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For the third time in as many weeks, the President made a public appeal to Republicans to stop blocking the small business lending bill, expected to get a vote when the Senate returns to session next month.
President Barack Obama says Congress should make passing a long-languishing aid package to small business its first order of business when it gets back from summer vacation.
He said in remarks in the Rose Garden Monday that he’ll also have other specific ideas on the nation’s teetering economy in the days and weeks ahead.
But he also said that action on the package of small business tax cuts and credit incentives is “one thing we know that we should do” as soon as possible. Republicans have been blocking the bill, calling it misguided. Obama said: “I ask Senate Republicans to drop the blockade.”
I don’t know what those “other specific ideas” are – sounds like Nixon’s “secret plan” to me – but the small business lending bill is an odd hill to die on for this or any President. While using the words “small business” and “jobs” in rapid succession can stand in for a public policy, I suppose, this bill is really weak tea. It’s not that there isn’t a legitimate problem in small business lending, particularly in lines of credit that allow cash-strapped businesses to make payroll. But it’s hardly the first-order problem of the moment, at least compared to increasing slack demand. Simply put, if businesses have no customers, they won’t take out loans to expand.
Republicans are indeed being massive idiots with their opposition to this modest measure, which they’ve predicated entirely on not getting the requisite amount of unrelated amendments to the bill. Either that, or they’re deliberately trying to sink the economy. But the bill is so tangential to actual economic growth that its presence or absence won’t have an outsized effect, though I suppose it’s better than nothing.
Small business seem to like the bill, and anecdotally they’ve stopped their expansion plans while they await the outcome of the vote in September. So I guess that’s reason enough to pass this. But when progressives wondered whether the President would announce a large jobs bill and dare the Republicans to stop it, the small business package, which Republicans co-wrote, wasn’t exactly what they had in mind.
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Small business don’t need loans! Nobody is buying anything. No one will have any money to buy anything until the mortgage crisis is addressed in some meaningful way. Where are all of those economic geniuses on Obama’s economic team? Mortgage “resets” to obscene levels in the 12-20% range are criminal in a 4.5% interest rate environment. Addressing that issue would do a lot to keep people in their homes and give them relief from usurious lenders. The savings could go to a kids’ schools supplies, tuition, auto repairs, medical insurance, groceries, etc. Banks would benefit from the resulting economic activity.
It does seem difficult for an incrementalist to even think about doing something more all encompassing all at once
Ding.
Isn’t there a way for Obama to be more forceful on this issue? If the bill is so important then why did he ignore it during his Martha Vineyard’s vacation?
You funny.
Kinda congers up a mental picture of O trying to jump over a chasm incrementally.
He was too busy clearing brush.
Oh wait…
And once again the Republicans will threaten to filibuster and Harry Reid will once again collapse like a mound of jello under the Texas sun in August.
NPR this morning with Reagan Trickledowners argued for retaining Bush Tax Cuts and rolling back corporate taxes which are the highest in the world – even higher than Japan!
You’d think with having the world’s highest corporate taxes we’d be more socialistic.
Later, I missed Cokie Robts review of Beckapalooza with its call for returning to Jeezus. I’m certain that she viewed it quite favorably.
Playing golf with Bloomberg is what Laura Ingraham was hot about….to each her own.
Don’t you love the phrase “weak tea”; that kind of language that sounds like what it says. It’s sort of a “girlie” word, I guess. Thanks for the image.
If I am not mistaken, her crowd estimate was 300 thousand.
Gibbs just touting this bill at daily presser.
That’s a joke. But then so is she.
Bloomberg never met a political party he didn’t love. Glad I didn’t pay any attention to what these guys do on their summer vacations since the brush clearing daze.
Cokie has a way with words. She can be disdainful and still promote it
The losers at Beckapolooza are so charming. Sure, they’re stupid, but they’re loaded with American can-do spirit! Hey. And they love Jeesus. What could be wrong with that! That’s whats great about flyover America!
Well, the right has an easy script this year. They cannot get over, breathlessly,attacking the First Lady, Sleave-less for going on an expensive trip. Should everyone, like Dutch and W, want to clear brush?
I find it shocking there has been so little comment about all the religious language & tone of the festivities….even Ingraham was saying something like that’s what America is all about. Separation only sometimes, I guess.
I resemble that. Brush clearing prolly where I spend more hours after sleeping & reading. (No joke. It’s the only thing I had in common with W, which is why I constantly mock him for it. Only I really do it.)
That is a hilarious visual!!!
Gotta read American Theocracy by Phillips. Eliminating separation of church & state is serious goal of fundies.
I didn’t make it up. Saw it somewhere else a long time ago. It’s a miracle that I remembered it in this context.
The administration is perceived to support many anti-business prgrams: 1099s for every expendtiture over $600 without any understandng of how complex an accounting problem that is for a small business; higher taxes which reduce money for payroll; increased costs for health care; heavier regulation for a number of processes. All of those and many others are costs that must be paid before any new employees are added.
One cannot be looked upon as being so anti-business and, at the same time, have small business owners risk their futures with more expenses. Businesses are not eleemosynary nor is their primary function to hire; they are in business to make money or they die.
Our team needs to go back to the drawing board.
I think Obama has talked about this three times in three weeks because he thinks they’ll actually pass it. My point is it’s negligible.
Republicans have a good grip on Churchgoers and uneducated. They’re going for broke.
Separation of Church and State? What’s that? America is a Christian Nation Under God. Love It OR Leave it.
Freedom Of Religion? Sure, as long as its Christian.
Obama will get the Republicans if he extends the Bush tax cuts.
“The question you might want to ask yourself is whether America has been deliberately stripped of her survivability potential by a globalist agenda half a century in the making.” urbansurvival.com
Now that would be an interesting experiment. The Rs are determined to vote as a block against every O piece of legislation…
Thanks…they are already taking a lot of license with what they do. I started to say some about operating without a licence, but that mixes it up.
300 Thousand? I thought there were – like – Five Trillion people there. I must have miscounted.
I think that’s the plan. Obama and his Geithner Administration chooses to
ignoreincrease the ever-widening chasm between the mega wealthy and the beleaguered middle class. He is buying (and reselling to us) the disproven Trickle-down spin – Reaganomics – he vilified on the campaign trail.Obama is a Republican Trojan Horse. The Bush Tax Cuts will remain.
And my point is that it’s content is irrelevant. Obama says he wants it, therefore Republicans will filibuster it.
To call it “smoke and mirrors” would be to put it charitably.
Cram down the mortgages, and spend heavily on infrastructure. Failing that, we’re looking at a great big hole that will take years and years to fill – assuming it even can be filled.
DING
Match your ding & raise you one ding.
You jest surely. I about dropped my teeth in the wine earlier today when Chrystia Freeland on MSNBC said Obama needed to show some balls. This was after the big speech on the economy.
Eh. Obama wanted the unemployment extension and it eventually got done. He wanted the state fiscal aid bill and it happened. The first was delayed and the second limited, but they did happen.
It’s good to maintain a sense of humor about that pathetic reality. (Time to paws for some cuteness [this one could have auditioned for Gremlins]).
The markets fell of the cliff this afternoon just as Obama left the podium. My take is that investors were reminded that the Republicans are willing to let the country fall into a depression if that’s what it takes to get their majority back. And nothing Obama is saying is giving anyone reason to believe he is willing to force the issues with them.