INK & TONER USA OWNER WEIGHT IN ON OBAMA's JOBS SPEECH …..

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INK & TONER USA OWNER WEIGHT IN ON OBAMA’s JOBS SPEECH

Obama’s jobs speech: President expected to propose $300 billion in tax cuts, aid
WASHINGTON — For five months, Bob Bloom has watched his business spike and dip, just like the stock market. After a great April, he suffered his worst July in six years. There was so little work "we sat around looking at each other," he said. Then, sales skyrocketed in August.

Earlier this week, Bloom worked until 9 p.m. to keep up with orders at his business, Ink & Toner USA in suburban West Palm Beach. He’s again thinking of adding another employee to his four-person team.

Bloom is just the kind of business owner President Obama hopes to appeal to tonight when he lays out his plan to boost jobs in America. Yet the small business owner says there’s virtually nothing the president could offer him – other than paying for the employee – that would guarantee Bloom will start interviewing."It’s not predictable out there. The business has to justify hiring," he said. "I don’t look to Washington to give me incentive to hire."

When Obama takes to the airwaves to address a joint session of Congress, he will be speaking to a skeptical public who, like Bloom, need concrete plans and not words to gain faith that the economy will improve.

Obama’s overall disapproval ratings have reached a career high. Americans are even less impressed with his handling of the bleak jobs outlook. More than 60 percent of those surveyed say Obama is doing a bad job of managing the economy, according to a new Washington Post/ABC poll.

Statistics are also against him. A recent unemployment report showed no net job gain in August and a stubborn unemployment rate stuck at 9.1 percent."This is a huge speech for the president," said presidential historian and Lynn University professor Robert Watson."I think he has to connect with people in a profound way. He has to have one of those Ronald Reagan moments when he just gets us in the gut," Watson said. "This speech has to be given not from the head but from the gut and heart."

The president is expected to propose spending roughly $300 billion on a package of tax cuts, infrastructure spending and aid to state and local governments, according to details of the plan that have leaked. The majority of the spending would go to extending unemployment benefits and a payroll tax reduction that saves the average working family close to $1,000.

Watson is part of a group of community leaders who have been invited to the White House and are briefed weekly on administration programs. Based on those discussions, he also says he expects the president to urge Congress to approve a trade agreement with South Korea that the White House says will make it cheaper for Koreans to buy American cars.

Another widely reported facet of Obama’s plan is a public/private infrastructure program that would include not only traditional roads, schools and power plant projects, but also soft infrastructure such as high-speed Internet for local governments and communities without it. The president is also expected to include money for local governments, as he did in his first stimulus plan, that would prevent teacher layoffs, for example.

Obama’s jobs package could spur the creation of 75,000 to 150,000 jobs, said David Denslow, research economist for the Bureau of Economic and Business Research and professor in the University of Florida Department of Economics.

"We need that, but we certainly need far more than that," Denslow said.
Rather than extending the 2 percentage point payroll tax reduction, Obama instead should offer a tax credit solely for low-income workers, such as a household earning less than $30,000 or $40,000 a year, Denslow said. Those taxpayers are more likely to spend any money they save than higher wage earners who may instead pocket the payroll tax savings.

"You could probably get twice the jobs for the money," Denslow predicted.
Whether Obama’s plan will actually stimulate the economy may depend on whether it requires Congressional approval, which may come only if the president agrees to corresponding cuts in spending. That would essentially inject cash into one part of the economy and pull it out of another, Denslow said.

White House spokesman Jay Carney has said the president’s plan is paid for, but he has not explained how.The president’s plan, as it has been described, includes various measures that were employed in his first stimulus plan. Watson said he hopes Obama has kept something up his sleeve that people haven’t heard before."If he doesn’t do something big, shocking, unsuspected," Watson said, "people are going to stop listening."

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September 8, 2011 at 7:16 AM