Category Archives: jobs

Filibusters and the Senate

Posted on by
Reply

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) blew up the Senate filibuster with his manufactured claim of Republican obstructionism and with his Senate rules-breaking move to eliminate it (for now only regarding Presidential nominees) with a (Democrat only) majority vote.

Yet Republican-led (note that: not the Republican satrapy, as Reid views his Senate to be for Democrats) House passed 200 jobs- and economy-related bills in 2013 and some dozen that were passed with 250 or more votes—i.e., with considerable Democrat (that would be bipartisan, for those Progressives following along at home) voting support.

The Democrat-ruled Senate?  An immigration bill and a farm bill.  A budget, but only under the embarrassment of having Senators’ pay withheld if they didn’t pass one.  Under real pressure, a sequester bill (that originated with President Barack Obama) and a natural disaster relief bill.

Indeed, of the 70-ish bills Obama signed last year, 56 originated in the House, and all of 16 came from Reid’s fiefdom.

The rest of those 200 House-passed bills?  Reid wouldn’t even let them come to a vote.  There are, for instance, 40 explicitly jobs-related bills that Reid refuses to allow the Senate even to discuss.  Of the Senate-originated bills, Reid wouldn’t let the minority party even offer amendments.  Under Senate rules, there are only so many amendments allowed to be proposed for a bill.  Reid routinely, and universally, “filled the tree” with his own or those of his trusted lieutenants, Senator Chuck Schumer (D, NY) and Senator Dick Durbin (D, IL).

There is the filibuster.

Friday’s Unemployment Numbers

Posted on by
Reply

The unemployment rate declined from 7.0% to 6.7% in December, while total nonfarm payroll employment edged up (+74,000)….

However, 347,000 Americans gave up and stopped trying to find work in this December of the fifth year of President Barack Obama’s failed recovery.  Had they kept looking, December’s unemployment would have remained at 7%.  Had the labor force participation rate—which includes those looking for work and still unemployed, mind you—matched December 2012’s rate of 63.6% instead of last December’s 62.8%, December’s unemployment figure would have been 7.7%.

Instead, nearly 2 million Americans have been pushed out of our labor force by Obama’s failed economics.

That’s the last year.  The graph below, from The Federalist, illustrates the failure over the last five years:

The red line in this graph starts in June 2009, the month in which the Panic of 2008 officially ended, and the present “recovery” began.

Emergency Unemployment Insurance Extension

Posted on by
Reply

The existence of unemployment insurance payments means, especially for the low-skilled, that the change in income for taking a job ranges from slightly negative to slightly positive.  This is what underlies much of the argument against unemployment insurance payments of any duration.

That’s only background to the present situation, though.  There are two more, and more important, considerations surrounding the present push by President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) to extend emergency unemployment insurance payments.

One is these Democrats’ refusal to allow job training requirements to be attached to any such emergency unemployment insurance payment extension.  This criterion would cull those who are just using the payments to live on.  See the work requirement attachments and their results during/after the Clinton years.  Seethe work requirement attached to TANF when it replaced AFDC.  But the work training requirement has an additional direct benefit.  The training will help these low-skilled workers get better jobs, not just return, of necessity, to the same type of job.

One is these Democrats’ refusal to pay for this extension with spending cuts anywhere else, but only with continued borrowing: this is an emergency, and “we’ve never paid for emergencies.”  Actually, we do pay for emergencies, if only by borrowing against our children’s and their children’s futures.  Which we’ve already done, to the tune of $17+ trillion.  And this sort of unending wealth redistribution is exactly the sort of thing against which Madison warned us in the 3rd Congress.

Which brings up a third consideration.  This “emergency” has been going on for five years.  The demand to extend emergency unemployment insurance payments in this emergency situation is a clear admission that the economic policies of Obama and his Senate cronies are a dismal failure, even if none of them have the integrity or courage to say so out loud.

Plainly, this is just crassly naked vote pandering and an attempt to distract honest Americans from the disaster of Obamacare and Obama’s failed economic and jobs policies.  And from his failed, retreat-oriented foreign “policies.”

It’s also insulting to honest Americans.

Minimum Wage as Politics

Posted on by
2

Democrats looking to make gains in the 2014 gubernatorial elections are using a possible minimum wage increase as a way to win support among voters….

Democrats across the political spectrum have lobbied for a higher minimum wage this year, after Obama got the ball rolling on the issue by calling for an increase in his February budget speech. Since then, union-organized demonstrations in front of profitable mega-chains such as Wal-Mart and McDonald’s have kept it in the public eye.

Senate Democrats have also pushed for a minimum wage increase going into 2014.  Their proposal would raise the minimum wage by 40%.

Of course there’s union involvement.  Aside from the Democrats being union meal tickets, increasing minimum wages protects union jobs—and so union leaders’ jobs—at the expense of the unemployed, those looking for a first job or for high school or college money, those looking for a second income, and the poor, who would gladly take the lower pay but who are priced out of the labor market by increased minimum wage.

We’ve already seen how that works.

Never mind the racist origin of minimum wage laws, instigated by FDR specifically to stem the tide of southern blacks moving north to take jobs at lower pay than white unions (blacks weren’t allowed in those unions, remember) wanted, and so taking jobs at the expense of those white union members.

Never mind that most of those unemployed and underemployed who will be priced out of the next round of hiring by these elevated minimum wages are the already vastly underemployed and underemployed black and Hispanic teenagers, black and Hispanic moms trying to work a family’s second job.  Regardless of current intent, the disparate impact of minimum wage laws is clear.  Where’s Eric Holder when we need him?

Nevertheless, Danny Kanner, Democratic Governors Association Communications Director had this to say:

The defining issue in every single one of these races is who is fighting for the middle class.

Yeah.  Never mind any of those poor, who’d like to get a job and work their way into the middle class.  Typical Progressive, playing politics, and with that play, ignoring the least among us.

Last Week’s Jobs Report

Posted on by
Reply

The headline is that the jobless rate fell in November to 7.0% from October’s 7.3%, and the participation in the labor force (the number of Americans working at some capacity or looking for work) rose in November to 155,294,000 from October’s 154,839,000.

However, the headline ignores the fact that the Democrats’ government shutdown for much of October led to a large number of Federal employees being furloughed (some 450,000 were out of work for the duration), which both contributed to October’s rise in unemployment and that lowered number in labor force participation.  Comparing November’s data with September’s, the month immediately preceding that shutdown, provides a much more useful comparison.  In September, the unemployment number was 7.2%; the November still seems a significant drop.  However, September’s labor force participation was 155,559,000 Americans: that force had shrunk by 265 thousand Americans by the end of November.  The lower participation contributed significantly to the headline unemployment rate “drop.”