We begin today's roundup with
Ryan Cooper's overview of the Republican "jobs" agenda which is pinned on two items which won't boost jobs by much at all. One of them is the GOP's Keystone XL obsession:
How many long-term jobs? Fifty. That's right, 50 whole long-term jobs. (One more, and the pipeline would have to get health insurance for them! Unless they hired veterans, I suppose.)
Furthermore, the argument that Keystone XL would help by lowering gas prices just had the legs kicked out from under it, with the price of oil plummeting towards $50 per barrel with no sign of stopping. This was always a bogus argument, since the pipeline is a drop in the bucket compared to world supply, but now it makes even less sense.
To get a sense of the bigger picture, the U.S. economy pumped out probably close to three million jobs total last year. The GOP's proposals, if enacted, will fail to make more than a small ripple in the job market.
Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, adds:
Those who support the Keystone XL pipeline say it would provide new jobs and promote energy independence, but let’s review the facts. [...]
There will be temporary jobs for 1,950 construction workers for the two years it takes to build the pipeline, and then they’ll be gone. Nearly 10 times more construction and manufacturing jobs can be created with less risk by building the kind of wind and solar power systems, hybrid cars, and other clean energy and clean transportation projects that created more than 18,000 good-paying jobs nationwide in the third quarter of 2014 alone.
More on the day's top stories below the fold.
USA Today rightly points out that the economy needs more than just new jobs -- America needs a raise:
[M]ore jobs alone is not enough to break out the champagne. With all that is working in favor of the economy now, job growth should be a given. What America needs is a raise.
The past 15 years have not been great for the non-wealthy. Adjusted for inflation, median household income (now at $51,939) is 9% below where it was in 1999. It went sideways from 2000 to 2007, then fell from 2008 to 2011, and has started to perk up only lately. This has to change.
Danielle Paquette brings us stories of those who are still strugglling despite increases in the minimum wage:
"I make, in total, about $400 per week. The rent for my two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn Heights, Queens is $1,400. I share the apartment with my mom, who is sometimes able to help out with the rent. She cares for the elderly. She came here 22 years ago. She worked so hard everyday to make a better future. She started having all kinds of problems with her pancreas. She recently had an emergency surgery.
Besides rent, most of my money goes to commuting and food: $30 weekly for a MetroCard, and $70 weekly for groceries. My last splurge was special moccasins for my mom to help with her blood circulation.
It’s a step in the right direction, but it’s hard to get excited about a minimum wage raise. I will still work between 60 and 70 hours each week. I will still barely make enough money to get by."
Harold Jackson at The Philadelphia Inquirer:
It amazes me when I hear near- to above-middle-class earners complain about the push to raise the federal minimum wage, which has stood at $7.25 for almost five years, including during the 2008 recession. These critics look at the $15 an hour that protesting fast-food workers have been asking for and say that’s too much for someone at that level of employment. What they’re really saying is that $15 an hour is getting too close to what they make and does not properly reflect the gap in education and responsibility between them and a – pardon the expression – hamburger flipper.
They’re looking at the issue from the wrong end of the microscope. It’s not that fast-food workers are asking for too much for what they do. An annual salary of $16,120 isn’t excessive when you consider the price of goods and services in today’s world. A worker with a family earning that amount would need another job if he or she were the sole source of income. A young person earning that amount and trying to go to college would have a hard time keeping up with expenses even if he still lives at home.
It’s not that lower-paid workers are asking for too much; it’s that workers making more are settling for too little. Wages need to be adjusted from the bottom up, with those at the very top income levels – the multimillionaires making dozens of times more than their workers – giving up some cash to compensate.
Switching topics,
Cliff Sloan, who was the State Department’s special envoy for closing Guantánamo, writes about the road to closing Gitmo:
WHEN I began as the State Department’s envoy for closing the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, many people advised me that progress was impossible. They were wrong.
In the two years before I started, on July 1, 2013, only four people were transferred from Guantánamo. Over the past 18 months, we moved 39 people out of there, and more transfers are coming. The population at Guantánamo — 127 — is at its lowest level since the facility opened in January 2002. [...] While there have been zigs and zags, we have made great progress. The path to closing Guantánamo during the Obama administration is clear, but it will take intense and sustained action to finish the job. The government must continue and accelerate the transfers of those approved for release. [...]
The road to closing Guantánamo is clear and well lit. We are now approaching the 13th anniversary of the opening of the Guantánamo detention facility. Imprisoning men without charges for this long — many of whom have been approved for transfer for almost half the period of their incarceration — is not in line with the country we aspire to be.
Eugene Robinson calls on the GOP to step up to the plate:
With Republican majorities in both houses, the new Congress should begin by focusing on traditional GOP priorities: improving the nation’s sagging infrastructure, reforming an unwieldy tax code and finding ways to boost middle-class opportunity.
When pigs fly, you say? Skepticism is definitely in order. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner have a fundamental choice to make. They can acknowledge the obvious areas of common ground they share with President Obama — thus showing that the Republican Party can participate responsibly in government — or they can throw temper tantrums.
On a final note,
Kevin R. Kosar explains why he quite the Congressional Research Service:
It was dispiriting to see Congress treating the CRS’s work less as sources of information than as weapons for use in partisan warfare. We were civil servants who tried to render thoughtful assessments about complex matters. We helped Congress respond to the endless torrent of constituent questions and demands—yet this was the thanks we got?
Like most folks at the CRS, I wanted to help Congress do important things. But with the exception of TARP and a few other enactments, not much has been achieved in the past decade in the half-dozen areas I covered. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were not reformed, and despite dozens of reports and memoranda on the USPS, the agency remains broke. Congress, the centerpiece of our democratic machine, is crippled by partisan gridlock. [...]
Giving the CRS more funds and freedom to run its operations would be good for both the agency and Congress. With our nation’s challenges growing by the day, Congress needs the Congressional Research Service now more than ever. And who knows? Maybe a stronger CRS can help Congress fix itself.