Meeting with The Bee’s editorial board on Tuesday, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg acknowledged that the state is limited in its ability to stimulate new jobs. <\/p>\n
Unlike the federal government, the state can’t print money (although it can print IOUs). Nor can the state, facing a deficit of $20 billion, launch its own public infrastructure program on the scale of the 1930s Works Progress Administration.<\/p>\n
Yet Steinberg, being an astute politician, knows that jobs are the order of the day. Lawmakers of all stripes will be judged this year on what they’ve done or attempted to do to reduce unemployment, currently at 12.4 percent. And so Steinberg and Senate Democrats have a 27-bill package he calls “A Plan for 140,000 Jobs.”<\/p>\n
Part of Steinberg’s plan is to pass authorizations that would allow the state to tap into federal funds for high-speed rail, school construction, local roads and other projects. He also sees opportunities for reappropriating bond funds to stimulate housing construction, expand work-force training and improve energy efficiency at public schools. <\/p>\n
Some of these proposals may run into opposition from groups that supported the original bonds, but they are worth pursuing. <\/p>\n
Other parts of Steinberg’s plan are more spotty. On Tuesday, he touted an alternative to the governor’s plan on ending the sales tax on gasoline, and replacing it, or part of it, with an excise tax on gasoline. Steinberg’s alternative, he says, would help transit agencies that the governor has stiffed. It sounds promising, but more details are needed. <\/p>\n
There’s also the question of whether the proposal would actually produce 140,000 new jobs, or save them from being lost. After some questioning, Steinberg conceded it would be a bit of both. <\/p>\n
You can quibble all you want with the numbers, but the bigger question is: Is this proposal ambitious enough? California has lost 1 million jobs since 2007, and it’s still not clear that the worst of the recession is behind us. Stronger medicine is needed. <\/p>\n
Steinberg has insisted that Democrats will not repeal labor laws and environmental protections to stimulate the economy, as some Republicans are seeking to do. <\/p>\n
It’s an admirable stance, but it sidesteps the question of whether some if these laws are in need of minor modification. The California Environmental Quality Act, as this page has noted, has been abused by non-environmental interests to stall hospital expansions and energy plants. Meal break requirements protect workers in sweatshops, but hurt various small businesses. <\/p>\n
Steinberg’s jobs plan shows promise. But it would be bolder if extended to some laws that Democrats have largely refused to touch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Meeting with The Bee’s editorial board on Tuesday, Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg acknowledged that the state is limited in its ability to stimulate new jobs. Unlike the federal government, the state can’t print money (although it can print IOUs). Nor can the state, facing a deficit of $20 billion, launch its own public […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4325,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-300694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300694","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\/4325"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300694\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}