...No jobs bills have been introduced in Congress, no job-creation plans have been advanced by the White House and all the policy focus seems to be on spending cuts.
It's called "bipartisanship" but it's really about Obama caving early on and abandoning the unemployed, according to Paul Krugman.
...Who pays the price for this unfortunate bipartisanship? The increasingly hopeless unemployed, of course. And the worst hit will be young workers — a point made in 2009 by Peter Orszag, then the White House budget director. As he noted, young Americans who graduated during the severe recession of the early 1980s suffered permanent damage to their earnings. And if the average duration of unemployment is any indication, it’s even harder for new graduates to find decent jobs now than it was in 1982 or 1983.
So the next time you hear some Republican declaring that he’s concerned about deficits because he cares about his children — or, for that matter, the next time you hear Mr. Obama talk about winning the future — you should remember that the clear and present danger to the prospects of young Americans isn’t the deficit. It’s the absence of jobs.
Washington is busy pretending it cares about deficits. We have known all along that this isn't a genuine concern for either Republicans or Democrats. For Republicans, it's a way of attacking Democratic policies. For Democrats, it's... I'm not sure there are any Democrats in Washington anymore.
