How do you spell W-I-M-P-Y?

First Congressional jobs bill of 2010 has cleared the Senate:

Senate Democrats Wednesday delivered the first of several promised election-year jobs bills, passing a measure blending tax breaks for companies that hire unemployed workers with highway funding eagerly sought by the states.

The bipartisan 70-28 vote to pass the bill sends it to the House, where many Democrats say it is too puny…

We tend to agree with the House Dems. Among the bill’s measures:

Democrats promise additional measures to create jobs, promising help for small businesses having trouble getting loans, aid for cash-strapped state governments, and subsidies for people who make their homes more energy efficient…

The bill contains two major provisions. First, it would exempt businesses hiring the unemployed from the 6.2 percent Social Security payroll tax through December and give them an additional $1,000 credit if new workers stay on the job a full year. The Social Security trust funds would be reimbursed for the lost revenue.

Second, it would extend highway and mass transit programs through the end of the year and pump $20 billion into them in time for the spring construction season. The money would make up for lower-than-expected gasoline tax revenues…

And the reason it is so wimpy:

But budget deficits are a worry, and future measures are going to be more difficult to pass — especially since a top Senate Democrat has blocked unused authority from the Wall Street bailout program from being used to “pay for” jobs initiatives…

Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, blasted the measure for increasing the budget deficit to fund highway and transit programs. He said the measure made a joke of Democratic promises to adhere to “pay-as-you-go” budget rules requiring new spending programs to not increase the deficit.

“I don’t think you get people back to work in this nation by loading more and more debt onto the next generation,” Gregg said.

Sen. Gregg seems like a good man, but he just doesn’t get the underlying economics (unless he believes that the private sector is in robust shape and capable of standing on its own, which means he’s looking at different data than we are). And as we continue to point out, if he and other budget hawks are wrong about the underlying economics, then they are actually going to leave “the next generation” in even worse shape than they would be with more concerted stimulus.

Mark Zandi is cited as estimating that the Senate bill will create roughly 250,000 jobs. That number is unlikely to even make a perceptible dent in structural unemployment. By our back of the envelope calculations, the Senate bill will add about half a percentage point to GDP under the most optimistic assumptions.

We’ll close by calling again on correspondent J. Wellington Wimpy:

“You will gladly pay me today for a job that might be created tomorrow.”

URLs:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100224/ap_on_bi_ge/us_congress_jobs

http://symmetrycapital.net/index.php/blog/2010/02/the-hawks-are-circulating/