Greg Sargent of the The Plum Line has a very interesting post. AFL-CIO spokesman Eddie Vale emailed him a list of the passages from Obama's speech the AFL-CIO liked and viewed as a challenge to the Chamber of Commerce. I have those here, but I recommend following the link to Greg Sargent to read his take on it (and to give him site hits for doing the story).
Go here: The Plum Line
Obama's reminder to business that they have a responsibility to America, that they can't just worry about shareholders and the bottom line:
"Ask yourselves what you can do for America. Ask yourselves what you can do to hire American workers, to support the American economy, and to invest in this nation."
Obama's reminder to business that there are important regulations:
"For example, even as we work to eliminate burdensome regulations, America's businesses have a responsibility to recognize that there are some safeguards and standards that are necessary to protect the American people from harm or exploitation."
His reminder to business that changes in the tax code need to benefit everyone:
"If we're fighting to reform the tax code and increase exports to help you compete, the benefits can't just translate into greater profits and bonuses for those at the top. They should be shared by American workers, who need to know that expanding trade and opening markets will lift their standard of living as well as your bottom line. We cannot go back to the kind of economy -- and culture -- we saw in the years leading up to the recession, where growth and gains in productivity just didn't translate into rising incomes and opportunity for the middle class."
The Plum Line (quoting Eddie Vale, AFL-CIO spokesman)
My view is that it is what it is. We are looking at something like a capital strike (reluctance to invest for a variety of reasons) and Obama is trying to get Business, especially Big Business, to invest in creating jobs in the United States.
President Obama is as he always was in my view: a slightly left of center reformer in times that may demand more. He has not really changed. Seeing him this way allows one to see the hope (some incremental change and preventing extreme rightists from taking over) and the limits (no transformational change when it is needed).
We can argue regarding the amount of corporate tax with closing of loopholes (30%, 25%, or 35%), but the agenda is constrained. He seeks some lessened economic inequality, but gross economic inequality is here for the forseeable future of his first and second terms (and probably for a long time after). Indeed, while jobs may be created, economic inequality may increase overall. Time will tell on that.
In any event, I found the AFL-CIO's views interesting. President Obama also said this today:
But we also know that with the march of technology over the last few decades, the competition for jobs and businesses has grown fierce. The globalization of our economy means that businesses can now open up shop, employ workers and produce their goods wherever there is internet connection. Tasks that were once done by 1,000 workers can now be done by 100, or even 10. And the truth is, as countries like China and India grow and develop larger middle classes, it’s profitable for global companies to aggressively pursue these markets and, at times, to set up facilities in these countries.
These forces are as unstoppable as they are powerful. But combined with a brutal and devastating recession, they have also shaken the faith of the American people – in the institutions of business and government. They see a widening chasm of wealth and opportunity in this country, and they wonder if the American Dream is slipping away.
We cannot ignore these concerns. We have to renew people’s faith in the promise of this country – that this is a place where you can make it if you try. And we have to do this together: business and government; workers and CEOs; Democrats and Republicans.
Obama's remarks as prepared for delivery
"Unstoppable." They won't be stopped, but maybe pain can be ameliorated.
There is a consistency on his core economic views over time:
Some of his remarks back in 2006:
We have all known for some time that the forces of globalization have changed the rules of the game—how we work, how we prosper, how we compete with the rest of the word. We all know that the coming baby boomers’ retirement will only add to the challenges that we face in this new era. Unfortunately, while the world has changed around us, Washington has been remarkably slow to adapt twenty-first century solutions for a twenty-first century economy. As so many of us have seen, both sides of the political spectrum have tended to cling to outdated policies and tired ideologies instead of coalescing around what actually works.
For those on the left, and I include myself in that category, too many of us have been interested in defending programs the way they were written in 1938, believing that if we admit the need to modernize these programs to fit changing times, then the other side will use those acknowledgements to destroy them altogether. On the right, there is a tendency to push for massive tax cuts, as Peter indicated from my speech at Knox College, no matter what the cost or who the target is, a view that stems from the belief that there is no role for government whatsoever in the challenges we face. Of course, neither of these approaches really works.
Before we came here, somebody was asking me, how do I maintain my idealism? I do because I think the American people know that neither of these approaches works. I think there is a broad consensus out there in the Country that we should be looking for common sense, practical solutions to the problems that we face. I think that there is a market. I think that there is a demand for solutions that are practical, that are based on facts, that are tested, and that require us to think in new ways.
A lot of the people who are here today have done that in the administration. Not only have they succeeded on many of their policies, but almost just as importantly, they have failed occasionally and have acknowledged those failures and adjusted their views. I think that is the kind of experimentation and attitude that all our policymaking has to pursue.
One thing that we all know is that when you invest in people, people will prosper. When you invest in education and health care and benefits for working Americans, it pays dividends throughout every level of our economy. When you keep the deficit low and our debt out of the hands of foreign nations, then we can all win.
Now, the economic statistics of the nineties that we are all so familiar with speak for themselves—income growth across the board, 22 million new jobs, the lowest poverty rate in three decades, the lowest unemployment in years, and record surpluses. None of this, I would argue, happened by itself. It happened because the leadership we had, including many in this room, was willing to take on entrenched interests and experiment with policies that weren’t necessarily partisan or ideological.
That is what I hope we will see from The Hamilton Project in the months and years to come. You have already drawn some of the brightest minds from academia and policy circles, many of them I have stolen ideas from liberally, people ranging from Robert Gordon to Austan Goolsbee; Jon Gruber; my dear friend, Jim Wallis here, who can inform what are sometimes dry policy debates with a prophetic voice. So I know that there are going to be wonderful ideas that are generated as a consequence of this project.
Not every idea will I embrace, and I hope that one of the roles that I can play, as a participant in this process, is to not only encourage the work but occasionally challenge it. I will give one simple example. I think that if you polled many of the people in this room, most of us are strong free traders and most of us believe in markets. Bob and I have had a running debate now for about a year about how do we, in fact, deal with the losers in a globalized economy. There has been a tendency in the past for us to say, well, look, we have got to grow the pie, and we will retrain those who need retraining. But, in fact, we have never taken that side of the equation as seriously as we need to take it. So, hopefully, this is not just going to be all of us preaching to the choir. Hopefully, part of what we are going to be doing is challenging our own conventional wisdom and pushing out the boundaries and testing these ideas in a vigorous and aggressive way.
But I can’t think of a better start, given the people who are participating today. I am glad that Brookings has been willing to provide a home for this wonderful effort.
Just remember, as we move forward, that there are real consequences to the work that is being done here. There are people in places like Decatur, Illinois, or Galesburg, Illinois, who have seen their jobs eliminated. They have lost their health care. They have lost their retirement security. They don’t have a clear sense of how their children will succeed in the same way that they succeeded. They believe that this may be the first generation in which their children do worse than they do. Some of that, then, will end up manifesting itself in the sort of nativist sentiment, protectionism, and anti-immigration sentiment that we are debating here in Washington. So there are real consequences to the work that is being done here. This is not a bloodless process.
I think that as long as all of us retain that sense of passion about the ultimate outcome that we want, which is a stronger, more prosperous America than we are passing on to our children, then I think we will do well in this process. I am glad to be a part of it.
Obama's comments to the Hamilton Project launch
Always look on the bright side I say. It seems that is what the AFL-CIO is doing. Possibilities and limits. They both are there. In fact, they are intertwined.
Update I: Eddie Vale's (who is also a kossak) tweeets (from kalmoth in the comments)
# Trumka & Donohue not FB friends but we're excited 2 work together to "poke" Cong on importance of investing in infrastructure.
about 4 hours ago via Echofon
# 2/2 Obama - But they agree on the need to build a 21st century infrastructure.
about 4 hours ago via Echofon
# 1/2 - Obama the Chamber of Commerce & the AFL-CIO don’t agree on a whole lot. Tom Donohue & Richard Trumka aren’t exactly Facebook friends.
about 4 hours ago via Echofon