Economic Crisis Boils Democratic Message Down to Jobs

Job-seekers look for opportunities and work on their résumés at WorkSource California in Los Angeles. (By Reed Saxon -- Associated Press)

Some Democrats acknowledge that the increased focus on jobs creates a tension of sorts. Obama's economic message during the campaign was an overarching argument that too many Americans are being left behind even amid growth and that a new administration needed to expand health coverage, make the tax code more progressive, invest in alternative energy and make it easier for unions to organize workers.

Some elements of the agenda fit more neatly than others when the emphasis narrowed around job creation -- notably, plans for spending on infrastructure and on alternative energy and conservation, and for eliminating tax breaks for "companies that send jobs overseas."

But some advocates of education reform worry that their issue could fall to the wayside since benefits of the changes they seek would accrue over the longer term. And union leaders are trying to ensure that Obama will still pursue legislation to make it easier to organize workers, even though that has generally been sold as a way to benefit existing workers rather than to create new jobs.

"We've got to create good jobs. Creating low-wage jobs is not going to do what we need to do for our families and our economy," said Anna Burger, secretary-treasurer for the Service Employees International Union. "It really all goes together."

Some Democratic economists say it is just a matter of setting priorities, with immediate stimulus measures coming first and broader reforms later. Infrastructure and green-jobs spending would lead off, along with a middle-class tax cut and expanded food stamps, unemployment insurance and aid to state governments, followed by an expansion of children's health insurance, and then by broader health-care, education and labor law changes.

Obama's agenda "has always been about jobs, job creation in the U.S., but it also has been about shared growth and strengthening the social compact through health care, pensions and higher education," said Gene Sperling, who led Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers. "He's been very clear that we have to deal with the financial and economic crisis but that the priorities of health care and education and energy have to be part of that broader agenda."

James Kvaal, a fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress who advised former North Carolina senator John Edwards's presidential campaign, compared the proposed infrastructure and green-jobs package to the New Deal. Though the workers would probably not be employed directly by the government, as was the case then, it would be another "opportunity to create jobs now, but also something that has lasting value."

Kvaal said there is such consensus emerging about the need for a major stimulus, Obama could hold off for now on raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for some of it. "The focus is less likely to be on paying for it year by year and rolling back the tax cuts, and more about being willing to run a deficit for now and get the economy back on its feet," he said.

Bill Samuels, the AFL-CIO's legislative director, said that even though only older Americans recall the New Deal's jobs programs, there would be popular support for an equivalent undertaking. "The public is watching unemployment spike and has to be worried enough to try something bold," he said. "What's exciting about Obama is that he's willing to come in and take bold steps. The public is ready for that -- and they'd be disappointed if he were not."

But McAuliffe, the former Democratic chairman, offered a cautionary note: The public would be all for an investment in job creation as long as the jobs materialized. "It's going to be brutal next year. And the Democrats will have control then, and it will be incumbent on us to produce," he said. "Voters don't care if they're Democratic jobs or Republican jobs; they just want people who can produce."