Enactment of H.R. 4853, the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, falls short of creating the tax certainty that could improve U.S. global competitiveness, but it is still a reasonable, very positive compromise that helps prevents economy-stomping tax increases that would have otherwise hit on January 1, 2011.

President Obama will sign the bill this afternoon, moving with alacrity (and probably to boost weekend retail spending).

The National Association of Manufacturers had sent both Senators and House members “Key Vote” letters expressing strong support for the legislation on the basis of extending the 2001/2003 tax rates, the “business extenders” including the R&D tax credit, and the compromise that stopped the estate tax from returning from a confiscatory 55 percent rate.

The measure of certainty and investment incentives — including President Obama’s proposal for 100 percent expensing of capital investments – will encourage manufacturers to expand and hire.

Margins of victory last night in the House — by a vote of 277-148 – and previously in the Senate — by a vote of 81-19 — were much larger than most observers had originally expected. But the consequences of inaction would have been so economically destructive that  members of both parties found the legislation the only realistic course of action before them. We don’t begrudge others their ideological commitment or reasoned arguments, but this was THE realistic compromise.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD): ” Ladies and gentlemen, there probably is nobody on this floor who likes this bill; and therefore, the judgment is: Is it better than doing nothing? Some of the business groups believe that it will help. I hope they are right. Not only do I hope they are right, I hope if we pass this bill that they respond and create the jobs that we know they have the resources to do.  This is a jobs bill, in my view, which is why I will vote for it. It could be a better jobs bill if we invested the money that we are giving to the wealthiest in America in job growth. It is a bill that will help those who have been unemployed week after week after week and whose angst has grown and grown and grown.”

House Republican Leader Rep. John Boehner (R-OH): ““With nearly one in 10 Americans out of work, acting to ensure no American’s taxes go up on January 1st was critically important.  Failing to stop all the tax hikes would have destroyed more jobs and deepened the uncertainty in our economy.  Stopping all the tax hikes is a good first step in our efforts to reduce the uncertainty family-owned small businesses are facing, but much more needs to be done, including cutting spending, permanently eliminating the threat of job-killing tax hikes, and repealing the job-killing health care law.  These are critical priorities the new majority has pledged to act on in the next Congress, and I hope President Obama will listen to the American people and work with us to stop Washington’s job-killing policies.”

This is the first time we can recall seeing this, the White House using the President’s official weekly schedule as another policy/political/talking point document. A sentence here, a sentence there, sure, but the entire entry for Wednesday is turned over to an economic argument, a defense of the Administration’s record, attacks on critics and a pot shot at the House Republican leader.

Why can’t a schedule just be a schedule?

Via Lynn Sweet’s blog at The Chicago Sun-Times:

Schedule for the Week of September 6, 2010

On Monday, the President will kick off Labor Day week with remarks at the Laborfest event in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

On Tuesday, the President will welcome the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Mr. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, to the White House.

On Wednesday, the President will travel to Cleveland, Ohio where he will make remarks to update the American people on the state of the economy, talk about the progress we have made, and discuss some targeted proposals to keep the economy growing including extending tax cuts for the middle class, and investing in the areas of our economy where the potential for job growth is greatest. It took years to create our economic problems, and it’ll take more time than any of us would like to fully repair the damage. There are no silver bullets and anyone who is promising them is not being straight with the American people. But there are some ideas that will help the economy and help American families that are hurting and those proposals will be a part of the President’s remarks. Speaking in the city where Minority Leader Boehner recently detailed the Republican economic agenda, the President will lay out the choice between his ideas and the failed policies and failed philosophy that led us into this mess.

On Thursday, the President will attend meetings at the White House.

On Friday, the President will hold a press conference at the White House.

House Republican Leader John Boehner sent a letter to President Obama expressing alarm at the expansion of the regulatory state.

Excerpt:

It has recently come to our attention that the Administration’s published regulatory agenda includes a total of 191 planned rulemakings, each with an estimated annual cost to our economy of $100 million or more, and that a number of these planned rulemakings may each have an annual economic cost in excess of $1 billion. During a recent job forum conducted through our America Speaking Out initiative, the uncertainty resulting from such rulemakings was cited by private sector job creators as one of the primary impediments to job creation currently facing small businesses.

A widely published AP story last week included the growth of regulations as one of the major points of dispute between the business community and President Obama.

Washington — Labeled anti-business by Republicans and some corporate chiefs, President Barack Obama mounted a campaign to show he wasn’t. But his charm offensive has hit a rocky patch.

Business leaders gripe about burdensome new financial and health care regulations, what they see as unfriendly tax policies and vast government spending. They were put off by Obama’s harsh depiction of “fat cat bankers” and “reckless practices,” a label he applied both to Wall Street and to oil-spill giant BP.

White House aides dispute an anti-business bias, noting that corporate profits are up 65 percent from two years ago. “The stakes are too high for us to be working against each other,” top presidential advisers Rahm Emanuel and Valerie Jarrett wrote to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce

It’s not just regulation of  health care and financial services that’s in dispute, of course. Energy and environmental regulations are as disconcerting and disruptive to the economy.

Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions organization conducted “The Real Jobs Summit” in Cincinnati Thursday to counter the White House’s Forum on Jobs Creation and Economic Growth. His group’s jobs platform includes excellent proposals, including many concerning taxes and expanded energy production, policy areas given insufficient attention during the White House program.

Gingrich also writes an op-ed in today’s Washington Examiner, “Crashing the Obama jobs summit,” that cites the views of Paul Taylor, head of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association. (We blogged about Taylor’s comments yesterday.) Gingrich:

In an interview with a Pennsylvania newspaper in anticipation of the president’s visit, Taylor delivered a point-by-point repudiation of the White House and the Democratic Congress’ big-government, big-spending, high-taxing plan for the economy.

Taylor expressed the same concerns I heard this week in a series of “Real Jobs Summits” with small-business people and entrepreneurs in Cincinnati, Ohio and Jackson, Miss.: Out-of-control government spending and bureaucratic red tape in the form of Democratic health, cap-and-trade and big-labor legislation are crippling America’s engines of job creation, our small businesses.

Gingrich is a fierce partisan, obviously, and so casts the arguments in a partisan political terms. But yes indeed, the policies — and the uncertainties they represent — are major impediments to jobs creation. (See Irwin Steltzer in today’s Examiner, “Job creation requires certainty, not government action.”)

House Republican Leader John Boehner — a former manufacturer — also made the argument about uncertainty in criticizing the White House event. From CNSNews.com, “Obama’s Snub to Chamber of Commerce in Keeping With ‘Job Killing’ Policies, Boehner Says“:

“I know what it takes to meet a payroll,” Boehner said. “What it means to create jobs. And without certainty, without some confidence about what tomorrow’s going to bring, I’m not going to move.“Look at all of these policies that are being proposed,” Boehner said. “Tax rates that are so uncertain – it’s no surprise to any of us that employers continue to do nothing.”

Yes, tax policy must be a priority in any discussion of jobs and U.S. competitiveness.

UPDATE (6:40 p.m.): Boehner stops after an hour. Speaker Pelosi now closes the debate. Votes to follow.

______________________

Allowing us time to get home, that is, if the commute has improved since yesterday.

From House Republicans’ American Energy Solutions Group:

Cap-and-Tax

Friends – Last night, at 3:00 a.m., the House Democrats released a 300-page amendment to their 1,200-page national energy tax legislation. No one – not one single Member of Congress – has read the bill that the Democratic Leadership is bringing up for a vote today. Remember, Speaker Pelosi promised the American people at least 24 hours to read a bill before a vote in her “New Direction for America” document distributed in 2006 that remains on her website today. Another broken promise from Washington Democrats.

So at the conclusion of his floor statement this afternoon, Republican Leader John Boehner will read the 300-page amendment on the House floor to America and the assembled Members of the House. By House tradition, three Members have the right to deliver unlimited floor remarks – the Speaker, the Majority Leader, and the Minority Leader. This is the House equivalent of the filibuster in the Senate. We expect it may take a while, but Members of Congress, and – more importantly – the American people have a right know what the House is voting on.

You can view the floor proceedings on CSPAN or at http://www.c-span.org/.

Yesterday on the way home we caught a glimpse of Reese Witherspoon out the bus window. No doubt hard at work at a green job.

Forecasting a possible labor agenda under an Obama Administration the WSJ outlines today that includes many familiar items — the Employee Free Choice Act — and some not so familiar, including the RESPECT Act, as well some lesser known provisions within the card check bill such as language to impose binding arbitration for first contracts. The column’s summary of the mandatory arbitration provisions is the most concise argument against the card-check bill that’s out there.

Another labor-friendly provision of the Employee Free Choice Act is mandatory arbitration. Under current law, labor and management are required to bargain in good faith but aren’t obliged to reach an agreement. Under Mr. Obama’s proposal, if the parties can’t settle on a contract within 120 days, the dispute goes to an arbitration panel which can impose a contract that is binding for two years.

 

As a practical matter, contracts typically involve dozens of provisions dealing with wages as well as seniority, grievances, overtime, transfers and promotions. Rarely is this accomplished in four months. The provision would notably shift bargaining power to unions, which would have an incentive to run out the 120-day clock and let an arbitrator impose a contract that is bound to include much of what unions demand.

Other points included in the column:

• Senator Obama’s support for the RESPECT Act. This seemingly innocuous bill would drastically amend the National Labor Relations Act to change the legal definition of a supervisor. The result would place many supervisors in the same bargaining unit as their subordinates. As clear conflict of interest;
• The Senator would bar companies from replacing striking workers; 
• Sen. Obama’s plans would also force state and local governments to recognize union leaders as the exclusive bargaining agent for first responders instead of allowing these important public servants to negotiate directly with their employers.
• Additionally, the column states that Sen. Obama is against states’ rights to pass Right to Work laws that protect employees that refuse to join a union or pay union dues.

In other related news, House Republican Leader Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) opines in Townhall.com other plans to implement big labor’s agenda. His piece focuses on the impact of EFCA and Sen. Obama’s position on the bill. Boehner speculates that if EFCA passes “With the stroke of a pen, a time-honored right [to secret ballot union elections] would be signed away into the pages of history.”

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) spoke today at an American Spectator/Americans for Tax Reform newsmaker luncheon today, with Heritage Foundation blogging guests also on hand.

Boehner and 10 Republican freshmen returned this week from an energy-oriented trip to Colorado and Alaska, and today’s session concentrated on energy issues.

The leader’s arguments:

• The majority of the public favors additional domestic energy supply, i.e. drilling.
• Clear majorities exist in both the House and Senate for pro-supply measures. In the House, Democratic leadership therefore prevents votes on legislation. 
• House Republicans intend to try to force votes, but it’s unclear whether the strategy will succeed.
• Republicans also intend to make energy a campaign issue this fall.

We’ll let the partisan politics speak for itself, although yes, it does seem like pro-energy supply bills would pass if allowed to come to a straight up-and-down vote.

A good question came from Phil Kerpen of Americans for Prosperity. Kerpen cited the EPA’s recent Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on the regulation of greenhouse gases, alluding to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA. Kerpen asked whether Congressional policymaking on energy isn’t ultimately moot if the EPA regulates carbon dioxide under the 1970 Clean Air Act, and whether Congress might respond in some fashion, perhaps a rider on the continuing resolution. 

Boehner:

First you have to remember that the Democrats control the Congress, and you’ve seen their willingness to give us an opportunity to amend their appropriations bills, or for that matter, almost any bill.

If I had my way I would make it clear that CO2 is not the enemy, because under that court ruling, we’d have Fish & Wildlife Service and EPA in charge of every CO2 permit in America. I think it’s going to become very evident by this time next year in Congress that if they haven’t acted, they’re going to have to act. But I see no evidence on the part of the Democrat majority in the House and Senate to address the issue.

Kerpen wrote a column highlighting the regulatory implications (dangers) of the EPA’s Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, “The EPA’s Blueprint for Disaster.”

UPDATE: (4:20 p.m.) A good, brief account of today’s session from David Weigel at Reason.

A huge margin of victory on H.R. 6304, the FISA Amendments Act. We’ll post the roll call when it becomes available.

UPDATE: Here’s the roll call.

Majority Leader Hoyer’s floor statement.

Republican Leader Boehner’s statement.

UPDATE (4:24 p.m.): Sen. Barack Obama endorses the legislation. The angry left is disappointed. Or angry.

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) in a letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi:

I write to you today regarding Select Committee on Energy Independence Chairman Ed Markey’s (D-MA) introduction of his long-awaited legislation aimed at reducing the level of carbon in the air by imposing new taxes on emitting it.  Based on his comments last week, Chairman Markey’s legislation is expected to be much more far-reaching – and much more costly – than the legislation the Senate is debating this week.  Make no mistake: House Republicans support responsible climate change policies that will protect our environment, advance our energy security, and create more American jobs.  But in both cases, Chairman Markey’s bill and the Senate bill amount to large tax increases that would impact virtually the entire economy and would saddle consumers with even higher energy costs.  I believe this approach is not only inadvisable; it is reckless and inappropriate…

While I disagree fervently with the logic of raising energy costs while consumers already face astronomical prices for gasoline, I respect your prerogative as Speaker to follow through on your promise and schedule a vote on the bill.  And frankly, I welcome the debate.  At a time when families are reconsidering their summer travel plans because of the record-high gas prices, I believe there is no clearer distinction between the two parties in Congress than on this issue.

Boehner’s full letter is here. 

We hadn’t looked at Chairman Markey’s proposal since the influence of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming’s is in inverse proportion to the length of its name — the longest committee name in the House. But it’s quite the proposal, “revolutionary,” as Markey calls it. We can’t make out in the plan just where the proletariat seize the means of production, but they sure wind up with all the proceeds.

It would be a very illuminating debate.