Even as one Republican leader accused President Obama of being "out of ideas and out of touch," Obama was proving that he is neither. The president's call for a spending plan to boost job creation and preservation recognizes that though the stock market is showing signs of a bounce-back, and other positive developments have been sighted on the economic horizon, unemployment remains at 10 percent nationwide, and for those 7 million Americans who have lost their jobs in this recession, recovery is a long way off.
And so, in a plan that would cost somewhere between $150 billion and $200 billion, Obama would: strike capital gains taxes for those who invested in stocks in small companies next year and held the stock for at least five years; he would continue giving those small companies tax breaks for some expenditures, such as equipment; small businesses would get tax incentives if they hired new people; and those small firms would be forgiven fees that usually go with borrowing through the Small Business Administration. In addition there would be billions of dollars worth of new construction projects and transportation improvements. Homeowners who make their houses more energy efficient would get rebates.
These are not giveaways, nor are they a bunch of New Deal-style federal employment programs (without which many Americans would not have survived the Great Depression). Rather, he is encouraging the creation of jobs where it counts, at the local level, in small businesses that stand a chance to prosper and employ more people.
This is the common-sense way to long-term recovery for the country and stable employment for a lot of people. It is better than any other alternative offered, not that many have been. It is the difference between patchwork and a careful rebuilding of an economic structure that proved to be dangerously flawed and subject to manipulation.
The small business person knows the economy from the ground up, and operates on the most basic principles: hire people, deliver a quality product, sell the product for a profit, grow the business. This is the foundation, the historic foundation, of the U.S. economy going back to the country's beginning. And now, after the fiascos of Wall Street and the near-collapse of the banking system, that small business model remains a rock on which to build.
Republican naysaying is frankly hard to understand. House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio spoke for his Republican allies when he made that crack about the president being "out of ideas..." But where are the ideas from the Republicans who were such strong supporters of allowing the free market to run wild and deregulation, etc., that helped dig the economic hole deeper?
They don't like spending. They don't like health care reform, even though a nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Democratic plans would lower, not increase, the federal deficit. And now they don't like the president's jobs program.
So is their own plan similar to the one President Franklin Roosevelt's opponents had during the Great Depression, that being to wait and see? Their words are shallow and their credibility is ebbing.
Doing nothing might win them seats in the 2010 election, but do they not understand that the country is in the middle of an emergency, and that the emergency is acute for the millions of people without work...hard-working people who were doing their part and paying their taxes before a system beyond their control turned chaotic? Obama isn't just trying to do something, anything. His plan is specific, targeted toward the people and businesses that can do the most to bring jobs back. It is a productive strategy that should be adopted.
