Barack Obama

A word of caution to President Obama's critics:   American families and businesses may be finally recovering from the economic beatings they suffered in the 2008 financial crisis and the extended unwinding of the 2002-2007 housing bubble.  The giant payroll company ADP, whose surveys have a good record of anticipating the official jobs reports, said today that private sector employment grew by an estimated 325,000 in December.  This follows several months of encouraging news on jobs from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.   Business investment and corporate profits also have shown renewed strength.   

Yet, GDP growth has been modest, mainly because consumer spending is still fragile.   Americans want proof that job creation is back and the value of their homes has stabilized.  The first factor may now be in place.   If housing prices stop falling - and Europe avoids a financial meltdown -- the American economy in 2012 is likely to be the strongest since 2007.

In Kansas last week, President Obama laid out the economic brief for his reelection. Its substance plainly recalls the program Bill Clinton offered in 1992. Both plans are built around new public commitments to education, R&D and infrastructure, some fiscal restraint to finance the public investments and unleash more private investment, plus some modest redistribution of the tax burden from working families to the wealthy. This formula still strikes the right notes politically, at least for those who aren’t diehard, pre-New Deal conservatives. But economically, this mainstream approach will face much greater hurdles today.

Most of the President’s conservative critics have focused on his call for more revenues from affluent Americans, starting with a surtax on millionaires. In fact, congressional Republicans not only have rejected the surtax; they’ve also suggested that they might hold payroll tax relief hostage until Obama agrees to make the Bush upper-end tax cuts permanent. It’s a bluff, and not a very good one: The GOP will stop the surtax on the rich, but they cannot be seen at the same time as raising taxes on everyone else. Whether or not Bush’s largesse for upper-income Americans survives will turn on who is inaugurated in January 2013.

This tax debate may pack a good political punch for Obama; but in the end, it doesn’t have much economic significance. Yes, a higher marginal rate, in itself, would have negative effects. But in the real world, a higher rate never operates by itself. The additional revenues may help bring down interest rates by reducing deficits and so spur business investment, as they did under Clinton. Or the same revenues could help finance public investments that make businesses more efficient and productive. And the truth is, the adverse effects of a higher tax rate on the wealthy, by itself, fall somewhere between quite weak and very weak. What else can an economist infer from strong growth in the 1950s when the top rate exceeded 90 percent, quickening growth in the 1990s after Clinton hiked the top rate, and more tepid growth after Bush cut the top rate?

The harder and more important issue is whether the combination of more public investment and smaller deficits, which worked so well for Clinton, will make much difference today. Like Clinton in 1992, Obama last week called for more federal dollars in the three specific areas that can boost productivity and growth in every industry, and which businesses tend to shortchange. This covers worker education and training, basic research and development, and transportation infrastructure. The theory, confirmed by the boom of the latter 1990s, is that these factors help make businesses more efficient and their workers more productive. Together, those gains translate into higher incomes and stronger business investment, especially if businesses don’t have to compete with Washington for capital to invest. And all of that should produce stronger growth, more jobs, and a much-sought-for virtuous circle.

The catch lies in jobs and wages. If the public investments allow businesses to become more efficient and productive, but those investments do not lead to higher incomes and more jobs, the only result will be higher profit margins. The whole virtuous circle will slow down or even stall out, much like what happened once the 2009 stimulus ran its course. In the 1990s, the strategy worked like a charm, because U.S. companies still responded to higher growth and productivity with strong job creation and wage increases. But those connections have weakened badly since then.

Consider the following. The Bush expansion from 2002 to 2007 saw GDP grow by an average of 2.7 percent a year, 30 percent slower than the 3.5 percent annual gains for a comparable period in the 1990s, say 1993 to 1998. But while the number of private sector jobs grew by more than 18 percent from 1993 to 1998, this rate fell to less than 6 percent from 2002 to 2007, a two-thirds decline from the earlier period . Even worse, the connection between productivity and wage gains broke down even more. In the 1990s, productivity grew 2.5 percent per-year, and average wages increased nearly in lock-step, by 2.2 percent a year. In grim contrast, productivity grew 3 percent a year from 2002 to 2007 while the average wage didn’t go up at all.

Clinton’s program could take strong job creation and wage gains virtually for granted. President Obama’s program will have to address these issues head on, and in ways that might attract some bipartisan support. Obama will also have to contend with additional hurdles, including the persistent economic drag from the financial crisis and, perhaps, from another round triggered by Europe’s faltering sovereign debt.

Here are three ways to begin.

First, while the President’s temporary payroll tax cut for workers provides some welcome stimulus, reducing the tax burden that falls directly on job creation on a permanent basis — the employer side of the payroll tax — would be more powerful economically.  We could cut employer payroll taxes in half, for example, and replace the revenues with a new carbon fee on greenhouse gases. In the bargain, the United States also would become the world’s leading nation in fighting climate change.

To address stagnating wages as well as slow job growth, the President should recast his training agenda as a new right. Most jobs today — and virtually all positions very soon — require some real skills with computers and other information technologies. All working Americans should have the opportunity to upgrade their IT skills, year after year. They could have that, and at modest cost to taxpayers, if Washington will give community colleges new grants to keep their computer labs open and staffed at night and on weekends, so any American can walk in and receive additional IT training for free.

Finally, U.S. multinationals have lobbied furiously, without success, for a temporary tax cut on profits they bring back from abroad. Give them what they want, if they will give the economy what it needs. We could let U.S. multinationals bring back, say, 50 percent of their foreign profits at a lower tax rate if, and only if, they expand their U.S. work forces by 5 percent. A 6 percent increase in a company’s U.S. workers would entitle them to bring back 60 percent of those profits at a lower tax rate, and on up to a 10 percent job increase and 100 percent of foreign profits.

That’s what it will take, just to begin, for an economically-powerful program of public investment and fiscal restraint to work its magic this time.

Everyone knows that unemployment is high today and unlikely to fall by much soon. Yet, a longer view of the official jobs data would startle most people, including virtually everyone in the media. Nearly three years into Barack Obama’s presidency, his record on private job creation has actually been much stronger than George W. Bush’s at the same point in his first term. Whatever the public perception, the real record provides strong evidence for both the relative success of Obama’s economic program and how hard it now is for American businesses to create large numbers of new jobs — as they did once so effortlessly, and without political prodding.

Let’s go to the numbers reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). In the first 33 months of George W. Bush’s presidency, from February 2001 to October 2003, the number of Americans with private jobs fell by 3,054,000 or 2.74 percent. Perhaps Americans were too distracted by Osama bin Laden to pay attention, or everyone was lulled by the dependably strong job creation of the 1980s and 1990s.  Whatever the reason back then, Americans are certainly paying attention to jobs now. Yet, few seem to have noticed that Barack Obama’s jobs record has unquestionably been much better. In the first 33 months of his presidency, from February 2009 to October 2011, private sector employment fell by 723,000 jobs or 0.66 percent. That means that over the first 33 months of the two presidents’ terms, jobs were lost at more than four times the rate under Bush as under Obama. 

To be fair, new presidents shouldn’t be held responsible for job losses or job gains in the first five or six months of their administrations.  Bush’s signature tax cuts, for example, weren’t enacted until June 2001; and while Congress passed Obama’s signature stimulus program earlier in his term, it didn’t take effect for several more months. But the story is the same when we start counting up jobs without the first five months of each president’s term. The BLS reports that from July 2001 to October 2003 under Bush’s program, U.S. businesses shed 2,167,000 jobs, or about 2 percent of the workforce. Over the comparable period under Obama’s policies, from July 2009 to October 2011, American businesses added 1,890,000 jobs, expanding the workforce by 1.75 percent. In fact, private employment in Bush’s first term didn’t begin to turn around in a sustained way until March 2004, 38 months into his term. By contrast, private employment under Obama started to score gains by April and May of 2010, 14 to 15 months into his term.

The same dynamics have played out with manufacturing workers. While they have taken a beating under both presidents, they suffered much harder blows under Bush than Obama. Setting aside, once again, the first five months of each president’s term, the data show that under Bush, 2,141,000 Americans employed in producing goods lost their jobs by October 2003, a 9 percent decline. Under Obama, job losses in goods production totaled 183,000 over the comparable period, a 1.0 percent decline.

Public perceptions, especially of Obama’s record, may be skewed by the collapse of the jobs market in the months before he took office. In the final, dismal year of Bush’s second term, from February 2008 through January 2009, American businesses laid off an astonishing 5,220,000 workers, 4.5 percent of the entire private-sector workforce. Obama and the Fed managed to staunch the hemorrhaging. But the huge job losses in the year before he took office have become a political hurdle which Obama must overcome before he can take credit for putting Americans back to work.

Apart from the obvious disconnect between conventional wisdom and what actually has happened with jobs, the data also speak to certain features of the labor market and the policies we use to affect it. For example, both presidents began their terms with large fiscal stimulus programs, backed up by more stimulus from the Federal Reserve. So, the record now shows clearly that when the economy is depressed, spending stimulus has a more powerful effect on jobs than personal tax cuts.

Beyond that, why couldn’t either president restore the much stronger job creation rates of the 1990s and 1980s? Obama’s economic team can point to the long-term effects of the 2008 housing collapse and financial crisis, especially the impact of four years of falling home values on middle-class consumption. But another factor also has been at work here, one which contributed mightily to the slow job creation under both presidents, and will similarly affect the next president.

The tectonic change from strong job creation of the 1980s and 1990s to the current times is, in a word, globalization. From 1990 to 2008, the share of worldwide GDP traded across national borders jumped from 18 percent to more than 30 percent, the highest level ever recorded. Intense, new competition from all of that additional trade has made it harder for American businesses to raise their prices, as competition usually does. That’s why inflation has remained tame for more than decade, here and nearly everywhere else in the world. The problem that American employers have faced — and still do — is that certain costs have risen sharply over the same years, especially health care and energy costs. Businesses that cannot pass along higher costs in higher prices have to cut back elsewhere, and they started with jobs and wages.

One irony here is that the Obama health care reform should relieve some of the pressure on jobs, by slowing medical cost increases. The administration’s energy program, still stalled in Congress, also might slow fuel cost increases, at least over time. So, if he does win reelection in the face of high unemployment, there is a reasonable prospect of stronger job creation in his second term than in his first one — or in either of George W. Bush’s terms.

NDN was fortunate enough to be invited to talk at the University of Richmond Spanish in the Community program about our 21st Century Border Initiative Program.

The interdisciplinary program is designed to allow students to engage in "Lectures presented by influential business, media, political, and government leaders—many of whom are active in the local Spanish-speaking community—bring the emphasis to comprehension and production through immersion in context."

NDN was pleased to present and foster a dialogue and debate about the southwest border region and immigration reform. The presentation was intended to educated the students about the very real progress made in creating a safer and more economically dynamic region and what that means for future movement on comprehensive immigration reform:

Regarding border safety, the presentation highlighted the fact that overall violence along the Southwest Border has been in decline for some time and that overall the region is quite safe:

The FBI report on Preliminary Annual Uniform Crime shows that nationally, including border states, all four categories of violent crime declined overall compared to 2008:robbery, 8.1 percent; murder, 7.2 percent; aggravated assault, 4.2 percent; and forcible rape, 3.1 percent. Violent crime declined 4.0 percent in metropolitan counties. The same report shows that in Texas, violent crime rates declined,by 3.5 percent to 123,668 incidents per 100,000 residents in 2009.  From 2009 to 2010 in the 4 Texas border states, El Paso, Laredo, Brownsville and McAllen all saw drops in violent crime. By contrast Dayton, Ohio part of Speaker of the House John Boehner’s is far more violent.

Regarding our important economic relationship with Mexico, the presentation highlighted the tight economic bond between the our countries:

Mexico and the United States trade more than $1 billion worth of goods each day ($393 billion in 2010). Mexico spent $163 billion on U.S. goods in 2010, including $14 billion on agricultural products. NAFTA-related trade with Mexico has added 1.7 million jobs to the U.S. economy. Twenty-six U.S. states had exports to Mexico in excess of $1 billion in 2010.

NDN President Simon Rosenberg weighing in on NJ Gov. Chris Christie's criticism of President Obama on 9.29.2011

Last week’s GOP debate at the Reagan Library, followed the next night by the President’s address to Congress, throw into stark relief the strengths and weaknesses of each side’s understanding of job creation and the economy. The Republican hopefuls get a gentleman’s C on the impact of regulation on economic activity. But their approaches to the overall economy and job creation ranged from silly to dangerous, and earn them all F’s. The President has to produce results, and his ideas aren’t constrained by primary challengers. This may help explain why his approaches are broader and more thoughtful, earning him a solid B on the overall economy and an A-minus on job creation.

All of the Republican hopefuls — the two leaders Rick Perry and Mitt Romney, the so-serious minded Jon Huntsman and Ron Paul, and the media-infatuated Michelle Bachmann and the rest — agree on one economic prescription: Apply deep and immediate budget cuts to an economy generating little growth and no jobs. This common position not only defies the basic dynamics of supply and demand in a slow economy. It also rejects the policies of the last five GOP presidents. After all, it was true-blue conservatives Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush who justified big spending increases for defense and big tax cuts to boost the flagging economies of their own times.   

Nor are the Republican wanna-be’s chastened by the current examples of Germany, France and Britain, which all embarked on austerity programs this year while the European Central Bank (ECB) raised EU interest rates. The results have been even more anemic growth than our own. In fact, the two GOP frontrunners along with the inimitable Mr. Paul not only demanded deep spending cuts, but also sided with the ECB by denouncing Fed chairman Ben Bernanke as an inflationist. The markets they all claim to worship don’t see it that way, since our long-term interest rates remain near record lows. For their determined contempt of elementary macroeconomics, all of the GOP putative presidents flunk.

The current President at least appreciates that this economy needs a boost, not more headwinds. His package adds $450 billion over 12 months, in theory adding new demand equal to 3 percentage points of GDP.  In practice, it would work out to be less than that, since people will save some of the money they gain from lower payroll taxes, and some of the tax cuts for businesses won’t be taken up.  The administration also gets credit for recognizing that the sick housing market is a critical piece of the puzzle behind the slow economy. Their answer, however, missed a basic point: Mr. Obama called for expediting Fannie Mae refinancings to put more money in the pockets of some homeowners. That’s all for the good, but it won’t affect the more economically consequential, high foreclosure rates that have been pushing down housing values, and so dampening people’s willingness to spend.  On balance, give the President’s economic team a solid B on the overall economy.

Both sides also call for tax cuts to spur job creation. All of the GOP candidates, however, focus on cutting corporate taxes. Now, most economists agree that the corporate tax cries out for reforms, especially a lower marginal rate tied to ending distorting tax breaks for favored industries.  But no reputable economist who doesn’t aspire to a top position in the next GOP administration has found that those reforms would have noticeable effects on jobs in any short or medium-term. And with large U.S. businesses already holding some $1 trillion in banked profits, by what other economic logic would additional tax cuts move them to create jobs?

The only route from this GOP position to new jobs depends on lower corporate taxes translating into higher dividends, mainly for the very affluent, which they would then spend and so boost demand. Even so, much of those additional dividends probably would be saved, which wouldn’t create any jobs under today’s conditions. Moreover, the GOP hopefuls also insist on spending cuts to offset lower corporate tax revenues — and that would mean job losses. For their resolute ignorance of labor economics and public finance, these hopefuls score another F.

President Obama’s tax plan is both more detailed and better targeted to creating jobs. First, he would reduce the cost to businesses of creating new jobs and maintaining their current workers. To do this, he would temporarily suspend the employer side of the payroll tax for new hires by firms with about 1,000 employees or less, and temporarily cut by half all employer-side payroll taxes for firms with about 100 workers or less. This strategy is eminently sensible — and downright brilliant compared to the broad corporate tax cut championed by the Republican hopefuls. Full disclosure: I’ve urged the administration to propose cutting the employer side of the payroll tax for new hires since October 2009, including a dozen times in these blog essays.

The administration’s decision to limit these new tax incentives to small and medium-size companies is less than ideal, since big businesses employ nearly half of all U.S. workers. On the other hand, big businesses are sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars in banked profits, so they clearly have the means to hire more workers. On balance, these proposals deserve an A-minus.

The same score goes to the President’s call for more job-related, direct federal spending. This includes new funds for the states to prevent more layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters; new support for school construction; and additional investments in infrastructure (through a National Infrastructure Bank).  The jobs benefits from other parts of the plan may be more problematic, including the President’s otherwise sensible support for expanded access to high-speed wireless and public-private partnerships to rehab homes and businesses. There’s also little direct jobs benefit in the administration’s laudable plans to reform the unemployment insurance system and bar employers from discriminating in hiring against long-term jobless people. All told, another A-minus.

The Republican hopefuls still have time to develop better strategies for growth and jobs, especially compared to their current dismal positions. They’ll have to play catch-up, however, because President Obama has proposed a sound new jobs agenda. And if congressional Republicans refuse to work with him on it, the President can ensure that the public will know whom to blame.

The persistent sluggishness of the recovery here in the United States and in most of the world’s advanced economies should underscore a stark lesson from economic history: Systemic financial crises are the products of deep economic problems, and they can’t be solved by simply treating the after-effects of slow growth. It’s long overdue that the United States and Europe directly address the deep market distortions that brought about the crisis of 2008 and 2009.

So far, all we’ve done is substitute large doses of fiscal and monetary stimulus for the hard work.  That pulled us back from the brink of a Depression. We also shouldn’t have been surprised that once the stimulus played out, the same distortions reasserted themselves. We may technically be experiencing a recovery. But unless we’re more forthright in our interventions into both the housing and financial markets — on both the international and domestic stage — we’ll remain exposed to the possibility of a renewed crisis, one even more severe than the one that began three years ago.

These considerations don’t drive policy, in part because so many economists still see the crisis as an anomaly, one that will be followed in due course by markets reasserting their natural optimality. This view, of course, ignores or slights the overwhelming evidence of how inefficiently and “sub-optimally” the financial and housing markets have performed for years. U.S. and European financial markets have systematically failed to reasonably price the risks of trillions of dollars of derivative securities; housing markets here and across much of Europe have sustained a classic speculative bubble and equally classic crash. 

Our current predicament has as much to do with our own lame responses to the consequent crisis, as it does with the original crisis itself. Washington provided bailouts and virtually-free credit for financial institutions without applying requirements as to how that new-found money ought to be used. There also were new housing initiatives, but based on a fanciful view that a little federal money would be enough to convince bankers to extend new credit to people already on the brink of default. Finally, there was a substantial fiscal stimulus — a good and necessary move — but one cobbled together from the wish lists of hundreds of members of Congress.

The results are now clear in the data. Financial institutions amassed trillions of dollars without expanding business lending, mainly because the financial-market distortions that brought on the crisis are still with us. These institutions are still holding trillions of dollars in wobbly asset-based securities, whose risks even now they cannot reasonably price. So they sit on most of their new capital (after paying out their bonuses), in hopes of avoiding another bout of bankruptcy from those assets, should another crisis erupt. Yet, the prospect of new legislation to sustainably resolve those weak assets by pulling them off the books — as Sweden did in its early-1990s banking crisis, and we did in the S&L crisis of 1989-1990 — is nonexistent.

The prospect of another imminent crisis on the horizon ought to put the necessary policies into relief. One initiative that cannot wait: President Obama should call an emergency G-8 meeting to help head off a new financial meltdown in Europe. The sobering fact is that many of Europe’s largest banks are nearly insolvent. It’s a legacy from not only the 2008 – 2009 meltdown, but also the EU’s decision in 2007 to reduce bank capital requirements under the level set by the “Basel 2” accords. Americans benefited from the fact that our own banking regulators dawdled in making similar changes desired by the Bush administration, by which time even the Bush Treasury had doubts about cutting capital requirements. The result today is that the German and French banking systems in particular are in much worse shape than Wall Street.

Now these weak banks face additional, large-scale losses from the falling values of Italian and Spanish government bonds, a contagion from the now-anticipated defaults of Greek and Portuguese public sovereign debt.  If this turmoil intensifies, it will probably pull down some of Europe’s largest banks. And if institutions such as BNP Paribas and Deutsche Bank (the world’s two largest banks) fail, the U.S. and global economies would probably follow. Moreover, this time, the consequences would be even more dire than in 2008 – 2009, since governments have already exhausted their fiscal and monetary policy options.

We can still head off a 1931 scenario if Germany and France will accept the inevitable and obvious: A common Euro currency requires that every member pledge its full faith and credit for Eurobonds to support the full faith and credit of everybody else. Otherwise, the failure of a small member (today, Greece and/or Portugal) can destroy confidence in the economic sustainability of much larger members (Italy and Spain). And then, everybody’s goose is cooked.

The political catch is that the solution puts French and German taxpayers on the hook to bail out fiscally-inept Greece and Portugal. Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy have tried to avoid the political blowback from introducing Eurobonds by trotting out smaller options. It is a decision that hearkens to the Bush administration’s misguided attempts to avoid bailing out Lehman Brothers. Investors aren’t buying it. So if Greece goes down now, Sarkozy and Merkel will be forced to rescue Italy and Spain — and perhaps France itself — at incalculably greater cost to everyone.

President Obama should not delay to call for a G8 meeting: Europe needs to hear that the United States considers its current course unacceptable, and that Washington would be ready to help fund IMF support for a broader solution that can head off another full-blown crisis.

If we intervene to put Europe back on course and avoid a replay of 1931, we still will be facing the prospect of a persistently slow economy. Preventing that kind of long-term stagnation would require that we finally address the distortions in the housing market by stabilizing housing prices. Policymakers’ most promising avenue to that end would be to focus on bringing down foreclosure rates and keeping American families in their homes.

There is no doubt that housing prices are central to our current growth dilemma. People spend freely when their incomes are rising or their wealth is increasing. During the last expansion and leading up to the current crisis, the incomes of most Americans stagnated. Instead, growth and business investment were driven mainly by the “wealth effect” created by fast-rising housing values. Now, the economy is caught in the flip-side, as four years of sliding housing prices drive a powerful negative wealth effect that continues to hold down consumption.

The broad reach of these effects reflects how wealth is now distributed in the United States: According to Fed data for 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held 40 percent of the value of all real estate assets, compared to a miserable seven percent of the total value of all financial assets (and yes, that includes pensions). Home equity, in short, is very nearly the only real asset for more than half of all Americans. The decision to allow housing values to fall for four straight years—in contrast to the equity and bonds of large financial institutions—leaves the majority of American consumers growing poorer month after month. Just as people who grow richer spend more, people who find themselves poorer spend less. So, consumer demand and with it business investment will not recover until housing values stabilize.

To help make that happen, policymakers could establish a temporary loan program for homeowners whose mortgages are in trouble, to help bring down foreclosure rates and so begin to stabilize housing prices and stem the negative wealth effect. The program should not be a giveaway; if it were, it would create enormous moral hazard and enrage everyone who works hard to keep up their own mortgages. So, the loans would carry an interest rate above current 30-year mortgage rates, and those who take advantage of them would have to turn back to taxpayers a share of any capital gains earned later from selling their homes.

It’s very important that we get this right. Unfortunately, the signs from Washington right now aren’t promising. The Obama administration reportedly is considering a program to promote large-scale mortgage refinancings at the current, low fixed rates. If it worked, lower mortgage payments could free up an estimated $85 billion for consumers. But since those whose mortgages are in trouble probably wouldn’t qualify, the refinancing program would inject a little stimulus without affecting housing values. That means it would leave intact the current, negative wealth effect.

We don’t have time to wait for the markets to begin operating rationally again. The economy will only right itself when housing values stabilize and distortions in Wall Street’s and Europe’s financial systems have been addressed. We will need to intervene on both domestic and international fronts, to restore consumer demand and business investment — and with them, President Obama’s prospects for reelection.

In good times, a President without clear economic policies may not suffer for it.   But in shaky and uncertain times like today, failing to advance a coherent strategy to ease people’s genuine economic troubles can be fatal politically, for a president or his opponent.  Yet, it happens with some regularity, often because the candidate simply prefers to talk about foreign policy or other things.  Consider the first George Bush in 1992, dismissing people’s economic worries to return again and again to his Gulf War success.  Think of John McCain in 2008, with no plan to stem the financial meltdown but eager to talk about his opponent’s character failings.  And reaching further back, there was George McGovern decrying the Viet Nam War, but with little to say about the inflation and slow growth.  

Both parties will certainly have economic programs for 2012.  Yet, both parties are in danger of passing lightly over the core issues of jobs, housing values, and incomes.  The problem for the Republican nominee is the Tea Party, which may well force him or her to embrace its’ radical bromides.  That assumes, of course, that the GOP doesn’t nominate Rick Perry or Michelle Bachman, who won’t need to be convinced.   Whoever the nominee is, he or she will have to stand for abolishing the minimum wage.  On the budget, the nominee will have to support moving Medicare towards vouchers with spending caps that don’t take account of health care costs, and a balanced budget amendment that won’t take account of recessions.  The nominee also will have to stand for the repeal of Wall Street regulation and more tax cuts to frost the cake of the rich.  

This prospect presents President Obama with two choices.  He can run against the Tea Party platform and insist that a minimalist approach is preferable to the other side’s eccentric agenda.  One catch is that the GOP nominee almost certainly will have a “Sister Souljah” moment when he ostentatiously distances himself from some loony piece of the Tea Party platform.  (My personal favorite is the call to abolish our “fiat” currency and revive the long, well-buried gold standard.)  And if the GOP nominee can weave a story about how a balanced budget and less government will help create jobs and restore housing values, and repeat that story often enough, it could be sufficient to trump Democratic minimalism. 

But the President has another choice.  He can offer up a new program of “Big Ideas” that directly takes on jobs, stagnating incomes, housing values, and the nation’s debt.  The conventional wisdom is that this is too risky, because it would tacitly acknowledge that his first-term program didn’t deliver the prosperity his economic team promised.  But since everyone in the country is already aware that it didn’t deliver as promised, acknowledging it would be a small concession.  

To be sure, the Tea Party-dominated House probably wouldn’t pass anything that Obama proposes before the election.  The economy will get a little more support from the Fed, but essentially will be on its own.  Nevertheless, the President can lay a foundation for stronger job and income gains in a second term – if he’s reelected – by campaigning for a new economic program.

With persistent, high unemployment, he needs to show that he knows how to reduce the costs for businesses to create new jobs and preserve old ones.  One direct way to do that would be to cut the employer side of the payroll tax by half, and then he could propose to pay for it through tax reforms that include a carbon-based tax to help address climate change.  He also can show that he knows how to help create new, small businesses which, in turn, will create new jobs.  Since our major financial institutions have largely stopped providing credit to small entrepreneurs, he could propose a new government-sponsored enterprise that could float bonds for community banks to finance those business loans. 

The biggest obstacle to a stronger recovery remains the sick housing market.  Nearly two-thirds of American households, in effect, grow poorer every month as the values of their homes decline and, with it, any equity they built up.   And people who feel they’re becoming poorer don’t spend, which in turn keeps this recovery anemic.  The best leverage we have to stop the decline in housing prices is to bring down home foreclosure rates.  The President can show he knows how to do that too, by proposing a new temporary loan program for homeowners with mortgages in trouble.  To be sure, this is treacherous territory, politically and economically, since it could enrage homeowners who don’t qualify and induce moral hazard for those who do.  But the President can address both problems with some tough love.  Homeowners who receive the loans would be on the hook not only to pay them back.  On top of that, 10 percent of any capital gains from an eventual home sale could go back to the taxpayers. 

Finally, the President can show that he knows how to help Americans prepare for the new jobs that the rest of his program would help create.  Nearly half of all working people age 35 and over today still have only the most rudimentary computer skills, leaving them unprepared to perform well in most 21st century jobs.  The President could propose a new grant program for community colleges that will keep their computer labs open and staffed in the evenings and on weekends: Any adult would be able to walk in and receive IT training at no personal cost.  

This program won’t assuage the Tea Party’s followers – in fact, it will likely incense them.  Let’s hope so.  The President should welcome a debate – okay, a pitched battle -- over a genuine and understandable strategy to improve the lives of Americans.  Even if unemployment is still well over 8 percent, a serious plan to bring it down should trump the grab bag of far-right nostrums that passes for policy in the Tea Party. 

NDN President Simon Rosenberg was on FOX News this morning regarding President Obama's re-election chances in the current economic climate:

Speaking from Carnegie Mellon University, President Obama discusses the vital role advanced manufacturing will have in strengthening our economy and creating good, middle-class jobs: