After suffering major electoral and legislative defeats last month, President Barack Obama took to the campaign trail in Nashua, New Hampshire, pitching his administration’s latest new plan to lower our nation’s double digit unemployment rate. This time, the President hopes to do for small businesses what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did for home mortgages. Specifically, he wants to create a new $30 billion “Small Business Lending Fund” which will loan money to banks with assets under $10 billion at favorable new rates, as long as they comply with a slew …
Heritage members and fans are discussing President Barack Obama’s State of the Unions address at Twitter and Facebook right now. And here are just some of our experts immediate reactions to parts of the speech: State of the Economy President Obama inherited a global recession and a global financial meltdown. So far, his enacted policies have had no beneficial effect as the 10 percent unemployment demonstrates in spades, and his threatened policies remain perhaps the greatest barrier to a strong economy. The economy will recover, and appears to have started …
New data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows why a jobs recovery remains far off. This report, the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), will receive much less press attention than last Friday’s unemployment report. However its figures hold the key to understanding why unemployment has risen so greatly. Between the collapses of the auto industry in Detroit, the finance industry in New York, and the housing bubble nationwide, media coverage of the recession has focused on layoffs. There is a lot of truth to this. …
On February 11th, President Barack Obama stood on a windy hilltop in front of a dusty construction site in Fairfax County, Virginia, and promised the American people: “Here in Virginia, my plan will create or save almost 100,000 jobs, doing work at sites just like this one.” Standing alongside current Democratic National Committee Chairman and former-Gov. Tim Kaine, the President continued: “Where we’re standing, that could mean hundreds of construction jobs. And the benefits of jobs we create directly will multiply across the economy.” Eleven months later, none of those …
There are links between terrorist attacks, job losses, and the health care legislation that is being completed behind closed doors: 1) A massive failed bureaucracy didn’t protect Flight 253 from a would-be bomber, so why expect that an even-larger bureaucracy can protect our health? 2)With 10% unemployment and 85,000 more jobs lost during the Christmas buying season, why pass a health care bill that promises to be a huge job-killer? The common factor is that big government cannot efficiently guarantee homeland security or job security, much less health security. Big …
Last Friday the Bureau of Labor and Statistics released its monthly jobs report showing that the U.S. economy shed 85,000 jobs in December, but due to the fact that 661,000 individuals left the labor force, the unemployment rate stayed at 10.0%. The Obama administration again spun the report by stressing that the rate of job loss continues to decline. But as Heritage fellow James Sherk explained last year, it is not job losses but lack of job creation that is driving our double digit unemployment rate. Unemployment is unlikely to …
Today’s Labor Department jobs report is a study in contrasts. For example, on the one hand the labor market is notably less weak than in recent months. December’s 85,000 drop in employment according to the payroll survey is markedly better than the monthly average of over 275,000 jobs lost during the third quarter and followed a 4,000 job gain in November. On the other hand, the Obama jobs deficit – the difference between current employment and the level President Obama promised when he sold his economic plan to the American …
Albert Einstein famously defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” So after a $787 billion stimulus that was supposed to create (not merely save) 3.3 million net jobs but instead saw 3.4 million net jobs lost, House Democrats this week have doubled down by (barely) passing yet another $150 billion stimulus bill. Of course, if deficit-spending created jobs and growth, then the staggering $1.4 trillion deficit in 2009 would have already overheated the economy. The new stimulus bill is offensive on a …
With over 15 million Americans out of work Congress is searching for ways to reduce unemployment. The latest idea, put forward by Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) is “work sharing.” Under work-sharing, companies reduce the hours (and pay) of all their employees instead of laying off some workers and having the remaining employees work normal hours. The government then gives workers a pro-rata share of unemployment insurance payments to partially compensate them for their lost earnings from their lost hours. Work sharing seems like a simple solution to the unemployment problem. …
Timing is everything in life. And in death. America’s level of death taxes is a bouncing ball—a political football because Congress is fumbling around with legislation that makes a dramatic difference measured in jobs as well as in dollars. As the law is now, anyone who dies during 2010 will pay no estate tax. But die in 2009 and the rate is 45% of the taxable estate. Die in 2011 or later and it’s 55%. The amount exempted from tax also fluctuates from $3.5-million this year to immaterial next year …
