Obama Invokes Teddy, Pushes Congress To Pursue Fairness

By Adrianna McGinley

President Obama called on Congress Tuesday to channel the policies of former President Theodore Roosevelt to bring the country out of recession and keep the “American dream” alive for middle-class Americans.

“At the turn of the last century, when a nation of farmers was transitioning to become the world’s industrial giant, we had to decide: would we settle for a country where most of the new railroads and factories were controlled by a few giant monopolies that kept prices high and wages low? Would we allow our citizens and even our children to work ungodly hours in conditions that were unsafe and unsanitary? Would we restrict education to the privileged few? Because some people thought massive inequality and exploitation was just the price of progress,” Obama said during remarks in Osawatomie, Kansas. “Theodore Roosevelt disagreed.”

“He believed then what we know is true today, that the free market is the greatest force for economic progress in human history,” Obama added. “But Roosevelt also knew that the free market has never been a free license to take whatever you want from whoever you can.”

Obama said Roosevelt was called a radical, socialist and communist for his progressive ideas, but reminded his audience that those ideas were what eventually brought the country out of depression. According to Obama, Roosevelt faced the same skepticism that exists today from “a certain crowd in Washington” who claim the market would “take care of everything…if only we cut more regulations and cut more taxes.”

These critics, Obama said, praise the “trickle-down” theory; a theory he believes lacks what the country needs.

“It’s never worked,” he said. “It didn’t work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It’s not what led to the incredible post-war boom of the 50s and 60s.”

Obama said that a child born into poverty in the years following World War II had a 50 percent chance of reaching the middle class and in 1980 their chance dropped to 40 percent. Today, he said, their chance has fallen to just one in three.

“The idea that those children might not have a chance to climb out of that situation and back into the middle class, no matter how hard they work? That’s inexcusable. It’s wrong. It flies in the face of everything we stand for,” Obama said.

“This isn’t just another political debate. This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make or break moment for the middle class, and all those who are fighting to get into the middle class.”

Obama called on Congress to pass comprehensive, long-term tax reform, consumer protection measures and support for higher education to bring the U.S. back to prosperity.

“In this economy, a higher education is the surest route to the middle class… We shouldn’t be making it harder to afford college, we should be a country where everyone has the chance to go.”

Obama pushed for an extension of the payroll tax and unemployment benefits to aid struggling middle class families immediately but said “we have to rethink our tax system more fundamentally” in the long term.

“We have to ask ourselves: Do we want to make the investments we need in things like education, and research, and high-tech manufacturing? Or do we want to keep in place the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans in our country? Because we can’t afford to do both. That’s not politics. That’s just math,” Obama said.

The president called out Republicans for continuing to defend the Bush-era tax cuts and criticized his conservative colleagues for refusing to ask millionaires to return to Clinton-era tax rates.

When Clinton proposed tax increases on wealthy Americans, Obama said, there were fears it would “kill jobs and lead to another recession” but instead,  nearly 23 million jobs were created and the deficit was eliminated.

“I’m here to reaffirm my deep conviction that we are greater together than we are on our own,” Obama said. “I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, and when everyone plays by the same rules. Those aren’t Democratic or Republican values; 1 percent values or 99 percent values. They’re American values, and we have to reclaim them.”

Hoyer Blames GOP Leadership For 'Do Nothing' Congress

By Adrianna McGinley

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters at a press briefing Tuesday he remains hopeful that Republicans and Democrats will work in the last weeks of the year to pass economic recovery legislation, but the GOP must be willing to cooperate.

“There is no doubt in my mind that if Mr. Boehner, Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Cantor and I sat down and we could all agree that we’ll both come up with a majority, under the following circumstances…we could do it,” Hoyer said. “The issue is whether or not we’re going to do it in a bipartisan way or pursue a partisan message.”

Hoyer blasted Republicans for moving less than half the amount of legislation the Democratically-controlled Congress moved in 2007 under a Republican administration and attributed the lack of action to a complete unwillingness of the GOP to move away from political messages.

“They voted three times to end Medicare, we’re not going to do that, they continue to vote for it. [They] voted ten times on regulatory bills that do not create jobs…They voted 23 times against initiatives to create jobs…They voted 14 times to repeal patient protections and put insurance companies back in control of healthcare, they know that’s not going to pass the Senate, they know the president is not going to sign it. These are all political message bills for their base, a relatively narrow base.”

“We’ve moved a lot of legislation through the House which the speaker must have known, we knew, had no chance in the Senate, but it was their political message,” Hoyer added. “They’ve been pursuing their political message, not policy.”

When asked if he thinks House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is responsible, he said, “Yes, I think the Speaker bears responsibility. He is, after all, the leader.”

With the current continuing resolution expiring in two weeks, Hoyer said “we are going to urge staying here until we get [the sustainable growth rate, unemployment insurance, and payroll taxes] done.”

On the legislation proposing an extension and increase of the payroll tax, Hoyer said Republicans are alienating their constituents, citing that roughly 75 percent of Americans support raising taxes on millionaires to aid the middle class.

“I frankly think the millionaires’ tax is putting a lot of heat on the Republicans,” Hoyer said.

He criticized arguments that raising taxes on the wealthy would negatively affect small-business owners, saying it “is not going to impact at all, according to any economist, job creation in America. What it will do is give us resources to protect the most vulnerable in America.”

“Every bipartisan group that has looked at it says you cannot get to where we need to get if you do not deal with additional revenues, and very frankly, almost every Republican leader that I’ve talked to agrees,” Hoyer added.

While he does not want to see sequestration take effect, Hoyer said, Democratic leadership is not working to avoid it, and he believes Democrats will support a presidential veto on any legislation with that goal.

“We need to keep the sequester in place, but realize it is an incentive, a reason, a demand, if you will, that we come to an agreement and adopt a balanced response to the fiscal challenge that confronts us…The sequester was the discipline. If you now simply spend time figuring out ‘well how can we get around the sequester,’ frankly, it eliminate the discipline.”

GOP Leaders Downplay Dip In Jobless Rate

House GOP leaders downplayed the dip in the nation’s unemployment rate from 9 percent to 8.6 percent Friday morning, the lowest recorded rate in nearly three years.

“Today’s unemployment numbers certainly look good on its surface,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said at a Friday press conference. “If you look at the number of new jobs created, there’s just not enough new jobs being created in America.”

According to the latest unemployment numbers, the economy added 120,000 jobs in November. Despite seeing jobs totals reach at least 100,000 in the past three months - September numbers were revised showing 210,000 new jobs were added, an uptick of 52,000 from the initial report - House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) voiced his concern over the period of time in which the jobless rate has remained above 8 percent. 

“The jobless rate in our country is still unacceptably high, Boehner said. “Today marks the 34th consecutive month of unemployment above eight percent.”

Though Republican leaders welcomed the dip in the unemployment rate as “good news,” they remained skeptical of Obama’s economic agenda. Boehner used the opportunity to call on President Obama and the Democratic-controlled Senate to take up 25 House-passed bills, all of which are considered job creators by House Republicans.

“It is time for the president to admit, after being able to enact all the major tenants of his agenda… that ultimately his policies are not working,” Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) said. “We would ask Mr. President to please asks Mr. Reid to pass our jobs bills.”

Schumer, Toomey Aim To Help Small Businesses Go Public

By Adrianna McGinley

Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) introduced bipartisan legislation Thursday they say will create jobs by facilitating the private-public transition for small businesses.

The duo agreed small and medium size businesses are essential for economic recovery, yet face tough obstacles when pursuing an initial public offering (IPO).

“Capital formation and access to capital is the single biggest and most important factor in driving economic growth and job creation,” Toomey said. “Without a doubt one of the very best and most efficient sources of capital is the public equities market, well you can’t access the public equity markets until you do your IPO.”

With the number of IPOs declining in recent years, the legislation would create a temporary “on-ramp” for small businesses to go public, phasing in costly IPO regulations as the business grows.

A new category of “emerging growth companies”, with less than $1 billion in annual revenue and $700 million in publicly traded shares, would be created. The companies would have a maximum of five years to make the transition, which could be cut short should the company meet either of the limits set forth.

Roughly 11 to 15 percent of companies, at any given time, would be eligible for the program, Schumer said, and with 79 percent of companies reporting lack of access to the IPO market for small companies and 90 percent of job creation occurring post IPO, this type of legislation “should be our focus.”

The Democratic senator cited LinkedIn as an example of a small company that has doubled its workforce since going public in May and expects many others would follow under the new program.

“The NYSE said the bill ‘would have the largest impact’ on job creation when compared to several similar proposals that have been debated,” Schumer cited.

On top of having bipartisan congressional support, the legislation was approved by the NY Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, and the IPO Task Force.

“We hope that this nice little proposal can help bridge the partisan divides in the Congress and have a real impact on job creation,” Schumer said. “We tried to take the things where you get the most bang for the buck, the least opposition, and ability to get something done.”

“I’m often asked…is there anything you guys can agree on,” Toomey added. “Here’s an example of something very specific, very concrete, very constructive, and very pro-growth on which we do agree…This is just a very constructive thing we can do, it’s not going to cost the taxpayers a dime, and it is assuredly going to create jobs.”

Unemployment Rate Unwavered By Uptick In Jobs Numbers

The United States exceeded economists’ expectations by adding 103,000 jobs to the nation’s workforce in September, but the uptick did little to shake an idle unemployment rate as it sits unchanged at 9.1 percent, according to the Labor Department.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics credits the expansion in employment to the 45,000 disgruntled Verizon employees previously on strike who have returned to work, accounting for nearly half of all job creation last month.

RNC Chair Reince Priebus took the opportunity to blast the president’s jobs bill, calling it “Stimulus 2.0” and denouncing its touted potential impact on the country’s economy.

“Today’s disappointing jobs report underscores why President Obama’s Stimulus 2.0 is not the answer to put Americans back to work. After putting $825 billion on the nation’s credit card only to have 32 straight months of unemployment at 8 percent or above, it is remarkable that the President would double down on the same policies at the tune of nearly half a trillion dollars in more ‘stimulus’ spending,” said Priebus.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) was even less than enthusiastic about September’s “sad numbers” saying Democrats “need to stop campaigning, start listening and start working,” a likely rollover from Thursday’s Obama’s-thrown-in-the-towel jab.

“Our unemployment rate has been higher than eight percent for more than two-and-a-half years, far above what [Obama] promised with the ‘stimulus,’” Boehner said in a statement.

Katherine Abraham, a member of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, also acknowledged that the stagnant 9.1 percent unemployment rate was “unacceptably high” and promoted the American Jobs Act as a means to expedite the economic recovery process.

“Clearly, we need faster economic growth to put Americans back to work,” Abraham said, but she reminded that September’s jobs numbers be taken with a grain of salt.

“The monthly employment and unemployment numbers are volatile and employment estimates are subject to substantial revision,” she said. “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”