The New Republic : Obama can right the economy by fighting - Obama should avoid talking about debt and instead build the case for government’s integral role in the economy right now - Needed : an Aggressive President focused on Jobs

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A President fired up with enthusiasm for solving the problems of joblessness is what America needs. - Not a sissy caving in to foolish Tea Partiers in the U. S. House of Representatives. - America needs a tough guy like Harry Truman or Franklin Roosevelt and not a compromiser in chief listening to stupid Republicans in the U. S. Congress.

The New Republic
Obama’s Got Plenty of Options to Right the Economy—He’s Just Got to Fight for Them
August 24, 2011

By Jared Bernstein

Jared Bernstein is a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the former chief economist to Vice-President Biden. He hosts jaredbernsteinblog.com.

Obama’s Got Plenty of Options to Right the Economy—He’s Just Got to Fight for Them


Some excerpts :

Fortunately, there’s lots of evidence that the government can and does create jobs, and not just government jobs. The recent two-week shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration provides one great and timely example. The shutdown led to furloughs for 4,000 federal workers, sure, but another 70,000 private transportation and construction workers were also laid off of projects they were completing for the agency.

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Instead, Obama should develop a tightly focused, resonant jobs agenda which he presents to America as the way forward, from now through the election and beyond. He should tell the people that he’s put the debt ceiling, the budget deficit, baselines, and credit ratings behind him. He knows what families care about right now: their jobs, their paychecks, their living standards.

He’s already been making this case regarding the extension of the payroll tax holiday and unemployment benefits. Those are already in the system, but they expire at the end of this year, and to let them do so would create a dangerous air pocket that we must avoid at all costs (I calculate that, together, these measures could shave 0.6 off of the 2012 unemployment rate—i.e., that rate would be 8.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 without them; 8.3 percent with them).

Then, he should roll out a campaign for a national infrastructure program to repair, retrofit, and modernize the nation’s public schools called FAST!—Fix America’s Schools Today. It’s got important advantages over the president’s infrastructure bank idea; it’s highly visible, can be stood up faster, and it’s more labor intensive, too. Finally, he should tout clean energy investments, as he did recently in Michigan, stressing the opportunities these investments create by replacing contracting industries with new, expanding ones.

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And, as for the rest of his plan, if Obama gets fired up around an agenda anything like the one I’ve outlined, and if he’s very clear about who, precisely, is standing between America and that jobs agenda, I think he’ll not only regain his footing and provide a stark contrast between himself and his opponents, but his fierce advocacy will give the country something to feel good about. And man, we really need that.

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