Are Senate Dems Committing Political Suicide Over Jobs Bill?
Senate Democrats this week showed they weren’t up to the political challenge of creating a jobs bill that could help Americans make up the nearly 11 million jobs lost in the recession. As a result, some economic experts say, they’re helping doom especially a generation of young workers to lowered job prospects and years of high rates of unemployment, as a new Atlantic article observes. After initially going along with a so-called $85 billion jobs bill larded with useless GOP-backed tax breaks for businesses, including extending tax credits for research, Reid suddenly decided that he gave away too much to Republicans and decided to pare it back to $15 billion. Unfortunately, his version lacked the much-needed extension of unemployment insurance and COBRA subsidies, putting it off until later in the month — although these benefits are expiring Feb. 28th. As economist Dean Baker told In These Times, “As a jobs bill, this is a joke…There will be other bills and there may be some additio
