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Biden on Jobs Bill: “This Is Not Very Complicated”

With a minority of Senators having blocked even an attempt at debate on the American Jobs Act, Senate leaders are moving individual provisions as stand-alone bills this week. And first up is a bill to put hundreds of thousands of teachers, firefighters and other employees back to work.

In a packed Senate conference room yesterday, a few hundred firefighters, nurses, teachers, police officers and their allies were joined by Vice President Joe Biden and legislative leaders to push for the bill. It’s a $35 billion measure that would send money to the states to help them save jobs that are right now disappearing thanks to short-sighted budget cuts. Sen. Harry Reid plans to put the bill up for a vote this week.

As Biden noted at yesterday’s rally, this isn’t a radical, ideological proposition. It’s common sense. It gives people paychecks and helps communities keep the services and protections they can’t afford to lose. “It’s not only about your needs, it’s about the public needs,” Biden told the enthusiastic crowd. “This is not very complicated…real people will get real relief, right now.”

(Surprise, surprise: Sen. Mitch McConnell is already gearing up to block the bill.)

The bill is completely paid for by a small 0.5% surtax on money earned after the first $1 million dollars. To put that in basic math, if a wealthy person has $1,000,010 in taxable income, the surcharge would raise their taxes by a nickel. “Everything is about priorities,” Biden aptly noted, saying that Senators could save nearly 400,000 jobs—or they could save millionaires a little bit on their tax bill. “This is so simple. Watch your senator. Watch him or her choose.”

Among those who spoke at yesterday’s rally were Rodney Barton, a retired Maryland police officer, and Cherine Akbari, a teacher from Oakland Park, Florida who got her pink slip on Teacher Appreciation Day. “I’m one of 1,400 teachers laid off in my district,” said Akbari. “I’m worried about losing my home, which I just bought thinking I could have a career in education. I’m worried for myself but I’m even more worried for my students.”

These layoffs hit communities in two ways. First, they obviously reduce cities and towns’ ability to provide for public safety and good education, which hurts everything from property values to the future earnings prospects of students. Second, it has the same economic impact as any other layoff: depriving local businesses of customers and throwing more and more people into competition for a too-small number of job openings.

As the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent notes, the Senators whose vote could be decisive here come from states where the number of jobs saved would be bigger than the number of people who would actually be hit by the tax. And polls overwhelmingly show support for modest increases on taxes on the very wealthiest and investments in jobs. Again: this is a no-brainer.

So what is it going to be, U.S. Senators? Go with the overwhelming public consensus and put people like Cherine back to work, or keep taxes on millionaires from inching up above their historic lows? It’s a sign of a deeply dysfunctional debate in Washington that this would be anything like a hard choice.

In addition to the bill to fund teachers and public safety workers, the Obama administration is also proposing as a stand-alone bill a program to help businesses hire veterans, another portion of the American Jobs Act.

Tags: Jobs, Joe Biden, Public Safety, Senate