Democrats to Unveil Jobs Package
By NAFTALI BENDAVID and GREG HITT
Senate Democrats are preparing to release a roughly $80 billion jobs program this week, but its prospects are uncertain in a political landscape where voters are angry about unemployment yet fuming about federal spending.
Senate leaders are proposing that part of that money come from funds originally allocated to the financial-sector bailout effort, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. but top Democrats have decided to slice the jobs initiative into smaller chunks in the face of Republican attacks on big federal economic-stimulus programs.
Action on the jobs measures will be a warm-up for the larger debates over federal spending proposed in President Barack Obama's 2011 budget plan released Monday. Both sides agree that jobs are a national priority. with Republicans on the cusp of 41 votes in the Senate, Democrats need some GOP support to avoid procedural obstacles that could doom their effort. if Republicans do block their initiatives—particularly proposed tax breaks for businesses—Democrats are prepared to blame the minority party for seeking election-year political advantage at the expense of hard-pressed workers.
For mr. Obama and his Democratic allies, the fiscal challenges will be difficult to reconcile as the year unfolds. mr. Obama is calling for new action to spur job growth, which will almost certainly add to the deficit. at the same time, the public is up in arms over the government's red ink, and mr. Obama is seeking a freeze in domestic spending.
Democrats have been planning for months to focus on job creation early this year. but the party's loss last month of a U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts that it had held for decades has added a new urgency to the sense that Congress needs to focus on the economy.
The Senate plan is one of a series of initiatives proposed recently by Democrats scrambling to show voters that they are tackling the nation's persistent unemployment problem. the House last year passed a $154 billion jobs program that includes some, but not all, of the same elements as the Senate plan.
Mr. Obama is offering a series of initiatives of his own. last week, he proposed a $33 billion tax credit for companies that create jobs. on Tuesday, he again suggested using $30 billion from the TARP program for a small-business lending fund. and in his 2011 budget, he included $100 billion for aid to states, infrastructure funding and other jobs programs.
Democrats must sort through these overlapping initiatives in coming weeks and decide which make the most sense economically as well as politically.
Senate Democrats plan to launch one bill, which could be introduced as early as Friday, to extend authorization for highway projects, give tax credits to businesses for job creation and other investments, and help state and local governments issue construction bonds. Democrats say those actions could create jobs right away.
A second phase would focus on infrastructure spending; help for state and local governments so they can provide jobs for teachers, police officers and other employees; and aid for people and firms making homes, schools and factories more energy efficient, an idea called "cash for caulkers."
"I think people are very tuned in to their constituents and job growth," said Sen. Maria Cantwell (D., Wash.). "So I think if there are proposals that people believe concretely will really create jobs, I think you'll have bipartisan support."
But Republicans criticized the Democratic leaders for crafting bills without input from the minority party.
"They're writing the jobs bill the same way they wrote the health-care bill—behind closed doors," said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.). "We've not been invited to participate, which isn't a good beginning."
Mr. Alexander and other Republicans also oppose the plan to use TARP funds, saying that by law the money is supposed to go toward reducing the deficit.
Among the ideas Democrats are sifting through is a proposal by Sens. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) to reward businesses for creating jobs. Under their plan, any employer that hires a worker who has been unemployed for at least 60 days wouldn't have to pay the worker's 6.2% Social Security payroll tax for the rest of 2010.
Another idea being promoted by Democrats involves beefing up a tax credit that would encourage businesses to make job-creating investments. such investments—equipment upgrades, for example—are often written off for tax purposes over several years. but the so-called Section 179 credit would allow firms to write off the value of investments in a single year.
Democrats also want to extend and broaden the "Build America Bond" program created in last year's stimulus package. that initiative provides tax-preferred bonds to help state and local governments fund job-creating infrastructure projects, such as construction of schools, hospitals and roads.
Additionally, Democrats are considering using the jobs package to renew several recently lapsed tax breaks, include the tax credit supporting business research and development.
Write to Naftali Bendavid at naftali.bendavid@wsj.com and Greg Hitt at greg.hitt@wsj.com
Obama's honeymoon is over
WASHINGTON — The chorus of loud criticism of President Barack Obama is a reminder that every new occupant of the White House has a presidential learning curve. there is no such thing as an instant president. They all have to learn the hard way.
Fans and foes alike seem to be ganging up on the newcomer as he approaches his first anniversary in office.
Hopeful Republican antagonists are wondering whether he can win a second term — premature as that speculation may be.
Some one-time Obama supporters are disillusioned because of the great expectations fostered by Obama's soaring rhetoric during the long presidential campaign. Democratic "progressives" now feel let down because they had assumed the new president was a "liberal" who believed that the government should initiate new Deal-style programs to get the country back on its feet.
Instead, he has conducted his first year in office as a cautious centrist, guided by a more moderate social philosophy than had been generally assumed.
I keep seeing his legislative experience — both in the Illinois Legislature and the U.S. Senate — coming to the fore in his quickness to compromise and to let deal-making chug along.
It seems that the president is operating on the theory that something is better than nothing, a questionable concept when you look at the forthcoming compromise health-care-reform bill. The emerging legislation will force some 30 million people to buy insurance or be penalized, creating a bonanza for the fat-cat insurance companies that shelled out millions to encourage Congress to drop any government-provided health plan.
Proponents of a government-run health-insurance plan — the "public option'" — that would compete with the bloated private insurers never had a chance.
Obama told The Washington Post in an interview: "I didn't campaign on the public option."
As a result, there was no place at the White House table to argue for the need for a government-sponsored health plan. The disillusioned now complain that Obama is "just another politician."
In foreign policy, Obama made it clear in his presidential campaign that he considered Afghanistan a big problem in the struggle against global terrorism.
But his questionable decision to dispatch 30,000 more troops to what is known as the "graveyard of empires" has widely evoked comparisons with the Vietnam quagmire.
On the home front, former President George W. Bush left his successor the painful legacy of the Great Recession, a calamity that strangely inspired Obama and Bush to rush to the rescue of some of the major Wall Street firms.
The big banks have shown their gratitude by brushing off loan applicants, while Wall Street — which was hugely responsible for the economic bust — is trying to block any new government regulations aimed at controlling the way it does business.
Obama has been faulted for making too many compromises and failing to take a firm stand against his Republican opponents in Congress. He mistakenly thought that Congress would want to do the right thing to tackle the nation's needs in a bipartisan way. think again.
Instead, the president soon discovered that it took political bribes and shameful concessions to win the support of greedy senators who were playing hard to get for their votes on the health bill.
The national-security critics — led by the insatiable former Vice President Dick Cheney — seem to forget that the Sept. 11 catastrophe and the torture and detention horrors happened on the Bush administration watch.
Like all presidents, Obama is finding that the honeymoon is over.
(c) 2010 Hearst Newspapers
Distributed by King Features Syndicate
Will All Gore be arrested?
Gore's office confirmed that the former vice president had received RAN's invitation and was considering it, though no decision has been made. "He has not accepted any of their offers to date," Kalee Kreider, a spokeswoman for Gore, said of the RAN offer. Kreider did not deny that this phrasing leaves open the possibility of Gore saying yes down the road.
RAN plans a national day of protest against coal on November 16, according to Brune.
If Gore did end up getting arrested during a protest against coal-fired power plant, it would make front page news throughout the world and put a spotlight on what some climate scientists and activists consider the single most important priority in the fight against climate change: halting the use of coal as the world's top source of electricity production.
Coal is the most carbon-intensive of the three major fossil fuels (the others are oil and natural gas) whose combustion produces most of the carbon dioxide that is helping to raise temperatures and change climatic patterns on earth.
NASA scientist James Hansen, the man who first warned during testimony before the U.S. Senate in 1988 that man-made greenhouse gas emissions were warming the planet, has called for a complete ban on new coal-fired power plants "until we have the technology to capture and sequester the CO2." That technology, Hansen estimates, is "probably five or ten years away." any plants built without that technology "are going to have to be bulldozed," argues Hansen, if the earth is to avoid "dramatic climate changes that produce what I would call a different planet."
John McCain, the Arizona senator and Republican presidential candidate, reportedly told a crowd in new Hampshire this week that he would consider supporting a ban on new coal-fired power plants if he could be shown possible alternatives. McCain was responding to a question from activists with Step It up, a grassroots organization pushing for bolder federal action against climate change, including a total ban on coal. Step It up plans a national day of demonstrations on november 3, exactly one year before the 2008 presidential election.
The state of Kansas recently denied a permit for construction of a coal-fired power plant due to concern over the plant's CO2 emissions. "I believe it would be irresponsible to ignore emerging information about the contribution of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to climate change and the potential harm to our environment if we do nothing," said Roderick Bremby, the secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and the Environment, in explaining his rejection of the permit for the Sunflower Electric Power company.
In neighboring Iowa, Hansen is offering expert testimony in a lawsuit aiming to halt construction of the Sutherland Generating Station Unit 4 coal-fired plant. "Coal will determine whether we continue to increase climate change or slow the human impact," Hansen testified.
A native of Iowa, Hansen contended that a decision by his state to reject coal-fired power plants could be an important tipping point that would trigger broader shifts in public opinion and institutional behavior. "If the public begins to stand up in a few places and successfully oppose the construction of power plants that burn coal without capturing the CO2, this may begin to have a snowballing effect, helping utilities and politicians to realize that the public prefers a different path, one that respects all life on the planet."
Asked why he is focusing on Iowa when China is building many more coal-fired power plants, Hansen replied that China and other developing nations "must be part of the solution to global warming, and surely they will be, if developed nations take the appropriate first steps." The United States, Hansen noted, is responsible for three times as much of the excess CO2 in the atmosphere as any other nation.
True enough. But if China keeps building new coal plants at a rate of one every ten days, it won't much matter if U.S. companies turn away from coal. The campaign against coal must be global if it is to succeed.
Al Gore could launch this campaign with a bang if he joined activists in facing down the bulldozers. But a word of advice, Mr. Gore: make a US power plant your first target, but don't leave out China and the rest of the world. Carbon is a climate killer, wherever it originates.