Forty Republicans and Ben Nelson won’t even allow debate on a jobs bill.
The Senate Republicans (plus Ben Nelson) have decided that the Great Recession hasn’t been quite great enough, and they’d like to see the economy really tank (while imposing as much suffering as possible on the long-term unemployed). After all, what’s bad for the country is good for the GOP.
That wouldn’t matter if the Senate acted by majority rule: there’s a strong majority for a jobs bill, but not quite 60 votes.
Time for some bully-pulpit action, and maybe an announcement from Reid that they’re not going home for the Fourth until the job gets done.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman
If there was to be a pushback against filibusters, it would have already happened months ago. There's nothing, and it depresses me.
I wonder what model of the economy you're working with, if you think that refusing to extend jobless benefits will cause the economy to really tank. That's just bizarre.
Thomas,
It's not awfully hard to come up with an economic theory that recommends that the government should money to help the least fortunate, to ensure that they have some security and that they have some money to spend within the economy, in order to help an economy in trouble and avert still greater or more prolonged economic contractions.
Thomas: "I wonder what model of the economy you’re working with, if you think that refusing to extend jobless benefits will cause the economy to really tank. That’s just bizarre."
Possibly J.M. Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, 1936? Or any more recent textbook that takes account of it and does not reinvent the fallacy of Say's Law?
PS: you really have to admire the political skill that has allowed a defeated minority party to inflict perfectly targeted cuts on the unemployed and Medicaid beneficiaries.
James, Warren, uhm, isn't there a little problem of scale? How big is the bill that Democrats are trying to get through the Senate? $100 billion? (I'm too busy to look it up right now.) If you think that passing or not passing a stimulus bill of $100 billion will make all the difference between the economy "tanking" or not, I think you'll need to do more than a simple incantation of "Keynes, Keynes." (If Mark said he thought the bill might have a mild stimulative effect on GDP in excess of its budgetary cost, that'd be something different. Probably wrong, but not bizarre.)