Job Creation Legislation Drop By The Wayside

The Obama administration issued a report that says the $750 billion Recovery Act passed last year has created 3 million jobs. But with unemployment hovering at 9.5%, Democrats and President Obama have scaled back their approach to job creation and are blaming Republicans for blocking their efforts.

After the completion of health care, which sucked up a large portion of Congress‘ time, Democratic leaders and President Obama vowed to return their focus on “jobs, jobs, jobs.”

But job creating measures have yet to materialize.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid blamed the Republicans for holding up job creating legislation.

“They think the worse the economy is come November the better they’re going to do election wise,” Reid said.

Numerous Democratic aids, including from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s and Senator Reid’s offices, said numerous pieces of job creating legislation is held up in the Senate, unable to bypass Republican objections. It includes an extension of unemployment benefits, tax breaks and expansion of credit for small businesses and assistance for states to prevent teacher and other public service layoffs.

Republicans have successfully blocked much of the Democrats agenda, but the Democrats have scaled back their legislative job creating efforts.

Months after the first stimulus passed in 2009, there was widespread discussion of another large scale spending package, in the range of $100 – $300 billion, to put people to work.

But Republicans have successfully sounded the alarm on the deficit. And as Democrats are facing a tough election in November, Democratic leadership aids said conversations about large scale spending bills to create jobs are not happening.

But economists say comprehensive bills are necessary to keep the economy from limping along or entering into a double-dip scenario.

Ethan Pollack, Economist with the liberal leaning Economic Policy Institute, said a large jobs bill is “imperative.”

“I think it is imperative that we’re doing a lot more than just pushing for a couple small little packages. I think those are much better than nothing, but any significant package would be in the hundreds of billions of dollars,” Pollack said.

At a meeting with Senate Democratic leaders at the White House Tuesday to discuss the legislative agenda, participants said the main focus was on jobs.

Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey said, “Everyone understands how important that is, not just politically but for the whole country.”

But Menendez and other attendees said the conversation was more of a discussion, and no specific plan of action emerged.

In a conference call with Reporters Wednesday, Christina Romer, Chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, insisted the President‘s top priority is jobs. “It is all about jobs, jobs jobs,” Romer said. She highlighted the President’s initiative announced last week to encourage countries to purchase American exports. But she did not indicate that a large comprehensive jobs bill is coming.

With more than 14 million recorded people out of work, according to the Department of Labor‘s June statistics, and fears of a stalled economic recovery, Democrats are urgently pointing to legislative victories, which they say have helped.

The White House is touting its most visible economic action as a success – the 18 month old stimulus. The White House Council of Economic Advisers released a quarterly report. It said the stimulus has created 3 million jobs and that the private sector has invested 3 dollars to every 1 government dollar.

Vice President Joe Biden said the Recovery Act and economic initiatives “are working.”

Since then, the other major job creating measure Democrats tout are small business tax cuts passed in the HIRE Act.

Though, Vice President Biden acknowledged there is more to do. “This first 6 months of this year, actually [added] 600,000 private sector jobs. Long way to go, Long, long way to go,” Biden said.

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