Rep. John Larson, the number three Democrat in the House of Representatives, has called for the creation of a Joint Select Committee on Job Creation, modeled after the newly created debt-focused “super committee.”
,,,The jobs super committee would be set up exactly like the deficit committee, with the same time-frame for recommendations and the requirement that its proposals be given an up or down majority vote not subject to a filibuster. The legislation is being finalized now, a Larson aide told me, and will likely be introduced next week.
We're insane if we don't make a huge push to promote this. Unlike the Progressive Budget, the Jobs Disaster is something that goes way beyond any labeling, as practically the whole nation feels nobody in the DC Club really cares about it.
This bill, if prominent, will most definitely affect the political futures of dang near the whole class of DC politician. They can support it, they can suppress it. They won't be able to hide lack of results behind word-play.
(Links and discussion below the bit of Victorian clipart.)
The yahoo reprint of The Nation article: http://news.yahoo.com/...
There's objections, and good ones, to the idea of another Super Committee.
What of our Representative Government, after all? Well, let's be sober and recognize that that's milk out the burned barn behind us. We're getting a damned Super Committee to Crush "em More whether or not we still pine for Vanished America.
Another objection is that the new Committee's makeup will, like the other committee, be finely balanced to permit either nothing, or worse, to get done. (It's absurd today, but it won't be for much longer: to think they'll come up with 'if everybody gave their paycheck directly to a bank upon earning it...')
Well, even if it does no good, it will do two things:
- I want to see which politician supports it, and which downplay or suppress it. I want to see, among those who claim to support it: which ones weaken it; which ones take a walk on the Supply Side; which ones say Can and Must Do Now Demand Side.
Think of how much bullshit that will save us all from hearing in 2012. They will have moved their feet, and their lips ain't gonna make it not-so.
- Picture a Jobs Committee at work at the same moment as the Safety Net Spoilers. Heck DC should be eager to do this, working on so many problems at once when almost all America considers them corrupt, incompetent, out of touch, and delusional.
These committees will be sharing headlines at the same time.
Here's a quote from the end of the linked article cited above:
These are all ideas Obama could draw on. The creation of a jobs super committee could help get some of these measures through Congress. And if Obama can’t pass a jobs plan through Congress now, he can still build public support for it and draw a sharp and favorable contrast between his job-creation ideas and the job-killing austerity agenda of the GOP. If he fails to do so, the president and his party are just as culpable as the GOP for prolonging the current economic morass. As Reich puts it, “the magnitude of the current jobs and growth crisis demands a boldness and urgency that's utterly lacking.”
[my bolding in quote]
Contact Rep. John Larson. Encourage him. Find out what the Bill will be called, spread the word, and then get your local Representatives, and House Leaders to hear about it.
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Well, that's that. But while on the topic of Jobs I must recommend jamess diary Forget about Quantitative Easing for Wall Street -- What about Quantitative Easing for Main Street from a few days ago.
The title pretty much says his main idea, but he does remember that little thing which fell down the memory-hole that the Fed has a chartered directive to address unemployment. Go read, who can explain jamess better than jamess?
Let me just add a preview of some of the things you'll find there:
the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act of 1978 allows the government to create a "reservoir of public employment" in case private enterprise does not provide sufficient jobs. These jobs are required to be in the lower ranges of skill and pay so as to not draw the workforce away from the private sector. However, the act did not establish such a reservoir (it only authorized it), and no such program has been implemented in the United States, though the unemployment rate has generally been above the rate (3%) targeted by the act.
...If private enterprise appears not to be meeting these goals, the Act expressly allows the government to create a "reservoir of public employment." These jobs are required to be in the lower ranges of skill and pay to minimize competition with the private sector. [...]
I bet there's a thousand ways to get jobs going, and heck, this is modern America, the powers that be can simply declare the unemployment crisis a matter of National Security and all sorts of funds can be shifted from, say, irradiating and strip-searching people of all ages for the crime of traveling by air; blowing up wedding parties, etc.
Where there's a Will, there's a Way, I always heard.
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(PS: Is there anybody else completely weirded out by the fact that all of a sudden this filibuster which destroyed all possible good things is suddenly just overridden by Senate Leader decree? I mean, all of sudden, a situation can arise where "there is no filibuster" can be said by one Senator, and it just evaporates like magic, not even discussed as to if it's possible under the Rules. But that's a whole 'nother topic.)