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President Barack Obama plans to propose boosting job growth by injecting more than $300 billion into the economy next year mostly through tax cuts, infrastructure spending and direct aid to state and local governments.
Obama would call on Congress to offset the cost of the short-term jobs measures by raising tax revenue in later years. This would be part of a long-term deficit reduction package, including spending and entitlement cuts as well as revenue increases, that he will present next week to the congressional supercommittee charged with finding ways to reduce the nation’s debt.
Almost half the stimulus would come from tax cuts, which include an extension of a two percentage point reduction in the payroll tax paid by workers due to expire Dec. 31 and a new decrease in the portion of the tax paid by employers.
Obama is set to lay out his plans in a Sept. 8 address to Congress as unemployment remains at 9.1 percent more than two years after the recession’s official end. Payroll growth stalled last month.
The jobless rate and the sluggish recovery will be central issues as Obama runs for re-election next year. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, one of the leading Republicans seeking the party’s nomination to face Obama in November 2012, today offered his own 59-point economic plan, which was focused largely on cutting taxes for middle-income Americans.
White House press secretary Jay Carney refused to give details of what the president will propose, saying at a briefing today that it would include “some new proposals that you have not heard us talk about.”
Republican Resistance
Much of Obama’s plan may have trouble passing the U.S. House, where leaders of the Republican majority have signaled opposition to new spending that would add to the federal budget deficit. House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia released a letter to Obama today saying their objections to the “large, deficit-financed, government spending bill” passed in 2009 to stimulate the economy has been validated by continued high unemployment.
The main components of Obama’s jobs plan, though not its scale, have been largely telegraphed by the administration. Obama has pressed Congress throughout the year to renew the payroll tax holiday along with extended unemployment benefits, which also expire Dec. 31. Backing for a reduction in the employer contribution to the payroll tax has been under consideration since at least June.
Obama said in a speech in Detroit yesterday that he would challenge Republicans to support tax cuts, which a person familiar with discussions said would be targeted toward middle- class Americans to spur consumer spending.
Challenge on Taxes
“You say you’re the party of tax cuts?” Obama said before the annual Metro Detroit Central Labor Council rally. “Well then, prove you’ll fight just as hard for tax cuts for middle- class families as you do for oil companies and the most affluent Americans.”
The direct aid to local governments will focus on halting layoffs of teachers as well as first responders. Education will be a theme in Obama’s address and he will also propose as part of his infrastructure program money for school construction. Some of the infrastructure spending also would come from additional spending on roads, bridges and other surface transportation projects.
White House officials say they anticipate congressional Republicans may go along with some of the tax cuts Obama is seeking, including the extension of the payroll tax cut. Still, they expect to meet Republican resistance to much of the package.
Job Training
To address the problem of long-term unemployment, Obama will likely propose a national program, modeled after a Georgia initiative that allows workers who receive unemployment insurance to train for jobs at businesses at no cost to the employer. Obama, at a town-hall meeting in Atkinson, Illinois, last month, called the Georgia Works initiative a “a smart program.”
Obama also plans to propose measures to make it easier for homeowners to refinance mortgages.
Obama will unveil a framework for the deficit reductions next week, including changes to Medicare and Medicaid, in addition to other cuts in contributions to military pensions and farm subsidies.
After a partisan fight over the deficit and raising the government’s debt limit took the country to the brink of default, Standard & Poor’s lowered the U.S.’s credit rating to AA+ from AAA on Aug. 5. The rating firm said the government is becoming “less stable, less effective and less predictable.” Even so, the government’s borrowing costs fell to record lows as Treasuries rallied. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell from 2.56 percent on Aug. 5 to 1.97 percent today.
Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings affirmed their top rankings on the U.S.
Economic Concerns
Concern over the economy has increased as growth weakened during the first half of the year to its slowest pace of the recovery and market pessimism has risen over the ramifications of the European debt crisis.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index pared losses during the day and ended down 0.7 percent at 4 p.m. in New York. The Stoxx Europe 600 Index slipped 0.7 percent to the lowest level since July 2009.
Recent signs of economic weakness have led private economists to raise forecasts for the unemployment rate next year. The median forecast for unemployment during next year’s fourth quarter, when the presidential election will be held, is 8.5 percent, according to 51 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News Aug. 2 through Aug. 10.
Since World War II, no U.S. president has won re-election with a jobless rate above 6 percent, with the exception of Ronald Reagan, who faced 7.2 percent unemployment on Election Day in 1984. The jobless rate under Reagan had come down more than 3 percentage points during the prior two years.
一些全球大型公司的首席执行官（CEO）积极向美国献策，帮助美国创造就业。采用部分私募资金，更新老化的基础设施，作为一种创造就业机会的方式，以提高美国商业竞争力，受到很多CEO的支持。建言还包括，鼓励创新，以及吸收全球人才。
全球矿业公司力拓集团（Rio Tinto Group）首席执行官汤姆-艾博年说，：“我经常在各国奔走，美国的基础设施根本就没有竞争力。我们生活在50年前的设施环境中，如果政府没有财力解决我们的基础设施危机，应该允许民间资本参与其中。”
电信服务公司明耀公司CEO马塞洛-克莱尔表示同意：“在美国升级欠佳的基础设施，甚至考虑基础设施私有化，将是创造就业机会的良好开端。”
麦肯锡咨询公司的常务董事多米尼克-巴顿说，养老基金、资产管理公司、主权财富基金和私人资本运营公司都准备投资基础设施项目，估计在未来三年他们可以贡献2500亿美元到5000亿美元的股权资本。”
这一献策计划是为本周四总统奥巴马在国会发表创造就业演说之际，华尔街日报对全球100位首席执行官发出有关创造就业建言的邀请，其中有35人做了回应。
多数CEO的建言都很类似，其中包括希望降低公司税，并暂停或放宽商业监管。
CEO们还建议，在华盛顿国会的辩论中，两党应该愿意接受妥协。CEO艾博年在预算问题上表示，“两党都有对的和错的地方。政府需要增加收入，而且还要降低成本[包括福利成本和军费开支]。”
CEO们普遍同意，负债累累的美国消费者不能推动美国经济的快速增长，经济增长的动力将来自于发展中国家。因此，他们呼吁美国实施全球自由贸易，并鼓励出口产业的增长。他们中的许多CEO建议积极开发人力资本，因为这是全球竞争力的关键因素。
汤姆森-路透首席执行官汤姆-格罗瑟写道：“为青年毕业生，建立更多的特许学校，提供更多的教育岗位，培养更多的工程师和类似德国品质的熟练劳动力。”还有CEO呼吁改革移民制度，允许更多的技术熟练的专业人员在美国生活和工作。
此外，鼓励创新，也是主题之一。
美国铝业公司董事长兼首席执行官柯菲德呼吁美国“重新点燃创新之火”，建立地方政府、大学和投资者链条的联盟，以激发新的商业创新，并积极投资建立“研究与发展集群”地区，比如清洁能源和生命科学产业。还有人建议大修专利制度，以减少积压，提高效率，以及日益严重的“专利地痞”问题。
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