Jobs trump balanced budgets

Negotiate with Republicans in Congress? Not a chance. The GOP leadership has made it clear it will do nothing that helps President Barack Obama succeed.

It seems unimportant to its members that if Obama fails, the country fails.


As a union leader, I can tell you there often are bitter moments in the give-and-take of collective bargaining. But I never went into contract negotiations with the ultimate goal of putting the employer out of business. How crazy is that? And how, under these circumstances, do Obama and the Democrats “negotiate” a sensible fiscal path?

The current $3.83 trillion U.S. budget includes $2.39 trillion in mandatory spending on Democratic sacred cows such as Social Security and Medicare. That leaves $1.44 trillion for “discretionary spending.” Defense, a GOP sacred cow, gets 60 percent of that.

The president’s bipartisan deficit-reduction panel called for reduced Social Security and Medicare benefits. Democrats are at least willing to listen and discuss painful changes.

But another panel recommendation to slash military spending and close one-third of overseas bases? Silence. Robert Dorff, an Army War College professor, said the growing costs of waging war in Afghanistan are unlikely to be reduced for years, but there is little discussion. The Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette wrote in an editorial, “By continuing to pay for the world’s largest military, and maintaining a ‘strange silence’ about the size of armed forces, U.S. taxpayers will surely be saddled with debt of stupendous proportions.”

The deficit-reduction panel also called for a sharp increase in taxes — a real nonstarter with a GOP for which tax cuts seem to be a higher priority than reducing the deficit.

Consider the way they “negotiated” with Obama during the lame-duck session, in demanding an extension of tax breaks for the rich. The tax cuts for families earning more than $250,000 adds $140 billion to the deficit over two years. Middle-income families got about $700 billion. Republicans agreed to this — despite the deficit increase of nearly $1 trillion.

When the members of Obama’s new economic team were serving in the Clinton administration, they reversed tax cuts from President George H.W. Bush — and the economy soared.

And consider that during the Eisenhower administration, the top marginal tax rate was at 92 percent. And the country prospered.

What Obama must do is stimulate the economy at the same time he’s cutting expenditures to balance the budget. Nothing will cut the deficit quicker than job growth and a revitalized economy.

Both business and labor approved Obama’s State of the Union proposal to rebuild the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO issued a rare joint statement calling on Democrats and Republicans to support projects that will not only create jobs but also build the 21st-century infrastructure our country needs to compete in the global economy.

Republicans were quick to scoff. They mutter “investments” as though it were a dirty word. They still refuse to accept the fact that the 2009 stimulus (yes, it added to the deficit) did what it was intended to do: save our economy from collapse.

Michael Sullivan is general president of the Sheet Metal Workers International Association, which is affiliated with the AFL-CIO.