Phone calls carry more weight than emails

September 14, 2011 By Fred Clark 121 Comments

Macroeconomic Advisers LLC says President Barack Obama’s American Jobs Act “would give a significant boost to GDP and employment.”

The various tax cuts aimed at raising workers’ after-tax income and encouraging hiring and investing, combined with the spending increases aimed at maintaining state & local employment and funding infrastructure modernization, would:

  • Boost the level of GDP by 1.3% by the end of 2012, and by 0.2% by the end of 2013.
  • Raise nonfarm establishment employment by 1.3 million by the end of 2012 and 0.8 million by the end of 2013, relative to the baseline.

The program works directly to raise employment through tax incentives and support to state & local governments for increasing hiring; it works indirectly through the positive boost to aggregate demand (and hence hiring) stimulated by the direct spending and the increase in household income resulting from lower employee payroll taxes and increased employment.

So this morning I read this from Steve Benen:

I’ve been pretty impressed over the last week with the White House’s jobs plan, the campaign to generate support for the plan, and the general reluctance to make preemptive concessions. But barring an enormous outpouring of public support, I still don’t see the path between introduction and success.

And then this afternoon I read this from Matthew Yglesias:

Justice and equality doesn’t just happen because it’s nice, people need to make it happen. If it’s not happening, then its advocates are failing. … Reading and talking to like-minded people about how powerful people are failing can seem like action, but it really isn’t. …

Make sure to call/write to your member of Congress and senators. Even if their vote is entirely predictable, they still pay attention to what they’re hearing from constituents and the overall volume of feedback still matters. … You should be doing this regularly. If a major legislative proposal is dropped, let your elected officials know how you feel about it. Both positive and negative reinforcement matter.

Excellent points.

And hey, did I happen to mention that Macroeconomic Advisers crunched the numbers on President Obama’s American Jobs Act?

They did. Here’s what the math says. That’s math — M-A-T-H — not spin, punditry or talking points. This is what will happen if the Jobs Act is signed into law. This is what will not happen if the Jobs Act is not signed into law.

The various tax cuts aimed at raising workers’ after-tax income and encouraging hiring and investing, combined with the spending increases aimed at maintaining state & local employment and funding infrastructure modernization, would:

Boost the level of GDP by 1.3% by the end of 2012, and by 0.2% by the end of 2013.

Raise nonfarm establishment employment by 1.3 million by the end of 2012 and 0.8 million by the end of 2013, relative to the baseline.

So if you regard a growing economy and higher employment as good things, you might want to follow Matt’s advice and call your representatives in Congress.

You can find their phone numbers at Contacting the Congress: A Citizen’s Congressional Directory.

Filed Under: class warfare Tagged With: , 121 Comments
← Older Comments
  • Anonymous

    Lori, don’t take my word for it…

    “Terrible,” Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) told POLITICO when asked about the president’s ideas for how to pay for the $450 billion price tag. “We shouldn’t increase taxes on ordinary income. … There are other ways to get there.”

    “That offset is not going to fly, and he should know that,” said Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu … “Maybe it’s just for his election, which I hope isn’t the case.”

    “I think the best jobs bill that can be passed is a comprehensive long-term deficit-reduction plan,” said Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), … “That’s better than everything else the president is talking about — combined.”

    Yes, other presidents have proposed legislation that had no chance to pass Congress.  And Obama knows that this bill won’t pass.  (Which was my point all along.)  I’m glad to see you coming around on this point.

    Seven weeks ago President Obama declared that he wanted the Democrat and Republican leaders to come up with bipartisan legislation that he could sign.  Since then he’s changed him mind despite the fact that Republicans have offered to work with him.  If Obama actually wanted to enact a bill that would do something, he would have, for instance, invited political leaders from both parties (Pelosi, Reid, Boehner, Cantor) to get together, and he would have told them, “Let’s sit down and develop legislation that will get Americans back to work.

    Instead, when this bill dies in committee, he will attempt to use that defeat to shift the blame for the continuing high unemployment rate from himself to Republicans.  Whether the swing voters who decide every election will buy it remains to be seen.

    And as for my reference to “57 states”, c’mon.  References to Republican gaffes and mistakes and numerous are welcomed by liberal commenters.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a reference to Bush’s pronunciation of “nu-ku-lar”, Cheney’s hunting accident, and Palin’s “I can see Russia from house” (a statement that she never actually said.)  Gee whiz, get a sense of humor.

    [I'm going to be extremely pissed off if Discus eats this comment.]

  • Anonymous

    Lori, I give up. 

    I tried to link a Politico article with quotes from three Democratic senators who rejected the plan as unrealistic because it doesn’t address spending, including one who stated that Obama may simply be looking out for his own reelection.  And I sought to address your lack of a sense of humor. 

    But that [censored] [censored] Discus has eaten my post four times now, and I can’t take it any more.  So you’ll get the last word.

  • Lori

     I tried to link a Politico article with quotes from three Democratic senators who rejected the plan as unrealistic because it doesn’t address spending, including one who stated that Obama may simply be looking out for his own reelection. 

    The fact that some Dems are saying it doesn’t make it true. Many Dems have done nothing but roll over for the Republicans since the last mid-terms. Because they’re looking out for their own reelection prospects. I have not idea where you got the idea that if a member of the party I usually vote for says it I have to accept it as gospel. I’m not a Republican. 

    None of that even touches the real issue, which one more time is that the plan that the GOP and their Dem toadies would vote for would be a bad plan. I don’t give a crap if Obama did only put this bill together to bolster his reelection chances. I care if the bill is good. I care about doing something to create jobs and get the economy going again. Austerity will not do that. A plan that includes yet more spending cuts is worse than no plan at all. I don’t give a crap how many  Blue Dogs say otherwise. We have already seen what austerity can do for us—it crushed the little bit of recovery we’d managed to get going. No more. 

     And I sought to address your lack of a sense of humor.  

     

    I have a sense of humor. You crack me up on a regular basis. You’re doing it right now. 

    That said, I don’t think it’s really surprising for a person to have trouble seeing the funny in someone advocating for more of the kind of economic thinking that has all but destroyed her life. So you know, screw you and your “humor”. 

  • Anonymous

    The reference to your sense of humor was regarding the “57 states” reference.  Both sides enjoy playful jabs at the other side for gaffes and other mistakes.  I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve seen references to Bush’s pronunciation of “nu-ku-lar”, Cheney’s hunting accident, and Palin’s “I can see Russia from my house” (although she never actually said it.)  That you couldn’t even smile at the 57 states makes me question your sense of humor.

    As for the rest of your points, I’m can’t continue to respond when my posts are repeatedly eaten.  So I quit this round.

  • Lori

     The reference to your sense of humor was regarding the “57 states” reference. 

     

    I knew what you meant. 

     
    As for the rest of your points, I’m can’t continue to respond when my posts are repeatedly eaten.  So I quit this round.  

     

    You have yet to respond to the real point at all and Politico links to Dems saying the bill is politically motivated really wouldn’t do that, even if you could get them to post. 

    I’ll say this any way, the problem is your links. I have no idea what disqus rules cause it to choke on some links, but it does. It’s happened to me and I’m sure to other people as well. Find a way to express yourself without them or try linking to another site and you should be able to post. 

  • http://apocalypsereview.wordpress.com/ Invisible Neutrino

    Back story on the Palin Russia thing.

    Seems a satirical remark by Tina Fey is the culprit.

    What I find interesting is that nobody has as yet made a serious attempt to address military spending in the USA for all Obama’s and the Repubs’ talk of actually getting on with addressing ‘sacred cows’ in spending.

  • Lori

     What I find interesting is that nobody has as yet made a serious attempt to address military spending in the USA for all Obama’s and the Repubs’ talk of actually getting on with addressing ‘sacred cows’ in spending.  

    Have you seen this? Man talk about read ‘em and weep. 

  • P J Evans

    And Nebraska is considering going to winner-take-all, because now the Democrats can get some electoral votes there that whey couldn’t with winner-take-all.
    In other words, it’s a planned effort to keep Democrats from getting all the votes they should, and to give Republicans votes they shouldn’t get.

  • P J Evans

    That’s like the news covering a story about Democrats not liking the president’s jobs bill, and the Democrats they’re talking about are Heath Shuler and his buddies in the Blue Dogs. (Shuler is better described as a DINO: he votes Republican as often as he can.)

  • http://blog.trenchcoatsoft.com Ross

    Seems a satirical remark by Tina Fey is the culprit.

    Palin never said you could see Alaska from her house, but she *did* cite the fact that you can see Russia from *parts of alaska* as the wind-up for her pitch that she was qualified in foreign policy. 

  • http://apocalypsereview.wordpress.com/ Invisible Neutrino

    Yaknow I’m curious

    Why does Disqus sometimes show a clickable “(person) liked this” and why does it sometimes show a nonclickable one, and why does it sometimes not even show WHO “liked this”?

    It seems to vary with something like the phase of the moon and the color of pajamas Bill Gates wore the previous night.

  • Anonymous

    I assume that the non-clickable ones are members who don’t have Disqus accounts. I’ve been able to like posts before when my browser has logged me out for whatever reason.

    @aunursa:disqus Copy your post before you submit it, then reload the page. If Disqus ate it, then paste the text back in and try again. Whenever I write up a longer post (especially if it has links or HTML code in it) I make a point of doing that. It usually works for me the second time around.

    I know, I know, ideally we’d be using forum software that didn’t devour posts (and let us ignore users) but at least it’s a pretty simple precaution.

    What I find interesting is that nobody has as yet made a serious attempt
    to address military spending in the USA for all Obama’s and the Repubs’
    talk of actually getting on with addressing ‘sacred cows’ in spending.

    It drives me absolutely crazy that no politician is willing to say this. Very few pundits even, at least amongst the podcasts I listen to.

  • Sgt. Pepper’s Bleeding Heart

    Yaknow I’m curious

    Why does Disqus sometimes show a clickable “(person) liked this” and why does it sometimes show a nonclickable one, and why does it sometimes not even show WHO “liked this”?

    It seems to vary with something like the phase of the moon and the color of pajamas Bill Gates wore the previous night.

    One constant I’ve noticed over a few months is that when someone posts an arsey comment it gets one unidentifiable ‘like’.

  • Hawker40

    I cannot log in to Disqus at work.  When not logged in, I can hit the ‘like’ button but it doesn’t say who ‘liked’ it.  At home, where I am logged in, you see that it’s me with my little airplane pic.

  • Anonymous

    I think it depends on if the person is logged in or not, as Hawker said. And I think there’s nothing stopping someone who isn’t logged in from ‘Like’ing their own posts.

  • Anonymous

    I think it depends on if the person is logged in or not, as Hawker said. And I think there’s nothing stopping someone who isn’t logged in from ‘Like’ing their own posts.

  • http://apocalypsereview.wordpress.com/ Invisible Neutrino

    Weird, ’cause I’m always logged in from home (when elsewhere, I have to post as my blog name cause cba to log in :P ) so I should be able to see all “likes”, but eh who knows. I use NoScript, so there is that to consider.

  • Anonymous

    I think it has more to do with whether or not the person who left the “like” is logged in. If you liked something that a bunch of non-logged in people also liked, it would say something like “Invisible Neutrino and 4 other people liked this”.

  • Lori

     I think it has more to do with whether or not the person who left the “like” is logged in. If you liked something that a bunch of non-logged in people also liked, it would say something like “Invisible Neutrino and 4 other people liked this”.  

    Based on what I’ve seen this is my assumption. Anonymous likes come from people who aren’t logged in and only the number is displayed. For likes by people who are logged in disqus displays one screen name and the number. I think the name displayed is whoever liked the comment most recently. So if it says ”Invisible Neutrino and 4 other people liked this” and then I like it, it will say “Lori and 5 other people liked this”. 

  • http://apocalypsereview.wordpress.com/ Invisible Neutrino

    It also seems to matter who left the initial “like”. If the initial “like” is left by someone logged in, all subequent likes are clickable. But if the “like” is left by someone not logged in, none are clickable.

  • Lori

    Disqus is weird. 

← Older Comments