Not sure if anyone has already diaried this, but the Oregonion is reporting that President Obama will finally announce a "bold" new plan to create "up to 5 million new jobs" as part of his re-election campaign, according to administration officials.
The officials requested anonymity since the plan hasn't been announced yet.
According to the officials, campaign adviser David Plouffe convinced the President on the need for a jobs plan after the ugly jobs report last Friday. He also revealed that Donald Trump & Mitt Romney had somehow succeeded in making the President seem "out of touch" and even his base was now reluctant to volunteer for his re-election campaign. Plouffe offered 3 options to the President:
- do more photo ops where the President drinks a beer with an "ordinary" American,
- adopt a "modest" jobs plan for "anything up to 5 million jobs" which could be marketed aggressively, or
- adopt a "massive" jobs plan for over 15 million high wage jobs to truly reverse the decline of the middle class.
After some deliberation with his advisers and lengthy discussions with business leaders, the President decided on the middle-of-the-road compromise option to deliver just enough hope and change to satisfy independent voters (i.e., large donors) and the Tea Party.
The President assigned Chief of Staff Daley & Treasury Secretary Geithner to come up with a plan over the weekend for inclusion in the debt limit negotiations. Reaching out to their contacts in big business, D&G came up with a plan which will focus primarily on increasing employment in 5 sectors, where spending is less controversial. Each sector will have a goal of "up to 1 million jobs", including:
- Defense - "mega contracts for defense contractors are rarely controversial" for Republicans, said the sources "so they should pass easily". The need for increased spending might be questioned by some biased reporters and the general public now that Osama's dead, but the administration isn't really concerned about them at this time. As an example, General Dynamics has promised up to 1 new job or 1 less layoff for every $1M in new contracts.
- Energy - "oil companies have assured the President that they will look at hiring thousands of employees quickly, maybe even tens of thousand, if we reduce regulation & taxes on oil exploration in the Gulf" said the sources, who said they would have preferred to give the incentives to solar & wind companies, but unfortunately the Republicans said no.
- Finance - a second $700B+ bailout for TBTF banks is being planned in order to help revive the mortgage & housing industries. The major banks have "assured" the President that they could meet their jobs target of "up to 1 million new jobs" if they want, and they might even hire some staff which doesn't specialize in foreclosures at some point down the road. They also left open the possibility that some or all of the new jobs might be created in China from the start so they won't need to be outsourced later. But, they warned, the deal is off if any politician of either party "bad-mouths" the banks or tries to regulate them over the next 18 months.
- Media - liberal blog Huffington Post and fair-and-balanced Fox News jointly committed to hiring "up to a million" freelance "bloggers" & "reporters" in exchange for 75% of the President's massive campaign ad budget. Fox was an underdog in the contest but it submitted the highest bid of "up to 500,000 new reporters & commentators". Since it negotiated "editorial independence" as part of the deal with the White House, Fox will now be able to hire all the Tea Party lunatics & homophobes around the country on the President's dime. Meanwhile, Huffpost will "hire" up to 500,000 bloggers by paying each commenter on its site 1 cent per comment, tweet, or click.
- Politicians - the "get out the vote" program of OFA promised to "hire" up to a million staff - or maybe even more if needed - in September & October 2012 to ensure a great jobs report next October. Some of those people, who will be paid "above minimum wage" for 2-3 hours a week may even help bring voters to the polls next November. OFA leaders felt confident that they could pick up any slack from the other 4 sectors & exceed the President's jobs target all by themselves.
The program would cost taxpayers around $2.1 Trillion and deliver anywhere from 0 to 3 million jobs, depending on the performance of the Defense, Energy, and Financial sectors. An additional 0-2 million jobs would be "free" to taxpayers since they'd be funded from the OFA campaign budget. So, taxpayers would get anywhere from 0 to 5 million jobs for only $2.1 Trillion.
Meanwhile, other (more senior) officials quoted by the Fox affiliate News of the World denied that the President will propose any "jobs plan" or "targets", arguing that the President has already done a heroic job of "managing the economy after the Bush depression" and that a new jobs plan might "give Republicans a campaign issue by making it look as if the jobs situation is bad." In particular there was a major concern in the Obama camp that "any public acknowledgement of a jobs problem tends to turn off large corporate donors who feel self-conscious about their offshore outsourcing programs whenever the unemployment topic is raised" at fundraising events and golf outings with the President.