The January Jobs Report Is In

The news is awful: Almost 600,000 jobs lost — the worst one-month job loss in 34 years. Unemployment at 7.6%. At the beginning of the recession, in December 2007, the unemployment rate was 4.9%. Three point six million jobs have been lost since then.

GOP leaders in the Senate are unconcerned (emphasis in original):

LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): We do not need any more news conferences. What we need is getting more than 16 people in a room. We need to slow down, take a timeout, and get it right.

ROGER WICKER (R-MS): As Thomas Jefferson reminded Americans in his day — and I quote — “Delay is preferable to error.” Let’s not rush into doing this the wrong way.

JOHN ENSIGN (R-NV): So we need to act much more responsibly than this bill acts. It’s still time. There is no hurry.

TOM COBURN (R-OK): There’s no reason for us to hurry up, number one. There’s no reason for us not to look at every area of this bill and make sure the american people know about it.

The American people want jobs and immediate economic relief. They can’t wait. They are in a hurry. Sometimes the bigger error is to delay taking action, even if what you’ve got isn’t perfect:

… there’s a very serious economic crisis out there causing real pain and anxiety to a lot of people.  Demand is down a lot (accordingly to Obama and others, it’s shrinking in trillions).  And so we need to act and we need to act fast.

The bill’s not perfect, but this isn’t a normal situation.  Spending a lot – maybe even too much – is the whole point.  That’s why I have the vague urge to dropkick Senators Collins and Nelson.  Cutting state education may make them feel like better and more serious people, but they’re causing pointless delays (and God forbid we provide a bit too much money to cash-strapped states to keep people employed — that’s quite clearly the more urgent danger right now).

The President’s Council of Economic Advisers issued this statement:

Today’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is the latest evidence that the U.S. economy is contracting greatly. Payroll employment declined by 598,000 in January, bringing the total job loss since the recession began in December 2007 to 3.6 million. This is the largest 13-month job loss since the payroll employment series began in 1939. The unemployment rate rose from 7.2 to 7.6%, bringing the number of unemployed Americans to 11.6 million.

These numbers, and the very real suffering of American workers they represent, reinforce the need for bold fiscal action. If we fail to act, we are likely to lose millions more jobs and the unemployment rate could reach double digits. Prompt, well-designed fiscal policy is necessary to stop the decline and heal the economy. The American people are counting on leadership from Washington to help the economy recover and lay the long-term foundation for long-term economic growth.

The White House will have to do better than that to wipe the sneer off Krauthammer’s face. “Catastrophe” — how hyperbolic, dear, dear. What urgency? What crisis?

So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared “we have chosen hope over fear.” Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.

Riff on Jill: Reach out a friendly hand to rabid dogs, get your arm pulpified. And no, Obama was not trying to buy Republican support. He was trying to show that you don’t have to demonize political opponents. He was trying to model the art of disagreeing without being disagreeable. Sad to say, there is a class of far right media pundits and politicians whose identity, on a very deep level, is defined by being disagreeable, contemptuous, and cruel. These are people that Pres. Obama, having made the effort to be collegial, can now safely ignore, go around, go through, sail past. He need not worry or be concerned about their opinions or their sensibilities anymore. Indeed, he shouldn’t.

What he should be doing is going straight to the American people. In the past 10 days or so, Republican leaders in Congress have been working overtime to push the narrative that spending is bad, tax cuts are good, and Pres. Obama’s stimulus bill is full of “pork” that will do nothing to create jobs. If that narrative is the only one Americans hear, and it’s the same one that’s been ingrained in them to believe for the past 30 years, then it’s highly unlikely they will accept the paradigm shift that the stimulus package is built on.

There are strong signs Pres. Obama is starting to do this. His remarks addressed to Democratic lawmakers at a Williamsburg, Virginia, retreat last night were delightfully unconciliatory. This was the second speech he gave yesterday about the stimulus. The first was at the Department of Energy, earlier in the day. (Complete transcript and video are here.)

Mr. President, “make this speech in prime time.”

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