Obama to Launch New Economic Aid Package

(AP)  Eager to jumpstart the economy ahead of crucial midterm elections, President Barack Obama said Friday he intends to unveil a new package of proposals, including tax cuts and targeted spending, to spark job growth.

Obama spoke in the Rose Garden after the August jobs report came out better than expected, showing the private sector adding 67,000 new jobs last month and revising upward the numbers from June and July. But unemployment ticked upward to 9.6 percent as more people entered the job market, and the president said it wasn't good enough.

"That's why we need to take further steps to create jobs and keep the economy growing, including extending tax cuts for the middle class and investing in the areas of our economy where the potential for job growth is greatest," Obama said.

"We are confident that we are moving in the right direction, but we want to keep this recovery moving stronger and accelerate the job growth that's needed so desperately."
Administration officials say a big new stimulus bill like last year's $862 billion measure is not in the offing nervous lawmakers looking to November's balloting would not be expected to approve an expensive new measure. But Obama said he'd be proposing a new set of ideas next week. He's likely to detail them during a speech on the economy Wednesday in Cleveland, midway through an economy-focused week capped by a rare White House news conference.

Obama's package could include a number of provisions that have languished in Congress for much of the year, including infrastructure bonds for municipalities and extensions for a series of tax breaks for businesses and individuals that expired at the end of 2009. Democratic leaders are considering making one of the tax breaks permanent, for businesses that invest in research and development.

They are also considering extending a law passed in March that exempts companies that hire unemployed workers from paying Social Security taxes on those workers through December. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has proposed extending the exemption an additional six months.

Obama is continuing to prod the Senate to pass a bill that calls for about $12 billion in tax breaks for small businesses and a $30 billion fund to help unfreeze small business lending. Republicans have likened the bill to the unpopular bailout of the financial industry. And the president wants to make permanent the portion of George W. Bush's tax cuts affecting the middle class.

The House has already passed many of the provisions, but they have stalled in the Senate because Republicans and Democrats could not agree on how to pay for them.

Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Reid hoped to be able to get the small business measure through once the Senate goes back in session later this month but the prospect for other ideas was cloudier. Moreover, some of the ideas are relatively small bore, so even if they did pass in the next month or two it's unlikely they'd make a real dent in the economy before the elections.

Departing White House economist Christina Romer told The Associated Press that the new proposals would be "targeted measures aimed at particular problems or incentivizing a particular area of the economy." Romer is leaving her post as chair of the president's Council of Economic Advisers on Friday to return to the University of California, Berkley.

[cleantheDCcesspool]

They are also considering extending a law passed in March that exempts companies that hire unemployed workers from paying Social Security taxes on those workers through December. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has proposed extending the exemption an additional six months. >>>>This is a perfect example of brainless lib thinking: "Lets just borrow more taxpayer money from Social Security, use it as a temporary band-aid, and worry in ten years about funding entitlements that we created."

[spaceatoms]

Of course they want a bailout 2.0, so the stocks go higher and everyone can go on a shopping spree again and of course at Wal Mart a Chinese distributorship.

[spaceatoms]

I am not spending a dime in the current economy and won't until the administration stops the shopping spree, I worked hard for everything and it took over 25 years and then they just hand the banks and lousy corporations billions of dollars in a five month window in 2009 to stimulate a shopping spree while we have a war overseas and kids are dying everyday. We have become quickly become a fascist country bowing to Wall Street and I pray the next elections gets some people who understand the Constitution in office.

[pragmatist1]

The president and his forces are incapable of doing anything meaningful. They're all clueless and indifferent. This president has been saying the same old thing since he took office. If he knew what he was doing, all of his other crackpot ideas and stimulus programs would have improved things.

[JUNKIENOT]

Just give every American 500K...Its all fake money ANYWAY...Then the economy will BOOM

[shearwaterso]

This guy is poison to our economy. He does not understand that when you tax the rich and small business, you are throwing the whole country into a tail spin and ruining the venture capitalists dreams of any recovery. Free market capitalism is what built the country and that is what will sustain it . . . not unending stimulus packages! Obama is tone deaf because there is a cacophony of voices yelling for another direction and he can't hear it. He is pandering to the unions as his dependable base. They do not understand that it is they who have driven businesses over seas and they are killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

[tsigili]

Obama is just going to increase spending again, mostly on worthless incentives and projects, that will produce nothing, and he will not even be able to account for where the money went.

He only knows how to do one thing......throw away billions and billions of dollars, on no benefit.

[deohgee]

Uh, ya think Obammy ever took an economics class?

[dontknowitall]

Unfortunately the last couple of administrations couldn't win " Are you smarter than a 5th grader" (even if they had the correct answers).

[wyodutch]

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

[lloydbest1]

Comes from the Declaration of Independance. I mention what may be obvious to some but you'd be amazed at the number of people who have no idea of the source of those words and that some of those would consider them subversive!

Part of the problem we have with our economy is an undereducated workforce. Jobs aren't exactly going begging but some companies are having a hard time filling positions because so few are qualified.

Some posters take the position that Obama's spending money on "stimulus packages" is money down a black hole. Most of that money is now going into infrastructure rebuilding and as someone who just completed a six week trip through the western half of the U.S; there's a helluva lot of that going on now and inspite of Richard Schlesinger's misleading article, we are in far better shape in this regard than we were in 2008.

Some of the rest of that money is funding alternative energy research. This has "Big Oil" pretty worried, consequently much of the republican establishment - beholden to the petrochemical industry for the most part - are doing their dammedest to rain on that parade.

For those who like numbers, Obama has spent about one fifteenth the money boosting our economy (about 1.2 trillion dollars over two years) that Bush did on his war-for-oil in Iraq. At an estimated 1.6 trillion dollars a year, that was money truly foolishly spent. At least most of the "O" man's lolly is staying home.

The reason we're in the economic mess we're in in the first place is the abysmal lack of financial and business regulation on Bush's watch. No matter who's in office now will have to deal with the fallout from that fiasco for years to come. It ought to be obvious that the economic policies of the Bush administration was what brought down the house in the first place and it is sheer idiocy to go back to operating on that mode with the same strategy as some posters claim we must do.

And finally the wealthiest individuals and businesses are going to pony up and take some of the responsibility for putting our nation back on its feet. Self or family interests are not a consideration. Some self deprivation on their part is essential or we will fall.
I can not emphasize this enough. It is NOT on the poor, middle class or near-rich but the top money makers who are going to have to suck it in and share some of their loot. According to a report put out by the Federal Reserve board in 2004, "Currents and Undercurrents: Changes in the Distribution of Wealth, 1989?2004", The top five percent of us own approximately 56 percent of the nations wealth. That translates to about 30 trillion dollars. That inequity in wealth distribution is about the same or worse today.
We could say, "That's capitalism and those who have the talent, initiative, (blaa-blaa-blaa) ought to be able to keep their wealth". But we could equally say that the reason these folks are even allowed to strive for such extremes of wealth is because of our tradition of encouraging people to seek their potential. It's worked (more or less) for over two hundred years but every now and then the rich will have to sacrifice some (or even much) of the fruits of their labors so the country and our society as a whole can function; so that we won't run ourselves into bankruptcy trying to get the economy back on its feet

This is one of those times.

[1renegade]

@lloydbest1... Your numbers quoted must have fallen off a marquis somewhere. At approx. 1 billion a week the Iraq/Afghan war has cost less than half of the 1.3 trillion spent by Obama his first year in office. It was Bush that stated the ridiculous lending practices of Fannie/Freddie was going to create a massive meltdown. As a small business owner I refuse to just give away everything I have worked for to those who expect some kind of entitlement. What you fail to understand is that most of us have risked everything to make an idea come to life. It's easy to see how people like yourself will never prosper because you expect everything to be given to you and are for the most part to lazy to work for it.