The GOP’s “Pledge,” and a Jobs Program That’s Working

I’d be interested in where else the stimulus money is going. I often hear “x jobs were created/saved” while simultaneously hearing “no one is being helped, this is a waste of money.” I was hoping we might see some reports over the next year of where exactly everything is going, who its affecting, and if there are abuses where they are.
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The only time I seem to hear anything is when voting is coming up either on the public level or in congress.

You should read Michael Grunwald’s piece. Linked in the post, but here it is again — http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2013683,00.html

I believe I read it when it came out, but I will read it again. Thank you for providing this illuminating article.
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I would like to see more in the future from the media at large. Considering this has such a huge impact on our budget, and is a lynch pin of the political platforms, I am underwhelmed by its coverage in general. That’s all.

What Ohio Tells Us About Obama
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Josh Kraushaar: Against The Grain
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CLEVELAND — There’s no shortage of political tumult in the Buckeye State this year, where the Democratic-held governorship and at least six Democratic-held House seats are in jeopardy. But what makes it particularly notable is that the state represents several key demographic groups whose changing perspectives will give serious insight into President Obama’s broader political standing for 2012.
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The voters Obama is losing — white-collar managers in Columbus, blue-collar union workers in Youngstown, pro-life independents around Cincinnati — are exactly the types he needs to win re-election in 2012, and they’re backing away from his party in droves. Obama tallied a whopping 60 percent disapproval rating in Quinnipiac’s latest Ohio poll, with nearly two-thirds of voters disapproving of his economic performance.
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That dissatisfaction extends across the board to Democrats on the statewide ballot. The Quinnipiac poll showed Gov. Ted Strickland down 17 points to Republican John Kasich and Republican Rob Portman leading Democratic Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher by 20 points in the Senate race. A separate CNN/Time poll was striking in that the two statewide Democrats were badly underperforming in nearly every part of the state, among almost every key demographic.
Working-class Democrats are abandoning the party to support Republicans. ..
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Meanwhile, Ohio’s House race landscape shows how widespread the Democratic problems are, with members representing diverse constituencies in all parts of the state in deep trouble. Much of their vulnerability can be tied to the state’s overall poor economy, but they’re also dealing with voting records that are out of line with their constituents’ views.
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Reps. Zack Space and John Boccieri voted for the cap-and-trade legislation even though they represent manufacturing-heavy northeastern Ohio districts where environmental restrictions on the cost of energy production are unpopular.
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And a Democratic strategist involved in Ohio races said they’ve seen polling and focus groups that show a surprisingly large number of blue-collar workers in Akron upset over Rep. Betty Sutton’s authorship of “Cash for Clunkers,” even though many took advantage of the program to buy cheaper new cars. (Obama carried 57 percent of the vote in her district in 2008.)
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“It’s the old Reagan Democratic coalition coming back at us with a vengeance,” the strategist said.
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The numbers have gotten so ominous in the state that even third-tier targets like Reps. Charlie Wilson and Marcy Kaptur can’t take their re-elections for granted.
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The developments across the ballot in Ohio suggest it’s not just the sputtering economy, but also the specific policies the administration has advanced, that have caused the Democratic brand to fall so flat, so fast. Obama’s been to Ohio 10 times since he was elected president — second-most of any state — yet his salesmanship on the economy and health care haven’t made a dent in his party’s numbers.
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With Obama getting pounded from Akron to Zanesville to Columbus to Cincinnati, it’s a clear warning sign for the future. Things can change dramatically in two years. But if the White House believe that it’s just style — that it’s the administration’s messaging, and not the underlying policies — causing the Democrats’ sinking numbers, it should take a look at the fate of Obama’s allies in Ohio who stood by him and are now bearing the brunt of those ties.

Thank you so much for responding to commentary with links to additional information, Alex Altman, it is always greatly appreciated.

The MSM doesn’t want to tell you. Isn’t that obvious?

A blueprint for balancing the budget…

That would be jobs, jobs, and more jobs. You know, where people are hired by employers in the PRIVATE sector, not public employees that are paid out of our deficit.

Alex – this is a real step up for Time’s blogging, but can we stop using weasel words? The ‘Senate’ in the abstract is blocking nothing. The Senate REPUBLICAN caucus (and a handful of conservative Democrats like Nelson) are preventing a cloture vote from occurring. The majority of the Senate, and the overwhelming majority of Senate Democrats do indeed want to continue the funding. The problem is, the Republican party decided that elections don’t count after 2008, and quickly began filibustering almost everything brought before the Senate. This a) wasted a massive amount of legislative time b) made it extremely difficult to accomplish anything during a period when America is in the depths of an economic crisis. Their reasoning is perfectly clear – allowing Obama to advance his legislative agenda and fix the economy would lead to him being popular and the GOP losing elections. So instead, the REPUBLICAN party (it bears repeating and emphasis) decided to sabotage the entire process of governance, despite the hardship this caused for millions of Americans.

Now there are a lot of things to unpack here – such as the fact that the composition of the Senate and the filibuster rule are stupid and illogical, and reveal that the USA is not in fact a functioning democracy, which I know would make much of your readership quiver with fear. But its the truth – and until you start reporting it, nothing will change.

For every republican that literally voted no as a united group over the last year, there have been a minimum of 50 democrats who each time rolled over and let them have their way. Regardless of what the media reports, the democrats have never had the spine to push the issue.

Hmmm – here’s the thing: when people have money they use it to buy goods and services, stimulating demand, and thus production and employment. Your argument seems to rely on the idea that either a) public sector workers (such as firemen, police, administrators and the US Marine Corps) are not in ‘real’ jobs, and are not paid ‘real’ money and so cannot constitute ‘real’ demand, or b) somehow you can get businesses to produce more widgets/services and employ more people despite the market for said widgets/services being non-existent due to people being unemployed and having no money, c) some magical means of creating private sector jobs (which this administration has done steadily, if in lacklustre numbers for the past 18 or so months) that no-one else has thought of.

“I’d be interested in where else the stimulus money is going. I often hear “x jobs were created/saved” while simultaneously hearing “no one is being helped, this is a waste of money.” I was hoping we might see some reports over the next year of where exactly everything is going, who its affecting, and if there are abuses where they are.”
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http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/home.aspx

The Republican track record for that isn’t very good. Since 1988 they’re in the negative on net job creation. In the past 20 years we’ve only had meaningful job creation under Bill Clinton.

gumshoe, I’m not so sure its lack of spine as much of lack of will. They rollover because they want to. They rollover to be bi-partisan. They rollover because an industry lobbyist asked them to.
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99% of the legislation the Dems are passing are exactly what they wanted to pass, despite their outward protests to the contrary.

Interesting Battle going on in the Senate Races
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According to the latest Real Clear Politics summary of current Polls.
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Senator Campaigns
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51 Likely Democratic
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49 Likely republicans
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With over 5 weeks to go, Republicans are within striking distance of becoming the majority party in the Senate.
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House Campaigns
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191 Likely Democrats
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206 Likely Republicans
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38 Toss Ups
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Republicans only need to pick up 12 seats out of 38 to take control of the House.
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Governors Campaigns
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14 Likely Democrats
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28 Likely Republicans
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8 Toss Ups
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It appears that Republicans will have about 2/3 of the governorships.

You should read the latest classy attack on Christine O’Donnell

http://conservativeblogscentral.blogspot.com/2010/09/has-really-come-to-this-liberals-want.html

Spine / will it doesn’t matter much to me. They aren’t walking a path that matches what they are saying.
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Also as a vague side note of relatively complete unimportance, my handle ‘gumonshoe’ isn’t a play on ‘gumshoe’ (slang for detective). Not a huge deal, but if you’re going to shorten it I prefer gOS (it would be in camelcaps if time allowed) or just gum. I’ve been using the name for the last 6 years or so and its origins have to do with a fateful bit of gum I stepped on in high school, as I am in no way a detective.

It appears the Republicans want to take us back to 2008.

Gosh! What a great year that was for this country!!

gum, it is!
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And you’re right, the cause doesn’t change the end result.

Then what, 3x?
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What do you and the fellow Tea Partiers plan to do with your new-found “power”, should that happen?
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A variation on “Back to the Future”? There has to be more to your platform than to “undo everything”…
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You’ll have to actually govern. Or do you plan to show how bad government is by doing just as sh!tty a job as you can to prove it?
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In other words, to become your own self-fulfilling prophecy.

“The homos at KOs are going crazy over it.”
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Yeah, that’s a fine example of how to act classy.

Any Tea Partier who bought the Republican “pledge” is simply a Republican plant or stooge. More than enough Conservatives have criticized the Pledge as fluff and more of the same old-same old.

If the Republicans really want reform, let them show their stuff. How are you going to balance the budget with spending cut only to 2008 levels and keeping all of the Bush tax cuts? Where are you going to have entitlement reform? You promise not to touch Seniors or the military, well where are you going to cut?

I will give Bush II some credit. At least he thought about reforming Social Security. The problem is every time the Republicans touch it, they get attacked by Democrats and burned in the polls.

For all of that, let’s see some real ideas. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin have some interesting ideas. Even if I don’t agree with any or most of his ideas, at least he has ideas. It is silly to say the system is not broken. Of course it is. The problem does anyone have the courage to try and fix it.

Don’t count your chickens yet, 3x.
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http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/
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You’ll likely takeover the House, but the Senate will likely stay Dem.
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Welcome to two years of utter gridlock.

Won’t take much to do a better job then Obama and the Democrats.

It is kinda funny, but I looked through the article you cited from Grumwald. And out of the entire article, he cites one example of “A123 grew into a global player in the lithium-ion battery market, with 1,800 employees and five factories in China.”. We’ll say for the sake of argument that the 1,800 jobs created by this one citation of jobs were American jobs and not Chinese jobs, just for calculation purposes.
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You lay claim, where no one knows because you do not cite your source, another 250,000 jobs created, and only……(cough)…….“about 1 billion dollars of stimulus money spend”.
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Did you do the math on that one, Mr Altman? Did you pull your calculator out to see what it cost for these two groups of jobs created for a total cited of 251,800 jobs?
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That works out to paying each of the 251,800 people exactly $3,971.41 dollars. Isn’t that right Mr Altman? Something just doesn’t seem to add up here wouldn’t you say Mr Altman. Either the number of jobs is wrong, or the amount of stimulus money spent is wrong, wouldn’t you say Mr Altman?
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Now math is not my strong suit, I will say that. But, if I am right, something just doesn’t seem to add up, Mr Altman. Maybe I have my zeros wrong for a billion, but last I checked there are 9 different zeros in a billion dollars.
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If all that these people made, $3,971.41 on average per person, how does that stimulate anything?

Won’t take much to do a better job then Obama and the Democrats.
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Nothing, huh??
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So I take it that “Back to the Future” IS your plan for governing? Is thre something to the rumors that the intent is to shut down the government and hold your breath until you get what you want?
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I think you’ll find that there’s more to it than simply dragging your feet on everything, 3x.

Now when I take sheperdwong’s link to recovery.org. I added up the amount of money spent so far on just the two categories broken down as “Grants…” and “Entitlement”. Figuring these two categories most likely “created or saved jobs” with the money spent.
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Dividing the number of people who Obama claims had either their “job saved, or created”, 750,045 and divide that by the 296 billion spent so far, that gives us a dollar amount spent with stimulus dollars of $394,692 PER JOB.
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Again, something just doesn’t seem to add up here. Does it Mr Altman? Are you really saying, “Gee folks, we only had to pay almost 400 thousand dollars of our tax dollars per job created or saved, is that what you really meant to say Mr Altman?
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Do you think that spending this amount of money to date to save about 750,000 jobs was a good decision and implementation of the stimulus money in hindsight, Mr Altman? Isn’t that what this story should be about Mr Altman, how much money we have spent, how many people were put back to work, and how this has all affected the economy overall?

Issa and his buddies will keep the house busy with continual investigations, as they did with Clinton. They will be awash in “gates”. They will try to shut down the government. Remember how the public rewarded them for this stupidity?
The Senate, now infused with more reactionaries like DeMint and Inhoff will continue to fillabuster everything. Of course, they will try the dreaded, hated method that they previously detested, reconciliatin to get their tax cuts to the rich, but will be foiled by vetoes.
The American public will love this. Wont they?

Listening to all you Libs coming to grips with your impending losses reminds me of an old song that seems very appropriate for you guys and gals.
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Cry me a River
Cry me a River
I Cried a River Over You.

On a local and state-wide levels[sic], programs like Jobs Now enjoy bipartisan support;

That’s because, at the local level, even Republicans actually need to govern. (Except in Arizona.)

“How are you going to balance the budget with spending cut only to 2008 levels and keeping all of the Bush tax cuts? Where are you going to have entitlement reform? You promise not to touch Seniors or the military, well where are you going to cut?”

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You are absolutely correct. Most Tea Party organizers and local coordinators I am in contact with want the GOP when they get in power again like in 1994, want them to take spending levels back to at least 20% less spending than what they did in 1994 when they took over the House at that time.
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You see, everyone touts Clinton as the one who made so much of a difference in the economy back then, but Congress was in control of the purse strings so far as spending and budgets are concerned.
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It was a Republican Congress which controlled the amount of money Billy-boy had to spend. They also enacted legislation which caused the first movement of welfare to work programs. This allowed many people to get off welfare, and secure good paying jobs.
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As a result the economy exploded. The dow jones alone went from a 3,000 ceiling to well over 10,000. Remember that? This spurred a great economy for that time period and unemployment DROPPED.
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As I am sure I will be attacked for this statement, and also the Bush haters will come out in droves to blame it all on Bush yet again. It was a Democrat controlled Congress since 2006 which has put us where we are today. Anyone who thinks or believes otherwise is merely ill-informed, or just plain stupid.

newfreedom,
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“It was a Republican Congress which controlled the amount of money Billy-boy had to spend.
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It was a Democrat controlled Congress since 2006 which has put us where we are today. Anyone who thinks or believes otherwise is merely ill-informed, or just plain stupid.”
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I’m always amazed at the ways Liberals leave out facts, distort or modify them to support their warped ideology.

‘Dividing the number of people who Obama claims… gives us … $394,692 PER JOB.’
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OK. Since you think we should be doing simple arithmetic on job numbers, let me try it. Using the numbers in Alex Altman’s post we divide 1 billion dollars by 250,000 jobs. That results in $4,000 per job — or ‘PER JOB’ as Rusty shouts it.
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Rusty will no doubt be very pleased and supportive of this very effective and frugal program. No doubt
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Could it be that doing simple arithmetic on numbers that aren’t simple (i.e. that require some understanding of the full meaning of the numbers and the programs involved) gives in bogus results?

ProPublica has maintained a fairly comprehensive chart containing info on where the money has been spent.

http://projects.propublica.org/tables/stimulus-spending-progress

We did the cash infusion stimulus in 2009. Clearly, the 500,000 PER MONTH jobs losses of Bush / 2008 were put to a stop.

Now it is time to realize the full damage of those years. 15 million remain unemployed. Trying to cut off their stipends in service to an already exploded deficit, is not the right move for emergency times. The right step here is to keep them supported, with FDR-style public works jobs.

Community policing to reduce crime. Elder home care, child care – both are underserved and have positive social and economic impact. Badly needed infrastructure improvements. Many unemployed would be happy to give half a day to these roles as they wait for reintegration into the private sector.

Which is obviously going to take years. The solution isn’t hard. Morons in Washington and a Media Inc. largely beholdened to the far right, are what is in the way.

Isn’t it odd how the FDR solution isn’t even on the table? Think Hoover Dam was a bad idea?

– Balkingpoints / www

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“Isn’t it odd how the FDR solution isn’t even on the table? Think Hoover Dam was a bad idea?”

They don’t know what you’re talking about. After all, if it’s called Hoover Dam, he must have built it, right?
They could learn the truth, but that would mean going down the street to one of the hundreds of free public libraries that Roosevelt programs built – and FOX is right there on the TV with all the Republitruthiness they need to know.

Sheesh!

3xfire3,

I certainly not crying a river about the 2010 elections, even if the Republicans take over the House or even the Senate. The fact is if the Republicans win big in 2010, it almost guarantees Obama winning in 2012. Look what happened to Clinton in 1996.

You could at least address my posting. Heck, even Rusty was kind enough to give a response without insulting me.

As far as who gets credit for the glory years of the Clinton era, it is always the President. Why do we give Reagan credit for the tax cuts of the 1980s when we still had a solidly Democratic house. Mayby we should give credit for the tax cuts to Tip O’Neill.

The truth is the deficit started going up before 2006. During the last decade, it steeply climbed, though Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress.

You can hold Bush responsible. I don’t think he vetoed a spending bill the entire time the Republicans were in control. If Republicans are going to spend money like Democratics, why do I need them in office? I don’t agree with their social agenda (after all, I am a Liberal), so the only reason I would want Republicans in office is to control government spending. It they can’t do that, I would consider them useless.

BTW, the 1990′s worked well because of Bill. Not Bill Clinton, but Bill Gates.