Bottom Kill of Teacher Jobs, Health Care for the Poor

We now know about the failure of the top kill in the Gulf, ensuring the continued gusher of oil into the Gulf of Mexico for at least the near future. Almost nobody in America knows about the “bottom kill” pulled off by the House of Representatives late on Friday. Deficit hawk Democrats forced the excising of two health care-related programs – a subsidy for the jobless to keep them on the insurance of their former employer, and increased funding for state Medicaid programs so they can keep up with increased demand during a time of mass unemployment – because they feared the price tag and the cost to the deficit in the short term. The only long-term measures in that same bill would lower the deficit by closing a host of tax loopholes, and every honest economist knows that short-term deficit spending is deeply necessary to put millions of Americans back to work. But these mundane truths had no sway over self-styled “fiscal conservatives” whose actions will necessarily blunt recovery or reverse it altogether. We already see this with the latest economic statistics – consumer spending is flat, median wages are stagnant, and job security remains tenuous. Here’s Robert Reich:

“Members who are from low unemployment areas are very concerned about the deficit,” Nancy Pelosi explained. She might have added that so-called Blue Dog Democrats have the same warped view of fiscal policy as most Republicans. They fail to distinguish between short-term deficits (good) and long-term debt (bad) <...>

Without consumers opening their wallets, and without government making up the difference, we’re careening toward a double-dip recession. The long-term deficit (i.e. Medicare as boomers become seniors) needs attention, but right now it’s critical for government to spend. Otherwise we have no hope of getting free of the gravitational pull of this recession.

Adding further injury, the proposal from Tom Harkin and George Miller to spend $23 billion dollars keeping teachers employed looks dead and buried, for the same reasons that the COBRA subsidy and state aid for Medicaid went by the wayside. State budget shortfalls could cost up to 900,000 jobs this year alone. Critics claim the aid wasn’t attached to enough education “reform” (good for the normally conservative LA Times editorial board for slapping down the nonsense that there’s some magic bullet in education policy that properly assesses teacher contributions to learning and achievement), but the only way to improve schools in the immediate term is to fund their continued operations.

http://news.firedoglake.com/2010/05/30/bottom-kill-of-teacher-jobs-health-care-for-the-poor/