Also yesterday, after rejecting three amendments to the bill, the Senate voted 89-9 to pass H.R. 1249, the patent reform bill.
Reactions to Obama's Job Speech:
Reactions in the press to President Obama’s call for more stimulus spending last night were definitely skeptical, with even the Los Angeles Times editorial page noting that “[t]he $447-billion plan isn't particularly novel” and The Washington Post adding, “The $447 billion cost of the program is more than half that of the stimulus package Congress passed in 2009 and reflects the severity of the nation’s economic challenge.”
The Wall Street Journal editors were doubtful, writing, “[Y]ou have to really, really believe in hope and change to think that another $300-$400 billion in new deficit spending and temporary tax cuts will do any better than the $4 trillion in debt that the Obama years have already piled up.”
And fact checkers at the AP were similarly unimpressed. They wrote last night, “President Barack Obama's promise Thursday that everything in his jobs plan will be paid for rests on highly iffy propositions. It will only be paid for if a committee he can't control does his bidding, if Congress puts that into law and if leaders in the future - the ones who will feel the fiscal pinch of his proposals - don't roll it back. . . . [T]here is no guarantee that programs that clearly will increase annual deficits in the near term will be paid for in the long term.”
The whole speech seemed awfully familiar to The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, who writes The Fact Checker blog. He observes, “The speech mostly gave us a sense of déjà vu. From the president’s language, you would never know that Congress already has acted under his watch to save jobs — the $800 billion stimulus plan passed shortly after he took office. ‘Over the next two years, this plan will save or create 3.5 million jobs,’ Obama proclaimed in a speech to a similar joint session of Congress on Feb. 24, 2009. We’re not sure about the jobs saved part, but the country has certainly not created jobs since then — there are almost 2 million fewer jobs since he made those remarks 2 1/2 years ago. That gives a sense of the economic burden he will carry into his reelection campaign.”
As the WSJ editors point out, “We've had the biggest Keynesian stimulus in decades. The new argument that the 2009 stimulus wasn't big enough isn't what we heard then. Americans were told it would create 3.5 million new jobs and unemployment would stay below 8% and be falling by 2011. It is now 9.1%. But this stimulus we are told will make all the difference.”
They conclude, “He passed $830 billion in stimulus, $3 billion for cash for clunkers, $30 billion in small business loans, $30 billion for mortgage modification, the GM-Chrysler bailouts, ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, credit card price controls, Build America Bonds, jobless benefits for a record 99 weeks, and more. . . . Washington can most help the economy with serious spending restraint, permanent tax-rate cuts, regulatory relief and repeal of ObamaCare. What won't help growth is more temporary, targeted political conjuring.”
U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, said, “The president’s plan makes a mockery of the recent debt limit deal. That agreement cut $7 billion in appropriations next year but the president now wants to borrow hundreds of billions more to finance a second stimulus package… Saying that something is ‘paid for’ isn’t enough… Borrowing even more to spend immediately in exchange for vague promises of distant future cuts means that we are digging ourselves into a deeper fiscal hole and moving quickly in the wrong direction.”
Rep. Congressman Tim Griffin (R-AR-02) responded, "I look forward to studying the details of the President's proposal, but from what I heard tonight, it appears to be more of the same stimulus that failed in the first place. In Arkansas, the President’s previous stimulus plan cost taxpayers more than $273,000 for every job it created or saved in the state while adding a trillion dollars to our national debt. If the President wants to strengthen the economy, he should encourage the Senate to pass more than a dozen pro-jobs, pro-growth bills that we in the House have already passed.”
Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR-01) responded, "While honest disagreements in policy are natural, my goal is to find common ground that will foster job creation and avert a national debt crisis."
Michael A. Needham, Heritage Action for America, said "Last night, the President of the United States said he wanted to see more products "made in America." This from a president who has allowed his National Labor Relations Board to torture a great American company, Boeing, trying to make planes in America. He said he wanted to pass trade agreements with Panama, Columbia and South Korea. Yet, he refuses to allow them to be passed unless his friends in the labor unions are paid off at the same time. He said he wants to stop the political circus. Yet, he convened a joint session of Congress only to present a fiercely partisan campaign speech. This is not the audacity of hope. It is just plain audacity. "
As Sen. Mitch McConnell put it yesterday, “The first Stimulus didn’t do it. Why would another one? This is one question that the White House and a number of Democrats clearly don’t want to answer. That’s why some of them are out there coaching people not to use the word Stimulus when describing the President’s plan. . . . But here’s the bottom line: By the President’s own standards his jobs agenda has been a failure. And we can’t afford to make the same mistake twice.”
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