Obama on jobs campaign
He’s trying to recapture the magic of 2008.
That’s a tough sell now. Even within his own party.
Meanwhile Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said he did not “know exactly what I’m going to do yet with the president’s jobs bill, but we’re going to have a full caucus meeting on it on Thursday.”
He has to try to explain it to his members.
When asked if he had the votes to pass the legislation as is, the leader said only, “We’ll see probably at later time.”
Reid plans a briefing for his Democrats Thursday from White House officials “for people who don’t understand it,” and leadership aides tell Fox that committee chairs have been encouraged to hold hearings, though none have yet been announced.
Some of Obama’s vocal supporters urge him to call this plan what it is.
Instead of using equivocal language, the president just needs to reclaim the word “stimulus.” And he needs to do it now as he tries to sell his jobs bill to the public. After all, it’s not like anyone’s forgotten the word or the 2009 measure he pushed through Congress.
Just a few paragraphs above that one the article quotes former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson as asking
if a trillion dollars’ worth of stimulus didn’t work, why will another $450 billion do the trick?
…and then Texas Gov. Rick Perry saying
“He had $800 billion worth of stimulus in the first round of stimulus. It created zero jobs, $400-plus billion in this package. And I can do the math on that one. Half of zero jobs is going to be zero jobs,”
which may help explain Obama’s discomfort with the word ‘stimulus.’
Especially given the latest federal deficit totals.
The federal budget deficit reached $1.23 trillion in August…Before 2009, the deficit had never come close to $1 trillion in a single year.
Furthermore…
Higher spending on unemployment insurance and food stamps, and a sharp contraction in tax revenues, widened the deficit. And it grew even more after the Obama administration backed a $787 billion stimulus program to boost the economy.
So he’s calling it a ‘jobs bill’, and working hard to sell it, as the Times notes.
But even as Mr. Obama was cranking up his call to action ( “Pass this bill” has turned into an audience chant à la “Yes we can”), he was also indicating that he is willing to take piecemeal passage of the bill after Republicans and some Democrats suggested that Congress would not adopt the proposal intact.
Meanwhile, the one job everyone is focusing on is his.
