Presidential debate at the Reagan Library), “to lay out his plan to create jobs, grow the economy, and reduce the deficit” according to White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer. That’s one thing that has been lost among this jobs speech – it’s also a deficit speech.
This is the speech where Obama will deliver a specific plan to the Catfood Commission II, one bigger than the $1.5 trillion deficit reduction target that they have, on top of the job creation ideas. You might say that the deficit reduction plan will “pay for” the job ideas. But the Republicans are highly unlikely to move on the job ideas, because it conflicts with their policy goals and their political imperative of not improving the economy. So all we’ll get is the deficit reduction, if anything at all. Heck, Congress won’t even pass emergency disaster relief without offsets, so you can forget about spending programs that will actually create jobs.
That means that this speech, billed as the big “pivot to jobs,” will in its aftermath probably be solely focused on the deficit reduction ideas. And since this is a big stage, with Congress watching, all of these deficit reduction proposals will loom large next November, much larger than the job ideas. If you don’t think that Republicans will run an “Obama wants to cut your Medicare” ad in 2012, regardless of the hypocrisy, you’re wrong.
And yes, there will be taxes in there as well, which will draw the inevitable “Obama wants to raise your taxes” ad. And while the staff director of Catfood Commission II is a Republican tax policy expert, which could possibly signal some give on revenues, at the end of the day the party leadership would have to sign off, and I’m not seeing that happening. If the Catfood Commission II passes anything, it will not have revenues in it. Or if it does, they will be vanishingly small.
The very fact that I’m speculating about the Catfood Commission II in the middle of a post that started as an announcement of Obama’s jobs address shows how impossible it will be to “pivot to jobs.” Especially because the pivot back to the deficit is included in the same speech.
Obama Jobs Address Also a Deficit Address
The President has requested a joint session of Congress on September 7 at 8pm (amusingly conflicting with the next GOP Presidential debate at the Reagan Library), “to lay out his plan to create jobs, grow the economy, and reduce the deficit” according to White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer. That’s one thing that has been lost among this jobs speech – it’s also a deficit speech. This is the speech where Obama will deliver a specific plan to the Catfood Commission II, one bigger than the $1.5 trillion deficit reduction target that they have, on top of the job creation ideas. You might say that the deficit reduction plan will “pay for” the job ideas. But the Republicans are highly unlikely to move on the job ideas, because it conflicts with their policy goals and their political imperative of not improving the economy. So all we’ll get is the deficit reduction, if anything at all. Heck, Congress won’t even pass emergency disaster relief without offsets, so you can forget about spending programs that will actually create jobs.
That means that this speech, billed as the big “pivot to jobs,” will in its aftermath probably be solely focused on the deficit reduction ideas. And since this is a big stage, with Congress watching, all of these deficit reduction proposals will loom large next November, much larger than the job ideas. If you don’t think that Republicans will run an “Obama wants to cut your Medicare” ad in 2012, regardless of the hypocrisy, you’re wrong.
And yes, there will be taxes in there as well, which will draw the inevitable “Obama wants to raise your taxes” ad. And while the staff director of Catfood Commission II is a Republican tax policy expert, which could possibly signal some give on revenues, at the end of the day the party leadership would have to sign off, and I’m not seeing that happening. If the Catfood Commission II passes anything, it will not have revenues in it. Or if it does, they will be vanishingly small.
The very fact that I’m speculating about the Catfood Commission II in the middle of a post that started as an announcement of Obama’s jobs address shows how impossible it will be to “pivot to jobs.” Especially because the pivot back to the deficit is included in the same speech.
