Firing government employees will solve unemployment (Said too many people now)!

Over on Facebook I got into another argument with a moderate conservative friend. I should really stop doing that. But he was responding to my post of E.J. Dionne's Column today which essentially says that drastic cuts to government spending - given our current employment numbers - is the WRONG thing to do if we need jobs.  Which we do.

My well meaning, but underemployed friend took that as another "I'm entitled to my job" screed by another overstuffed, underachieving, under employed fed.  He should know better with me, but there we were.  His argument was that federal employment - for that matter - any government employment - should go down in a down turn, as should government spending.

Leaving aside the anti-Kenynes approach he has (RE stimulative impacts of federal spending in down economies since governments aren't actually bound by supply and can create demand through deficits), I took him to task over federal employment, since I'm not the only one of his friends who's a fed.

That argument led me to do some data analysis, which I present below.  First, looking at federal civilian employment trends since 1962 (Data courtesy OPM.gov), I find that the federal government is nowhere as big as it has been in my life time.  Specifically, the federal government topped out at over 3 Million employees under President Reagan, began to shrink under President Bush 41, shrank dramatically under President Clinton (to less then 2.65 Million), climbed again under President Bush 43 (During the prime years of the Great Recession), and began to shrink again under President Obama. 

Sadly, the data cut off from OPM is 2011 so we can't see what the impacts of 2012 and 2013 budget decisions are - particularly Sequestration.

Interestingly, I'm not the only one to notice the dip in employment under our current President.  Forbes published a short, to the point analysis of total government employment (in which they lump local, state, and federal employees) vs. total population.  Their "in the face of conventional wisdom" conclusion is that not only did the ratio of total government employees to the population go down, but that the rate of growth of government employees to the population went down under President Obama.  They rightly attribute the declines to the Great Recession, though they note most decline is due to budget cuts forced on states that are legally mandates to balance their budgets.

And then there's this little nugget from The Atlantic in May, 2013:

But rather than Washington leading the still-weak economy, the cart has led the horse, with the private sector adding roughly 2.2 million jobs over the past year while state, local, and federal governments have shed more than 90,000 jobs.

 Finally, the American Enterprise Institute notes that total government employment as well as Federal government employment have declined under President Obama (they conveniently carry their data back to 2001, and ignore the increase under President Bush; but theirs is the same data set I  used above):

So no, federal and state and local government employees haven't been spared the axe - far from it.  And no, federal employment isn't out of control - Mr. Reagan had a million or so more feds the Mr. Obama has.

And no, cutting federal spending on employees won't solve any economic problems.  If the private sector is adding jobs while government is still firing people, I'd say we're suffering enough.

Civil Liberties, the AP, and Government Accountability - Why are we looking for all the wrong people to blame?

As I wrote a couple of days ago, the media are now up in arms over the curtailing of civil liberties that is inherent in the AP Phone Records Scandal that broken in Washington DC last week.  The Washington Post published no less then five columns (here, here, here, here, and here) that featured the story in some form – and  all variations on the same theme:  this is an egregious assault on the press and civil liberties, and goes past anything the Bush Administration did, and must be stopped.

As I noted then (additional emphasis added):

History is repleat with examples of surveillance states, all probably set up due to the PERCEPTION of an existential threat , that grow and morph and begin to consume the very societies that they are meant to protect.  It happened in the Soviet Union, it happened in Nazi Germany – it happened here during WWII resulting in internment camps for Japanese citizens (among other horrible domestic abuses).  It happened under Nixon, and it happened under Johnson as Vietnam raged.

So why in the world did anyone think that the vast (and often contractor led) surveillance state cobbled together in the 9/11 ashes of the Cold War would be any different?  Because when it started was pitched to focus on “terrorists”, which is really code for Muslims?  Because it was run by the federal government?  On what basis did all these media types, and telcom bosses, and ordinary citizens believe they would be immune from NSA’s purported billion emails a day capturing and filtering capability?

Glenn Greenwald expand the point in his blog today, writing this:

You don't say! The Washington Post's breaking news here is only about four years late. Back in mid-2010, ACLU executive director Anthony Romero, speaking about Obama's civil liberties record at a progressive conference, put it this way: "I'm disgusted with this president." In the spirit of optimism, one can adopt a "better-late-than-never" outlook regarding this newfound media awakening.

What’s actually at work here, is that the denial of civil liberties (which is really a denial of human rights) has finally left the “them” community and come to “us.”  No longer can white, middle class, corporate America turn the other way while Muslims are subjected to invasive, terrible treatment, because that same segment of white, middle class America is now  firmly in the sights of the surveillance state.  It is the culmination of something predicted, ironically, by the CIA (H/T Glenn Greenwald at the link above)[emphasis mine]:

This is such an under-appreciated but crucial aspect of the Obama legacy. Recall back in 2008 that the CIA prepared a secret report (subsequently leaked to WikiLeaks) that presciently noted that the election of Barack Obama would be the most effective way to stem the tide of antiwar sentiment in western Europe, because it would put a pleasant, happy, progressive face on those wars and thus convert large numbers of Obama supporters from war opponents into war supporters. That, of course, is exactly what happened: not just in the realm of militarism but civil liberties and a whole variety of other issues. That has had the effect of transforming what were, just a few years ago, symbols of highly contentious right-wing radicalism into harmonious bipartisan consensus. That the most vocal defenders of this unprecedented government acquisition of journalists' phone records comes from government-loyal progressives - reciting the standard slogans of National Security and Keeping Us Safe and The Terrorists - is a potent symbol indeed of this transformation.

While I’m glad the media is finally waking up to how bad this really is, I think they are going off in the wrong direction for a solution.  Both David Ignatious and Joe Davidson of the WaPo (cited above) seem to think that part of the solution is “management” of federal agencies that isn’t afraid to manage and lead, so that federal employees at Justice and the IRS (in it’s Tea Party aggregation filter scandal) would have been stopped before they started.  They all but whine that senior feds aren’t doing their jobs (insert bloated, ineffective government anyone argument of the day here) and if they were, this would never have happened.

Really?  Let’s start with whom, exactly, you think are these managers who are so derelict?  The Senior Executive Service career folks who are running many parts of the federal government because they have no politically appointed bosses (thanks to Senate Republican’s sudden aversion to Advice and Consent on Presidential appointees).  Are they those same appointees, who all serve “at the pleasure of the President” and thus whose very job depends on toting the Party Line?

Or, could it be that the abuses of civil liberties – which started with state sanctioned torture and indefinite detention under President Bush – are well grounded in the Orwellian legal system Congress has constructed at the behest of two Presidents of opposing parties.  From the Patriot Act, to the FISA reauthorization and beyond, Congress has abdicated its checks and balances role on the Executive Branch, preferring to give ever broader powers to the White House, and it’s principle occupant, all in the name of keeping us “Safe.”  One wonders when we will see Congress grill itself over its own contributions to this horrible alternate reality with the vigor it applies to the Administration.

But then again, we’d all have to recognize that all these abuses – regardless of the targeted group – are heinous abominations against our Nation and its ideals.  Sadly, I fear most Americans are not yet ready to do that.

The Surveillence State nabs the Associated Press, a known terrorist organization (not)

According to published reports (U.S. News Here; Salon here and here)  the Associated Press has now been swept by the vast surveillance state set up by the Bush Administration, and then expanded broadly by the Obama Administration (see Here, and Here, and Here, and Here, and Here for some of my thoughts on this issue).  Glenn Greenwald has made a career of dealing with this issue.  And I have to say – AP why are you surprised?

History is repleat with examples of surveillance states, all probably set up due to the PERCEPTION of an existential threat , that grow and morph and begin to consume the very societies that they are meant to protect.  It happened in the Soviet Union, it happened in Nazi Germany – it happened here during WWII resulting in internment camps for Japanese citizens (among other horrible domestic abuses).  It happened under Nixon, and it happened under Johnson as Vietnam raged.

So why in the world did anyone think that the vast (and often contractor led) surveillance state cobbled together in the 9/11 ashes of the Cold War would be any different?  Because it started was pitched to focus on “terrorists”, which is really code for Muslims?  Because it was run by the federal government?  On what basis di all these media types, and telcom bosses, and ordinary citizens believe they would be immune from NSA’s purported billion emails a day capturing and filtering capability?

Look, we as American citizens have to make a choice, and then we have to start acting on it and keep acting on it.  We can either have a free state, where the government really and truly works for us, or we can have a safe state, where the government really and truly listens to us behind our backs, arrests and detains us for no reason and without due process, and murders us using determinations for the President that never see the light of day.  But we can’t have both, and expect them to be mutually co-existent.

Democrats and South Carolina - a Lowcountry Match made in Tea Party activism

Over at the Fix this morning, Chris Cillizza and Sean Sullivan try to make the case that a Win by former Gov. Mark Sanford (R, Tea Party Branch) in South Carolina's 1st Congressional District tomorrow is NOT a loss for Democrats.  Their premise is that if Elizabeth Colbert-Busch wins the seat, the carrying costs for Democrats will simply be too high to sustain that victory in 2014, so why bother acquiring now what will be handed back later?

Much as I respect that opinion, I think they are wrong for three key reasons:

1. First, while Mark Sanford is damaged good politically, he had to run to the far, Tea Party delirious right to even make it out of the primary ( which counted no less the 16 Republicans in contention). He also lost the support of the RNCC when he confessed to violating the court order keeping him out of his ex-wife's house, to say nothing of the embarrassment he caused his sons by introducing them to their future step mom at his victory party last month.  This means that, if he has what it takes to be nominated in the this District on the Right, Democrats won't have that hard a fight on their hands in 2 years.
2. Second, a win is a win is a win.  Democrats are supposedly drowning themselves in lethargy and "malaise" these days over President Obama's "lack luster" first 100 days (of his second term).  Both Salon and the WaPo have carried numerous example stories of this.  So Democrats need a win at something to help start their rally - why not in a House race that puts a Democrat in office under Sen. Lindsey Graham's nose?
3. Third, and perhaps most importantly. Colbert- Busch isn't running as the extreme left of center Socialist that President is still being made out to be by many of those same pundits.  Her ads in South Carolina since the primary win have been focused on her business chops and her roots and connections in the Lowcountry, not on Obamacare, or immigration, or any other issue that can be marginally linked to Democrats.  In short, she's running as a pragmatic centrist (sort of like the President actually) without invoking anything Obama has said or done. Compared to the other Republican offerings, I think if she votes the way she's running, the purple First District will be very willing to see her returned to office.

So Cillizza and Sullivan may be right - we'll know tomorrow - but the evidence and the real long term strategy would be better served if they were wrong.

Picking a leader - How the Obama Administration gets sideways (again) at the Department of Commerce

Various news outlets, including the Wall Street Journal and Greenwire are reporting that President Obama intends to nominate Penny Pritzker as the next Secretary of Commerce.  Pritzker, whose family owns and runs the Hyatt Hotel chain (along with a number of affiliated brands) would bring a wealth of corporate management experience to the post, as well as a number of international connections that would no doubt be useful to the President's foreign trade relationship needs.

Unfortunately for Ms. Pritzker, her corporate experience has probably not prepared her for the majority of her day job - namely overseeing the 63% to 65% of her budget that is spent by NOAA.  You see, it's a closely guarded open secret that the largest single part - or Bureau - of Commerce is not really all about commerce per se (certainly not in the same way that the International Trade Administration, the Census, or the Bureau of Industrial Security or the Patent and Trademark Administration are).  Former Secretary Gary Locke (now Ambassador to China) understood this, but he had a head start in his learning curve having worked closely with NOAA on Pacific Northwest Salmon issues during his years in Olympia.

Unfortunately for our rebranded hotel leader, NOAA is all about forecasting the weather, protecting Endangered Species, setting national and regional commercial fishing quotas, understanding the linkages between climate change and drought, and conducting basic ocean and atmospheric research.  Some of those things require telling business sectors "No" rather loudly and often. It may be true that Ms. Pritzker's managerial experience will benefit NOAA - it's an organization of 12,000 or so staff - but that will only occur if she's briefed properly, trusts the civil service career staff to do their jobs, and the White House supports her by nominating a NOAA Administrator and other NOAA political appointees who actually understand what the organization does and how to best run it.  With the departure of Dr. Jane Lubchenko in February as NOAA Administrator, that chair is open.

So we'll see how it goes, particularly if and when there are confirmation hearings.  If Ms. Pritzker can answer ocean and weather questions, and maybe at least get climate terms correct , then there will be hope for her tenure as Secretary of Commerce.  Otherwise, she'll wind up like a long line of Commerce Secretaries before her who, as former Secretary Carlos Gutierrez (he of Kellog CEO fame) once said, had no idea they were coming to Washington to be Secretary of NOAA.

Approaching the Fiscal Cliff - a little panic might do us some good

In a piece today in Salon, Alex Setiz-Wald brings forth an important point about who, and how, our domestic security debate has been shaped by the psychology of fringe voices:

Psychological research has demonstrated that in times of crisis, people respond most acutely to emotionally strong voices, Bail explains. The media industry has long understood this intuitively and featured dramatic, colorful and emotional figures because they’re more compelling to readers. We’ve all seen this “fringe effect,” as Bail dubs it, from the Tea Party to the birther movement.

Yet I would humbly suggest that this observation is equally applicable to the “fiscal cliff/austerity bomb” debate currently raging in Washington.  Simply put, Republicans may be blamed in polling for causing the fiscal cliff, but their message is also likely to draw more resonance because they are using more emotional language, and actually displaying emotions, then President Obama.    The invective he raised when confronted by Republican attacks on his U.N Ambassador would be well suited to the fiscal cliff debate, yet his post-election speechmaking (and for that matter his campaign speechmaking)  is still fairly devoid of emotional content.

Does the fiscal cliff get “solved” or “fixed” if the President lets off a little steam?  No, but it does turn the narrative away from the raw emotion of the Republican position, and that may be the key to keeping both the government open, and the economy functioning after January 1^st.

The Rise and Fall of NOAA - A Cautionary Tale

Taking Advantage of the late day Friday news cycle lull, President Obama announced the demise of the modern Commerce Department at the federal level at the end of last week. In its stead, the "core business functions" of the Commerce Department will now be combined with several other federal business related agencies - including the Small Business Administration, the Export-Import Bank, the Office o f the International Trade Representative, and the International Trade Administration - to form a new business agency, temporarily headed at the Cabinet level by the current Administrator of the SBA.

Receiving less press coverage - but no less important - is what will happen to the 65% of the Commerce Department budget currently known as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Like many presidents before him, Mr Obama dismissively sends them to the Interior Department, where many in the conservation community have long argued they should be. See, NOAA is in Commerce because President Nixon put it there in a spite-filled decision aimed at keeping his Interior secretary from growing more powerful. The spite was over the Secretary's stance on Vietnam. And since NOAA does not have legislative authorization (an Organic Act), the shot-gun marriage from 1970 has stuck.

As I see it, this plan was hatched under three significant - and significantly wrong assumptions:

Equal Words Equals Waste and Inefficiency: In what can only be described as an attempt at a joke that went horribly wrong, the President presaged this move in last year's State of the Union Speech:

"There are twelve different agencies that deal with exports. There are at least five different entities that deal with housing policy. Then there's my favorite example: the Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they're in fresh water, but the Commerce Department handles them in when they're in saltwater. And I hear it gets even more complicated once they're smoked."



On the Surface he is correct - both NOAA and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service share jurisdiction over SOME salmon in a single region of the U.S. Atlantic Salmon - which are currently to be found primarily in Maine - are co-managed by both agencies under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). But if you actually Google their respective websites, you will find that their actions are complementary, and not overlapping. You'll also find that a significant amount of the actual work is done by the state of Maine for both agencies.

Out west, pacific salmon are regulated by NOAA alone, under both the ESA and the Magnuson-Stevens Act (which regulated U.S. Commercial Marine Fishing since pacific salmon can still be commercially harvested). Having learned how hard comanagement was, the Interior Department deferred to NOAA for the ESA, thought they still work closely with the agency on many issues relating to pacific salmon. NOAA has "sole custody" of Magnuson actions, so there is no duplication or overlap there. Bottom line - just because GAO can find the same words describing programs in similar agencies, that doesn't mean there is duplication. Often, programs that sound the same on paper are working on different parts of the same issue.

If It Looks Broken, Clearly We need a New One: The only reason there are nearly as many contracts and consultants doing federal work in the U.S. as actually federal employees is that our politicians seems to have been brainwashed into thinking that all problems can be solved by creating new and different programs and departments to address old and persistent problems. They have also been brainwashed (mostly) into thinking efficiency will bring effectiveness in delivering federal programs.

Don't believe me, then read the assessment of the Department of Homeland Security put out last year by GAO. In it, they highlight three key challenges for the organization:

GAO's work identified three themes at the foundation of DHS's challenges Leading and coordinating the homeland security enterprise; Implementing and integrating management functions for results; and Strategically managing risks and assessing homeland security efforts. This testimony contains no new recommendations.

SImply put, ten years after 9/11, and 8 years after Congress cobbled DHS together from 20 previously existing entities, efficiency and integration are NOT hallmarks of the department.

Ironically, in the case of Commerce, I happen to agree with the President that all the federal functions relating to business should probably be in one place. I actually mistakenly thought several of the players named above in the consolidation list were already in Commerce. But harkening to the advice the GAO imparts here (which I find unusually sage for them ), I have to ask - will these business functions be better managed, delivered more effectively, and thus create efficiencies and cost savings in a brand new organization? Or would it make more sense to shed the non-business parts of Commerce and fold thus stuff in? My sense having worked in federal budget formulation, as well as long-range strategic planning is that the savings and efficiencies (if there are any to be gained) would be from the later approach. Of course, I am not a well paid management consultant, so I am probably missing some important connection - or not.

Even a Decent Idea Can Get Trumped by Federal Statutes: Moving NOAA to Interior will take more then Congressional authorization and a Presidential Executive Order. It will take re-writing 92 federal statutes that tell NOAA what to do. Some of the legislation - like the Weather Bureau Organic Act - is older then NOAA itself. All of it either tells the Secretary of Commerce to do something - i.e. the ESA or Magnuson-Stevens - or tells NOAA to do something, often referencing the Commerce Department along the way. Given that NOAA is routinely sued under the ESA and MSA now, it is a virtual certainty that NOT changing any of this legislation while moving NOAA to Interior will lead to an upswing in litigation. That upswing will NOT enhance efficiency, and will be even more of a drain on the limited federal resource stat NOAA brings to bear on these issues. There's also a Law of Unintended Consequences at work here - all sorts of things could be added to these efforts at legislative rewriting that are more detrimental to the U.S. then anything currently on the books.

So what's your answer smarty pants: Simply this - if we must rearrange the deck chairs, move NOAA out of Commerce, and allow it to stand alone, like the EPA, NASA, and NSF do now. Pas a NOAA Organic Act to do this, and settle what NOAA is and Isn't once and for all. The NOAA Administrator, as Undersecretary of Commerce - is already Senate Confirmed, so there would be no change in procedure for selection of that person. Likewise, the House and Senate Appropriations Committees would still retain the same jurisdiction, which in the end may be the most significant hurdle to the plan as currently proposed. Pull the SBA and all the other business related entities into Commerce, where the management inefficiencies that still plague DHS will be few, since Commerce has been around for a hundred years or so as an executive department.

My plan is likely to never come to pass of course - it makes too much sense, and Washington D.C. is a place where common sense seems to have jumped out the window and run off screaming.

The Great Recession fuels a swing to the Right - the Debt Deal and what it means for Liberals

It will come as somewhat of a surprise to my regular readers that I’ve stayed silent on the debt ceiling crisis. Part of the reason has been my July schedule – two weeks of vacation, a week in the office, and then a professional trip to Alaska. The other part of the reason is that I long ago reached a conclusion that analyzing the sausage making is a waste of my time – having spent most of the last five years doing federal budget work I know all too well how much can change in a day.

But now a “deal” is out, and like Washington Post Columnist Matt Miller, I’m underwhelmed:

So this is what we’ve driven the global economy and America’s credit rating to the brink for?

This is why Republicans (who voted for the Paul Ryan plan that would add $5 trillion in red ink over the next decade) decided it was vital to not lift the debt ceiling to accommodate their own budget’s outsized debt?

This is the best the White House could salvage after inexplicably failing to insist that the debt ceiling be raised as part of December’s deal to extend the Bush tax cuts — which would have let the country avoid this unprecedented exercise in self-inflicted damage?

See, I’m one of those liberals who sit well to the Left of the President – who is a Centrist at best and a moderate Republican normally – and thinks we could have done better. I’ve written here and elsewhere before about how, at the gross analysis level, you can’t cut your way out of this debt cycle – you have to raise revenues as well. Yet the plan now going before the House and Senate (with less than stellar chances of passing IMHO) is all cuts.

Many in the media punditocracy will no doubt try to spin this as “the best a besieged president could do. Paul Krugman is not buying it:

For the deal itself, given the available information, is a disaster, and not just for President Obama and his party. It will damage an already depressed economy; it will probably make America’s long-run deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status.

Start with the economics. We currently have a deeply depressed economy. We will almost certainly continue to have a depressed economy all through next year. And we will probably have a depressed economy through 2013 as well, if not beyond.

The worst thing you can do in these circumstances is slash government spending, since that will depress the economy even further. Pay no attention to those who invoke the confidence fairy, claiming that tough action on the budget will reassure businesses and consumers, leading them to spend more. It doesn’t work that way, a fact confirmed by many studies of the historical record.

Glenn Greenwald isn’t buying it either, and he notes with a fairly strong factual basis that the deal reached is the deal Mr. Obama wants to reach:

It appears to be true that the President wanted tax revenues to be part of this deal. But it is absolutely false that he did not want these brutal budget cuts and was simply forced -- either by his own strategic "blunders" or the "weakness" of his office -- into accepting them. The evidence is overwhelming that Obama has long wanted exactly what he got: these severe domestic budget cuts and even ones well beyond these, including Social Security and Medicare, which he is likely to get with the Super-Committee created by this bill (as Robert Reich described the bill: "No tax increases on rich yet almost certain cuts in Med[icare] and Social Security . . . . Ds can no longer campaign on R's desire to Medicare and Soc Security, now that O has agreed it").

Last night, John Cole -- along with several others -- promoted this weak-helpless-President narrative by asking what Obama could possibly have done to secure a better outcome. Early this morning, I answered him by email, but as I see that this is the claim being pervasively used to explain Obama's acceptance of this deal -- he was forced into it by the Tea Party hostage-takers -- I'm reprinting that email I wrote here. For those who believe this narrative, please confront the evidence there; how anyone can claim in the face of all that evidence that the President was "forced" into making these cuts -- as opposed to having eagerly sought them -- is mystifying indeed. And, as I set forth there, there were ample steps he could have taken had he actually wanted leverage against the GOP; the very idea that negotiating steps so obvious to every progressive pundit somehow eluded the President and his vast army of advisers is absurd on its face.

As usual, Mr. Greenwald is correct in the larger context of his analysis, and that is one of my main (and saddest) beliefs about the current Administration. They were not outfoxed nor were they outsmarted – they got what they wanted, just as they did with “healthcare reform”, our horrific indefinite detention policy, extensions of the “Bush era” tax cuts, and host of other, Right of center policies.

What the President (and to a certain extent Congressional Republicans) ignore is that the Economy has both grown weaker over the last 4 or 5 decades, and that weakness is severly exacerbated by the trends of income inequality that have emerged. Simply put, as Wages at the Higher end of the Economy (80^th% and up) have grown significantly since the early 1970’s, wages for all the percentiles below have grown so slowly as to remain flat. This chart shows it well. Add in the fact that tax rates have actually gone down slightly since 1965 as a percentage of GDP, and it’s no wonder the government has the huge debt problem it has.

It’s also no wonder that the problem of that debt CAN’T be solved with a policy that severely reduces spending (even with slashes to entitlements and Defense/security expenditures). Such slashing is doubly disingenuous because it ignores responsibility for fiscal actions taken since 2000. If Republicans were to start all their discussions of what to do with the debt by owning this series of decisions, I might respect them more, even when I disagree with them:

The bottom line, however is this – the President has the deal he wants, Congressional Republicans have the deal they want, truly liberal Democrats are left out in the cold, and the fiscal condition of America’s middle and lower class households is about to get worse. What’s the starting line for that continued decline?

· 58% of Americans have a job

· 56% of Americans are covered by Health Insurance

· The median yearly wage in the United States is $26,261

· The Average American household is carrying over $75,000 in debt, including their mortgage

· Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975

· American families are approximately 7.7 trillion dollars poorer than they were back in early 2007

· Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States were living below the poverty line in 2010

· According to Newsweek, close to 20 percent of all American men between the ages of 25 and 54 do not have a job at the moment

And lest anyone think the legislation (If it passes , consider this regarding the legislative branch:

The biggest problem here is that Congress is completely incapable of binding itself over time. And everyone knows it. There’s a name for the problem — legislative entrenchment — and a line of Supreme Court cases supporting it. And there’s Blackstone before that. (More here, if you want. But the headline is misleading, as the only significant loophole to legislative entrenchment is that one Congress can compel another to pay off its debts — not, shall we say, helpful in this situation.)

What one Congress enacts, another Congress can repeal. Always. This problem is often brushed aside, but it makes a lot of policy proposals ultimately silly the longer you look at them. Al Gore’s Social Security lockbox is the most infamous example, but unless I’m missing something really big, this one bids fair to surpass it.

Surprisingly, however, there may well be Democratic resistance, and principled resistance at that:

At a press conference held by members of the House Out of Poverty Caucus Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich), the second most senior member of the U.S. House, was pointed in his criticism of the White House regarding jobs and cuts to Social Security the President put on the table last week. “We’ve got to educate the American people at the same time we educate the President of the United States. The Republicans, Speaker Boehner or Majority Leader Cantor did not call for Social Security cuts in the budget deal. The President of the United States called for that,” Conyers, who has served in the House since 1965, said. “My response to him is to mass thousands of people in front of the White House to protest this,” Conyers said strongly.