October 5, 2011
Where’s the Jobs Bill?
When Eric Cantor, the House Republican leader, predictably said that President Obama’s jobs bill was dead on arrival in his chamber, and would not even be debated, the president — in a break from his usual forbearance — lashed right back at him. “Does he not believe in rebuilding America’s roads and bridges?” Mr. Obama asked on Tuesday. Does Mr. Cantor oppose rehiring teachers or construction workers, he continued, or giving tax breaks to businesses that hire?
It was the kind of strong, personal rejoinder to Republican obstructionism that Mr. Obama needs to make. Unfortunately, he has not been as forceful in pressing the other lawmakers holding up his bill: Senate Democrats.
Nearly a month after the president proposed his jobs bill, it has not yet been taken up in the chamber controlled by his party. “We’ll get to that,” Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, said last month, after taking up a misguided bill to punish China for currency manipulation. The truth is that Mr. Reid has not had enough Democratic votes to even claim a Senate majority. That is because so many members of his caucus do not have the political courage to stand up for aggressive government action to revive the economy, or to admit that both higher taxes on the wealthy and an end to corporate tax breaks are necessary to pay for it and to start wrestling down the deficit.
The Republicans have used that cowardice to embarrass Mr. Reid, his party and Mr. Obama. On Tuesday, when the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, prankishly offered to bring up the jobs bill, Mr. Reid was forced to object, leading to all sorts of merry, if hollow, taunts from the Republican side.
The Republicans’ willingness to play political games while millions are out of work is inexcusable, but the eagerness of some Democratic senators to protect big business and big contributors is no less frustrating.
Oil state Democrats, like Mark Begich of Alaska and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, are resisting ending tax breaks for energy conglomerates. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Bill Nelson of Florida have objected to broad tax revenue increases. Even Charles Schumer of New York objected to increases on families making more than $250,000, claiming— no more convincingly than Republicans do — that many are struggling small businesses.
To reassemble his coalition, Mr. Reid on Wednesday proposed scrapping the president’s plan to pay for his bill, and substituting a new 5 percent surtax on incomes of more than $1 million. That would increase the progressivity of the tax code, and White House officials said they could accept it. But their original idea was much better.
Ultimately, families making $250,000, and even those making less, will have to give back some of the tax benefits they got from the Bush administration if the budget is to return to long-term health. Beginning that tax-reform process now makes more sense than confining the new tax to millionaires, whatever its populist satisfactions.
In the end, it may be a political exercise anyway, since Mr. McConnell’s Republicans will filibuster any jobs bill, and Mr. Cantor’s will reject most of it. But the sharp contrast with the Republican plan to do nothing can only be made if Democrats are clearly united behind a plan to invigorate the economy. Mr. Reid insists the millionaire’s tax will unite Democrats and produce a vote on the jobs plan in the next few days. It cannot come soon enough.
