Will a 9.2% unemployment rate add up to new calls for more stimulus?
Will a 9.2% unemployment rate add up to new calls for more stimulus?
CHIOTAKIS: The jobs report today is not what the White House wants to hear — especially as the President and Congressional leaders debate a debt-ceiling deal that includes big cutbacks to government programs. In other words: big federal job cuts. Does that mean there’ll be an even bigger call for more stimulus spending to create jobs?
Marketplace’s Mitchell Hartman reports
MITCHELL HARTMAN: In fact, we’re already seeing in this morning’s job numbers what happens when stimulus runs out: governments cut 39,000 workers in June.
Gary Burtless of the Brookings Institution says maintaining stimulus spending would put more money in consumers’ pockets, and keep down unemployment benefit costs.
GARY BURTLESS: We have a huge deficit because we have terrible unemployment. But nonetheless, the narrative that says the debt or the deficit is our problem is dominating political discourse these days.
But Burtless thinks any more stimulus spending to get people back to work is dead in the water.
BURTLESS: At the moment there are only Democrats in favor of more direct federal spending to add to payrolls. So if we’re going to find common ground among the political parties it has to be I think tax cuts.
The most likely candidate — a payroll tax holiday for employers, to encourage them to hire up.
I’m Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace.
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