The U.S. doesn’t yet have a jobs czar, but it could soon have a Congressional supercommittee on jobs creation to join the supercommittee on deficit reduction.
With an election 15 months away, Washington is getting busy showing the American public it’s going to do something about that stubborn 9 percent unemployment rate.
President Obama is on a bus tour of the Midwest to talk up his plans to create more jobs and ease the plight of the unemployed by, among other things, cutting payroll taxes and getting benefits for the out-of-work extended.
Congress, meanwhile, is beginning to see ever more jobs-related legislation. The House has two pending bills making it illegal to discriminate against the unemployed. The Senate, not to be one-upped, has S. 1471, a bill nearly identical to HR 2501, one of the two House versions.
Now, Rep. John Larson of Connecticut is proposing Congress set up a jobs committee to work alongside the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, which was created in the debt-ceiling compromise of two weeks ago.
He circulated a letter last week to House members arguing that the current unemployment rate threatens the nation’s fiscal health by reducing tax payments and increasing government spending.
His suggestion is that the debt-ceiling bill be amended to create a jobs committee to come up with recommendations for Congressional action on the same timetable, and under the same rules as those governing the debt reduction supercommittee.
Larson is said to be readying his bill now to be introduced when Congress returns from its August break.
For the record, Wikipedia says the U.S. has not yet had a jobs czar, though it briefly had a green-jobs czar back in 2009.