Source:
New York TimesPresident Obama is weighing new steps to bolster the economy, he said Monday. But any measures he takes seem likely to be small ones, and his options are limited with Congress showing little appetite for more spending in a hotly contested midterm election year. On his first workday back in Washington after a 10-day vacation on Martha’s Vineyard and a day trip on Sunday to New Orleans, Mr. Obama spent part of the morning huddled with his economic team, then emerged in the Rose Garden for a hastily arranged appearance that was troubled by microphone difficulties.
He chided Senate Republicans for engaging in “pure partisan politics” by holding up a jobs bill that would offer tax breaks to small businesses and ease credit with a $30 billion initiative to channel loans through community banks. “I ask Senate Republicans to drop the blockade,” Mr. Obama said. The president also said he and his team were “hard at work in identifying additional measures,” including extending tax cuts for the middle class that are scheduled to expire this year, increasing government investment in clean energy and rebuilding more infrastructure.
None of those steps, however, will come close to the $787 billion stimulus measure that Democrats passed at the outset of the Obama presidency. With voters angry about government spending, and economists divided about just what approach is the correct one, such aggressive steps are by now out of the question. “There’s a deep frustration among economists that they simply don’t know what to do under these circumstances, at least in terms of fiscal policy,” said Bruce Bartlett, an economist who advised Republican presidents. “I think there are a lot of economists who, in principle, would support some new fiscal stimulus, perhaps a jobs program where people were directly employed by the government or something of that sort,” Mr. Bartlett said. “But politically it’s simply not possible to do anything remotely like that under the current circumstances.”
The House has already passed a bill offering tax breaks to small businesses, but the measure is not the same as the one being considered in the Senate. The majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, has scheduled a series of procedural votes on the Senate bill for when lawmakers return from their recess on Sept. 13. But passage “is not a foregone conclusion,” said Jim Manley, spokesman for Mr. Reid. “We’re going to need Republican votes.”...
Read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/us/politics/31obama.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
