The Senate Conservatives Killed President Obama's Jobs Bill - Why? (updated 10-21-2011) [93*9]

Thanks for reading it Phoebe.

My thoughts exactly, thanks HS.

I was hoping you would respond to this one, Chris, because of the many Conservatives I debate with, you at least read what I write, consider what I am trying to say, and if I present the right set of facts, might even concede a little bit.

I only have time to resond to one of your points at the moment; the 8% unemployment number; it is a favorite one used by the Right, and quite wrong. First, I don't think Obama ever said that, but a couple of his staffers did (which, in politics is the same thing) and they did it in early January 2009. The KEY point is their 8% estimate was based on 3rd Qtr, 2008 economic data.

The FULL impact of the near depression wasn't gleened from the numbers until until the 4th Qtr, 2008 data was finalized after President Obama took office and AFTER his stimulus plan was mostly developed.

The Fact I would like you to take away from this is that unemployment was soaring past 7% and heading toward 8% BEFORE Obama ever became President.

With the rate of layoffs gaining momentum in December 2008, through January and February 2009, it was a physical impossibility for unemployment to stay below the 7.?% when Bush left office. I guarantee you, that if Obama had followed the Conservatives prescription for recovery (research the Panics of 1873 and 1893 where the Conservative methodolgy was followed), that unemployment would have reached upwards of 15% or more, the minimum for these kinds of downturns.

Obama kept it at 10%

I appreciate you reading and commenting on my hub, Cinpit8812. Yes, the current batch of Conservative candidates look a bit strange to us, but they are quite good from the Conservative perspective. As you saw from CMerritt's comments, he sees the world entirely differently than you or I do, and, he is as sincere in his view as we are about ours. The key, of course, is how do the Independents see the world this time around.

Think of the box you put yourself into Chris with that kind of thinking; you leave yourself wide open to absurdacies (and I can't spell). The 15% isn't a "strawman". Go back and look at all financial recessions/depressions/panics of this mangintude where the government did nothing to mitigate its effects and find me one where unemployment was less than 15%; many were above 20%. In the world where I spent my workinig career as a cost analyst, that is pretty solid evidence that 15% is a reasonable estimate.

In another hub, I showed where job loss was around 400,000 in December (Bush), then 600,000 in January (Bush), then 700,000 in February (Bushes, no stimulus yet), then another 700,000 or so in March and unemployment is now over 8% (Bushes, stimulus just started); it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see where this is heading if something isn't done. American businesses where just beginning to downsize because they saw the government doing nothing besides TARP which the Conservatives were bad-mouthing and making everybody nervous.

Holding Obama to the 3rd Qtr 2008 numbers is just flat rediculous; that kind of logic makes Bush look like a total disaster, given what didn't happen that he said would ... do you remember his Iraq victory speech? Because Conservatives would let Obama adjust the stimulus to meet the threat suggested by the 4th Qtr numbers, it fell short of what was actually needed even though it met his primary goal of saving or creating 4 million jobs.

OK, let's look at those.

Why couldn't he close GITMO? The Conservatives would NOT let him (and sheeplishly with a some Democratic Congressional help)

The troops in Iraq ARE home, on the scheduled promised. Obama also did and is doing what he said he would do in Afghanistan, reengage in the real war that Bush ignored and properly finish it off; he is still basically on that timetable as well. My personal hope is that he does delay drawing down the troops there

Not sure which "tree hugger" promises you are referring to but my question back to you is were they broken because the Conservatives wouldn't let them be passed?

I haven't studied border security enough yet to comment much other than to say, building an actual "brick and mortar" fence is a really dumb idea. Rick Perry's idea of a virtual fence is much better; which Obama has been working toward plus, if you look closely, I think you will find he has beefed up border manpower significantly, although I am ready to be slapped down on that one, my mememory is terrible these days.

ALL politicitian say they are going to root out WFA, NO politician ever does; Obama is human after all.

Don't know anything about NAFTA, must go look.

Lobbiests are ubiquitous. He may or may not have known that going in, but he certainly found out soon enough. So now the challenge was to hire good lobbiests, and as few as possible, as opposed to bad lobbiests. In my opinion, he has not been stellar in his success. If I am thinking of the right Lynn, he is one of the good guys, I believe he was serving in DoD when I was there.

Now that you have listed some of his percieved failures, I encourage you to go to my hub "What has President Obama Done Right in Almost Three Years? LOTS!" It is an incomplete but growing list of Obama accomplishments and promises kept.

The one historic accomplishment I will point out here is that his response to the Bush near depression was critical to keeping this country out of a real depression, 1929-style. That is not my opinion; that is the opinion of Conservative economists who understood what was really happening, finally, such as Greenspan, Bernanke, and Summers. There is no question in anybodies mind who understands economics that if Bush hadn't abandoned his Conservative principals and passed TARP and Obama hadn't implemented it the way he did plus add what turned out to be an anemic stimulus, all over the violent objections of Conservatives, the Dow wouldn't have stopped falling at 7062 from 13930 and unemployment would have sailed passed 11% which it never reached under Obama. To understand the devastation that would have been visited on America, you need to bone up on what happened after the Panics of 1873, 1893, and the depression of 1929, when the government followed the Conservative model of how to deal with economic downturns.

Now, I do understand that the many who hold the Conservative philosophy (like Bourbon Democrat Grover Cleveland) think that is the way it ought to be, that government simply has no Constitutional business in helping out its citizens and businesses, even in times of crises, but, the rest of us do.

Thanks Credence, I sure hope the voters do, but, so much depends on how American's, short-sighted as we are, percieve the economy in Oct 2012.

Let me take on another of CMeritt's points - Repeal of Obama Care. First let me say that I absolutely agree with the premise that if business sees that government finally has its act together and can put forward a stable policy, then, and only then, will they feel comfortable to take risks and invest and hire.

So long as the Conservatives threaten to repeal everything that Obama has done, including Obama Care, then the Conservatives guarantee a bad economy until sometime into 2013, at a minimum; which may be their plan; it sure seems like it anyway. So long as Conservatives refuse to compromise on anything, even it means the country going BK, business is going to sit on its billions in cash.

Specifically to Obama Care though. Businesses DO know what the cost is going to be now, at least enough to plan. I was talking to my insurance broker yesterday about just that and here is what I found. 1) my premiums will be going down by 10% in 2012, 2) all companies my size, less than 50 people, are "grandfathered" in to some of the provisions, meaning I won't be required to provide insurance if I don't want, except I already do, 3) all provisions of the law are known and if I were any kind of businessman, I would already be factoring in what Obama Care may or may not be costing/saving me. Again, in my case, even with no "grandfather" my company, and ones like it, wouldn't see any downside to Obama Care. For the Conservatives to claim that Obama Care will cost jobs in the future is just as rediculus as the Democrats claiming it will create jobs; neither side has a clue; all we do know is that the CBO thinks that Obama Care is a winner.

Actually, I do understand quite a bit about labor economics and the larger category of macroeconomics as well as microeconomics.

While you are right in your next statement about length of gov't sustainment, you are wrong in your implication that it is Obama's intent to sustain the economy indefinitely via gov't intervention; his plan, if you had read it, is to try to prime the pump in order to get business off of their fat-asses and start hiring again. But, as long as conservatives keep trying to subvert the economic recovery, I doubt they will do that.

Your statement that "Business will save the economy", is absolutely true, everybody knows that. The $64 question is, why aren't they, four years later. It certainly isn't from lack of demand; $1 trillion in stimulus is a lot of demand, although most economists now say that given the depth of the hole the conservatives ended up puttng America us into, $2 trillion was needed, not $1. In any case, $1 trillion was all Obama was going to get out of the political climate the conservatives created.

This Obama "spent us into oblivion" comment is proof positive of your own ignorance of how economics works. Of the $4.5 trillion conservatives attempt to attribute to Obama, they need to take back about $3.5 trillion of it and give to themselves as a direct consequence of lost tax revenue from their recession and automatice transfer payments (mainly unemployment) built into the law anytime major down turns occur. Obama's portion is the $1 trillion spent to keep us out of a depression.