Obama Jobs Plan Modest, Already Compromised

If early reports of President Obama's job speech are accurate and the choice for reinvigorating the economy is "go big or go home," it's looking like the President has opted to go home. As Paul Krugman pointed out a few days ago, the problem with the initial stimulus package wasn't that it was ineffective, but that it was too small to repair all of the damage caused by the Bush crash. In short, it may have saved us from a depression, but that's about all it was capable of doing.

So never let it be said that this administration is capable of ignoring past mistakes. If at first you don't succeed, try again -- fail better. When you need a hoist to lift the economy, get a stepladder and hope for the best. Still, it's not all bad.

Associated Press:

According to people familiar with the White House deliberations, two of the biggest measures in the president's proposals for 2012 are expected to be a one-year extension of a payroll tax cut for workers and an extension of expiring jobless benefits. Together those two would total about $170 billion.

The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plan was still being finalized and some proposals could still be subject to change.

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Note to the President: Winning Isn't Everything, It's the Only Thing

The good news is that President Obama is fixing for a fight on jobs.

Washington Post:

President Obama has decided to press Congress for a new round of stimulus spending and tax cuts as he seeks to address the great domestic policy quandary of his tenure: how to spur job growth in an age of austerity.

Obama will lay out a series of ideas in a major address right after Labor Day, when he and a largely antagonistic Congress will return from vacation, the White House said Wednesday.

The president is thinking about proposing tax cuts for companies that hire workers, new spending for roads and construction, and other measures that would target the long-term unemployed, according to administration officials and other people familiar with the matter. Some ideas, such as providing mortgage relief for struggling homeowners, could come through executive action.

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