Washington Doesn't Get It: We Need More Jobs - Dan Froomkin\HuffPo [View All]

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Washington Doesn't Get It: We Need More Jobs
Dan Froomkin
First Posted: 10- 2-09 01:09 PM | Updated: 10- 2-09 02:08 PM

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Nowhere is the massive disconnect between Washington D.C. and the rest of the country more striking than when it comes to the issue of jobs.

Inside Washington, it is almost universally considered a foregone conclusion that unemployment will remain near, at, or even above 10 percent -- not just for months, but for years to come. (The unemployment rate in September, we just found out this morning, ticked up yet again, to 9.8 percent.) As White House economic guru Larry Summers dispassionately told reporters last month (while otherwise taking credit for turning the economy around), "The level of unemployment is unacceptably high and will on all forecasts remain unacceptably high for a number of, for a number of years."

This situation creates no sense of urgency in Washington. Ask Summers what he's going to do about it, for instance, and he hems and haws about recovery act programs that have yet to take full effect. To our political elite, jobs are simply nowhere near as critical an issue as the other economic indicators, the stock market, or the financial health of the nation's top bankers.

Outside the Beltway, however, it's a different story. According to a new poll by Hart Research Associates for the Economic Policy Institute, unemployment and the lack of jobs "remains the dominant problem on the economic agenda for voters across party lines." In fact, it's not even close. Asked to name the most important economic problem facing the country, registered voters cited unemployment twice as often as they mentioned the deficit or even the cost of health care; and four times as much as the housing crisis or problems with the banking system.

A whopping 83 percent see unemployment as either a fairly big or very big problem; and 81 percent say the Obama administration hasn't done enough to deal with it.

And there just aren't a whole lot of things that more than 80 percent of Americans agree about.

Not coincidentally, large majorities of voters also see the government's economic policies as helping banks and Wall Street -- while few see themselves or average working families in general as benefiting.

So why isn't political Washington fully engaged in addressing the unemployment problem? For the same reasons it can't seem to get much of anything done these days: most notably the abject lack of boldness from the Democrats and persistent obstructionism from the Republicans.

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More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/02/washington-doesnt-get-it_n_307882.html

Yep...