Here is the summary from this week’s Monday Economic Report:

The U.S. economy appears to be stabilizing, with several reports showing stronger-than-expected increases in activity, including the latest jobs numbers release on March 8. Nonfarm payrolls rose by 236,000 in February, well above the consensus estimate of around 155,000, and the unemployment rate dropped to 7.7 percent. Manufacturers hired an additional 14,000 workers for the month, which was in-line with the average monthly gain over the course of the past year. However, losses in several sectors offset some of the gains in manufacturing employment. Ideally, we could see stronger job growth, even as these numbers represent a good start. We need to see broad-based manufacturing hiring growth, with the sector creating an average of 20,000 jobs each month. This is consistent with the “20/20 vision” outlined by National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) President and CEO Jay Timmons in his Detroit Economic Club keynote speech last month.

The Federal Reserve Board’s Beige Book noted the “modest to moderate” pace of growth in the economy since its last report, citing strengths in housing and consumer spending in particular. Growth in manufacturing activity was more mixed, as we have seen in recent sentiment surveys from various regional Federal Reserve Banks. In addition to weaknesses in sales and production, respondents mentioned federal budget cutbacks, the regulatory environment and “the unknown effects of the Affordable Care Act” as roadblocks to their competitiveness. This suggests a degree of skittishness in hiring, which might be reducing the overall job growth numbers mentioned above. Nonetheless, the larger Beige Book findings suggest an economic environment that is improving, with wage and pricing pressures under control, at least for now. (continue reading…)

The most puzzling of all the decisions that went into the legislative maneuvering that gave us the benighted Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act a year ago today was, why no acronym-inviting title? You would have thought if Congress was going to so dramatically expand the federal government’s control of health care and insurance, it would embrace a grandiose, if forced, title that would give us an acronym for the ages.

You know, like the PATRIOT Act, or RICO, or last year’s SPEECH Act (Securing the Protection of our Enduring and Established Constitutional Heritage Act). Give the law a name to remember it by.

No such luck. Democrats and other supporters usually drop the “Patient Protection” part to refer to the law as simply by the anodyne Affordable Care Act. Republicans deride it as Obamacare.

Such a missed opportunity for truth in acronymization. Is it too late? If not …

• The HEALTH Act — Helping Eliminate Affordable, Life-extending Treatments, Hospitalization Act
• The NANNY Act — The Not Affordable, Nope, Not Yet Act
• ABCDE Act — A Bill that Cost Democrats Election Act

Oh well. Some good commentary as the anniversary festivities subside…

• Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), a manufacturer, Wall Street Journal, “ObamaCare and Carey’s Heart: My daughter probably wouldn’t have survived in a system where bureaucrats stifle innovation and ration care.”
• Heritage Foundation, The Foundry blog, “Obamacare’s Failed First Year“
• Dr. Jason Fodeman and Dr. David Gratzer, The Washington Times, “Obamacare: One year later –Stripping patients and doctors of authority over care“
• Joe Trauger, National Association of Manufacturers, Shopfloor blog, “Health Care Law at One Year: Little Protection, Not So Affordable”
• Editorial, Washington Examiner, “Obamacare is even worse than critics thought“

Gov. Butch Otter of Idaho, a Republican, did not discuss the manufacturing sector generally but he cited the success of individual manufacturers and other companies in his State of the State address last week, a speech in which he called for major tax reform to support economic growth and fairness.

For businesses, economic and financial uncertainty caused in large part by misguided federal programs and policies are undermining confidence in the marketplace. Employers have no idea what it will cost them to comply with new health care mandates.

I understand their hesitation. But that’s stifling employment growth.

But there are plenty of examples out there of courageous and forward-looking business investments in Idaho’s future – examples that we should celebrate. For instance….

In Payette, Teton Manufacturing has more than enough work to hire at least four new machinists.
In Moscow, Biketronics is looking at sales increases that should enable it to expand and hire staff for a planned business incubator.
In Caldwell, Kit Manufacturing could be in a position to double its workforce in the coming year.
Fry Foods in Weiser is continuing to hire for its growing food processing business.

Otter criticized the federal health care laws in more detail than other governors whose state of the state addresses we’ve read.

Earlier posts on State of State addresses.

When business calls for the federal government to show restraint on taxes and regulation, that is not a call for inaction.

In its weekly Intelligent Investing feature, Forbes.com interviews David M. Cordani, President and CEO of Cigna and a member of the National Association of Manufacturers’ board of directors. From “Get Briefed,” in which Cordani reviews the new health care law, which he says addressed one challenge — access to care. Now, it’s time to “tackle the remaining twin challenges of managing health care costs and closing gaps in quality of care.”

The empirical data is in: consumer-oriented plans bend the cost curve in a positive way, without compromising care.

Our ChoiceFund study, a multi-year study comparing the actual claims experience of 655,000 individuals covered in Cigna’s traditional managed care plans and those covered with our consumer directed plans, shows that medical costs for individuals in consumer-directed plans went down 26% over four years, while levels of care for their preventive medicine, chronic disease management and evidence-based treatments were higher than their counterparts in traditional managed care health plans.

If the share of Americans enrolled in consumer-directed plans rose from a current 18% to 50%, and the results of the Cigna study were applied, the U.S. could achieve $350 billion in savings over 10 years.

In a recent Wall Street Journal column, John Lechleiter, president and CEO of Eli Lilly, looks further down the road and sees a serious threat to U.S. leadership in life sciences, including pharmaceutical R&D. From “America’s Growing Innovation Gap“:

The evidence is certainly mounting that we are facing today nothing short of an innovation crisis in America’s life sciences. The industry I know best, biopharmaceuticals, is facing unprecedented pressure. R&D costs continue to rise, fewer potential new medicines gain regulatory approval, and key products lose patent protection. In fact, the number of new molecular entities approved by the FDA over the past five years—92—is lower than in any other five-year period since I entered the industry in the late 1970s.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is not standing still. The U.S. is not the only country looking to the life sciences to drive economic growth, and the very qualities that brought much of the world’s research capacity to our shores could just as easily attract that work to Asia or elsewhere.

In examining the growing conflict between business and the Obama Administration, CNBC host and commentator Larry Kudlow included Lechleiter as one of the business leaders warning against overregulation and taxation. (continue reading…)

Interesting maneuvering matched by occluded motives in the health care debate today up on Capitol Hill. From Reuters, “US Senate Democrats push to open healthcare debate“:

WASHINGTON, Nov 10 (Reuters) – Democratic leaders in the U.S. Senate said on Tuesday they hope to bring a long-delayed healthcare bill to the floor next week, kicking off a tough fight that may well spill into next year.

From a purely tactical standpoint, it might indeed make sense to quickly bring the House bill to the floor, vote it down, and then go back to the Senate bill as defining the debate. Politically, it might stop the bleeding.

Meanwhile, President Clinton legacizes on the Hill. From ABC News, “Bill Clinton Visits Capitol Hill to Rally Democrats on Health Care”

In the push for health care legislation, a new yet familiar face emerged on Capitol Hill today in an attempt to rally Democrats — former President Bill Clinton.

Clinton, who himself unsuccessfully sought to overhaul the nation’s health care system 15 years ago, met today with Senate Democrats during their weekly caucus meeting and urged them to come to a compromise on health care legislation.

And from Dow Jones, “Former Pres Clinton: No Need To Be Perfect On Health Care.”

The Wall Street Journal examined that “just get it done” strategy in an editorial today, reviewing the comments of John Cassidy, a liberal writer at the liberal New Yorker. From “Confessions of an ObamaCare Backer“:

Mr. Cassidy is more honest than the politicians whose dishonesty he supports. “The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment,” he writes. “Let’s not pretend that it isn’t a big deal, or that it will be self-financing, or that it will work out exactly as planned. It won’t. What is really unfolding, I suspect, is the scenario that many conservatives feared. The Obama Administration . . . is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind.”

Why are they doing it? Because, according to Mr. Cassidy, ObamaCare serves the twin goals of “making the United States a more equitable country” and furthering the Democrats’ “political calculus.”

Cassidy concludes: “Putting on my amateur historian’s cap, I might even claim that some subterfuge is historically necessary to get great reforms enacted.”