1) Barack Obama is a Secret Republican<\/b> 2) So, Are We Counting Jobs or Not?<\/b> 3) Who’s Afraid of the Bank Tax?<\/b> As President Obama baited Republicans about It’s unclear to me what Republicans gain by campaigning against the 4) Vagueness on Health Care<\/b> 5) Vagueness on Jobs<\/b> President Obama’s State of the Union address was sprawling, as State of the Unions tend to be. It was sprawling not only in its ideas, but also in its tone. Obama quipped with lawmakers and then chided them. He poked fun at his hope-and-change reputation and then ended with nothing but more hopeful promises to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWell, not really. But he praised off-shore drilling and nuclear power
\nplants. He gushed over small-businesses (14 mentions of the the term
\n“small business”!) and glorified entrepreneurs. He roared about
\nAmerican competitiveness, and even threw in a dash of nationalism. As
\nJoshua Green wrote<\/a> last night, Obama sounded like a better Republican than some Republicans in parts of the speech.<\/p>\n
\n— The White House on January 12: No more counting jobs saved or created,<\/a> because it’s not possible, practically, or politically winning.
\n— President Obama last night<\/a>:
\n“Because of the steps we took, there are about two million Americans
\nworking right now who would otherwise be unemployed.” Huh?<\/p>\n
\n— As Obama talked the bank tax and the camera panned to sullen-faced Republicans, Megan got a scoop<\/a>:<\/p>\n
\ntheir opposition to new taxes on the banking industry, the pool camera
\n(helpfully?) cut to a shot of Republicans, who weren’t clapping. An
\ninfluential Democrat e-mails: “The footage of every R sitting when
\nObama talked about bank tax is going into every ad we do in 2010.”\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nmost populist elements of financial regulation. I’m with Megan all the
\nway on this issue.The bank tax is good populist politics, but it’s a
\nconfused short-term policy. Obama presents the tax as a way to recoup
\nthe bank bailout money, but we didn’t lose TARP money on the banks. We
\nlost TARP money on AIG and Detroit. So the justification for the tax is
\na small lie. If the White House wants to tax liabilities over a certain
\nlimit to discourage excessive liabilities, then that’s a part of
\nfinancial regulation that shouldn’t be dressed up as a
\none-time-money-grab.<\/p>\n
\nJust before the speech, my colleague Dan Indiviglio told me: I’d guess
\nthat what the market wants from this speech is certainty. We didn’t get it on health care. Obama called health care reform necessary — but also implicitly secondary to the jobs bill. He defended the cause, but not the hotly contested specifics of the bill. Not sure he moved the dial, unless he gets a general boost after the speech and a rising tide of Obama lifts the health care boat.<\/p>\n
\nThe jobs plan that Obama previewed in the State of the Union didn’t
\nhave much detail, either. It was mostly broad strokes: Tax rebates for
\ngreen energy, small business credits, infrastructure spending, and
\nslashing capital gains taxes on small business investment to zero. I wonder if this is the right approach after a lack of specificity from the White House was a key feature of much-delayed, now-imperiled health care reform.<\/p>\n
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