Looking Up: Bounce Back on Jobs Could Give Dems Breathing Room

By Rick Klein

This change thing must be for real if job-number day isn’t greeted with absolute dread. If it feels like we’re doing this every month or so, that’s because we are. And if the smart folks are right this time, we’re talking positive territory — and maybe the economic turnaround will be reflected in the numbers at last. Or this is a blip, caused by counting the people-counters. In any event, the economy that’s slowly come under the full ownership of President Obama retains the potential to subsume all other issues in the political world this year. (Few will remember what happened in April if May, June, and July don’t look good, too.) Yet from the other side, arguments about job-killers tend to have more relevance when jobs are actually dying. The creation of jobs starts Democrats on the long road back toward zero — and could provide some breathing room for pitches on health care and the rest. Early spin: “The report is expected to show the economy gained a significant number of jobs for the first time in three years, and a Thursday release by the Department of Labor that said that weekly unemployment claims had hit a new low did nothing to lower the expectations,” The Hill’s Ian Swanson writes. “Republicans on Thursday emphasized that if the report is positive, it will only be because government is growing.” Momentum: “The Obama administration’s spring offensive may gain further momentum Friday morning with a monthly jobs report that many economists believe could be the beginning of a sustained string of employment gains,” Politico’s Eamon Javers writes. “The interest in this week’s release has reached a new level of intensity, as economists speculate that the March report could be the beginning of a sustained string of employment gains across the nation, reversing a more than two-year trend of nearly unrelenting monthly jobs losses.” “Can it be sustained?” asked former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, on “Good Morning America” Friday. “Because the good job numbers are in part a result of the stimulus, really at its peak right now.” Behind the expectation-hedging: “The White House is expecting much-needed good news from the latest government jobs report, but Republicans were crediting temporary workers including census takers for anticipated gains,” Julie Mason writes for the Washington Examiner. Counting, counting: “Perhaps half the 200,000 or so positions expected to be added to payrolls may be the byproduct of a government effort that has turned into a fortuitous job generator: the U.S. census,” Nathan Olivarez-Giles and Alana Semuels report in the Los Angeles Times. “That’s a stroke of luck for the Obama administration, which has been criticized for failing to revive the labor market. And it’s a windfall for the 700,000 temporary employees the census expects to hire, although most of the jobs will last only two to six weeks.” More for the caveat files: “Any cheering will be tempered by nagging concern over an insidious problem lurking within the numbers: the startling number of Americans who have fallen into the ranks of not just the unemployed, but the long-term unemployed,” Gerald Seib writes in his “Capital Journal” column. “President Barack Obama and his team are particularly worried about the phenomenon, and have set out to find ways to combat it. But they’re finding policy prescriptions limited by politics and money.”  Tying it all together … “An ebullient President Obama pitched his newly-minted health care law to Mainers yesterday, casting it as a job-saving plan, ridiculing those who predict a disaster, and daring opponents to try to repeal it,” Susan Milligan writes in The Boston Globe. “The speech reflected a newly confident tone by the president, whose first year was characterized by an uphill struggle to overhaul health care while fending off complaints he was not paying enough attention to the high unemployment rate.”  Presidential punditry: “It’s been a week, folks,” Obama said in Maine. So before we find out if people like health care reform, we should wait to see what happens when we actually put it into place. Just a thought.”  On the White House schedule Friday: “In the morning, the President will travel to Charlotte, North Carolina, where he will deliver remarks on jobs and the economy and host a discussion with workers at Celgard, LLC — A Polypore Company. The President will use the visit to the advanced battery technology manufacturer, which is now hiring and expanding its operation through a Recovery Act grant, to point to the economic progress made since he took office and continue his push for Congress to build on that progress by acting on his additional job creation proposals.” From the White House blog: “Celgard recently won $49.2 million in Recovery Act grants to expand its capacity, growth that will create between 200 and 300 new jobs in North Carolina and provide more than 1,000 jobs among Celgard’s contractors and suppliers. These are real jobs held by real people — meet a few of them in this new video.”  Clockwork … House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, with an op-ed in the Charlotte Observer: “Evidence of the heavy toll President Barack Obama’s government takeover of health care will exact on our economy has emerged with frightening speed in the days since it became law. Major American employers, including Boeing, AT&T and Prudential have announced they will likely be forced to make painful changes due to the law’s job-killing tax increases and health care cost hikes.” Plus: “The U.S. economy has lost more than 3 million jobs since President Obama signed the ‘trillion-dollar’ stimulus into law last year with promises it would create jobs immediately. Every state but one, including both Carolinas, has lost jobs during that time. In fact, only Washington, D.C., has gained more than 1,000 jobs on President Obama’s watch.” White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee will be on ABC’s “Top Line” Friday at noon ET to discuss the latest jobs numbers. Livestreaming at noon ET on ABCNews.com. Coming Sunday: Jake Tapper sits down (separately) with Larry Summers and Alan Greenspan on ABC’s “This Week,” with George Will, Matthew Dowd, Karen Finney and Robert Reich on the roundtable. (And check out the live “This Week” Twitter feed, starting at 10 am ET Sunday, HERE.) Also on the day’s agenda: transportation security, air and ground both. “The Obama administration is preparing to brief foreign nations and members of Congress about changes to airline security for passengers flying into the U.S., senior administration officials tell ABC News,” Jake Tapper reports. Plus, Tapper continues: “A new report from the Obama administration — ‘Surface Transportation Security Priority Assessment’ — paints a picture of a security system for surface transportation (subways, trains, highways) in which ‘a lot of work needs to be done.’ ” On the aviation changes, from a senior administration official: “Under the new measures, every passenger from every country traveling to the United States will be subjected to additional screening if they match current, intelligence-driven and threat-based characteristics. These protocols also give the US the ability to now better screen individuals when only fragments of information are known about them.” “Passengers traveling to the United States from international destinations may notice enhanced security and screening measures throughout the passenger check-in and boarding process, including the use of explosives trace detection, advanced imaging technology, canine teams, or pat downs, among other security measures.” More for the flyers: “The new security protocols will be built around present-day threat situations, officials said, where fragments of intelligence from various threat streams are considered. So, for example, if terrorist groups are recruiting college-age men who have spent time in Asia and have been to the Middle East, that type of travel pattern would raise a flag to officials at international airports,” Jeff Zeleny writes in The New York Times. Speaking of travel: “Facing a tough midterm election in which they could potentially lose their majorities in Congress, Democrats are privately debating where and how President Obama can help — or hurt,” Anne E. Kornblut reports in The Washington Post. “Even while that debate begins, there is a clear no-fly zone for Obama, said senior administration officials, who discussed internal White House strategy on the condition of anonymity. ‘There are some cases, like Blanche Lincoln, where it’s not helpful’ for the president to travel, one senior administration official said.” Tracking the anger: “The health-care debate has generated intense levels of frustration among the bill’s opponents, and those who say they are outright angry almost universally believe that the country is going in the wrong direction — some say toward an America they no longer recognize,” The Washington Post’s Sandhya Somashekhar and Perry Bacon Jr. report. “Of the 26 percent of people who described themselves as “angry” about the new law in a recent Washington Post poll, virtually all also said the country was on the wrong track. In follow-up interviews, many went beyond health care as they spoke of their deep misgivings about the country’s leadership and the changes taking place around them.” Getting traction on the left: “The ruling on Wednesday by a federal judge that one instance of such spying had been ‘unlawful electronic surveillance’ may force onto the table a discussion of how aggressively the Obama administration should continue to defend from judicial review the contentious Bush-era counterterrorism policy,” James Risen and Charlie Savage write in The New York Times.  Getting action: “Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Thursday ordered an overhaul of the Pentagon’s use of retired senior officers to advise the military, limiting the pay of ‘senior mentors’ and requiring them to disclose their business ties to defense contractors,” USA Today’s Tom Vanden Brook and Ken Dilanian report. “The policy comes in response to a USA TODAY investigation, which disclosed that retired generals and admirals were being paid hundreds of dollars an hour to advise military services even as they were consulting for companies seeking to sell products to those same services. Because the retired officers were hired as contractors, few ethics rules applied.”  Troubles with Afghanistan: “President Hamid Karzai on Thursday delivered one of his most stinging criticisms to date of the foreign presence in Afghanistan, accusing the West and the United Nations of wanting a ‘puppet government’ and of orchestrating fraud in last year’s election,” The Washington Post’s Joshua Partlow and Scott Wilson write. “Karzai’s comments come just five days after President Obama, in his first visit to Afghanistan as commander in chief, pushed the Afghan president hard in a tense exchange to crack down on his government’s pervasive corruption, ensure independently monitored elections and draw up a clear plan for how to reintegrate defecting Taliban foot soldiers into Afghan society.” Michael Steele’s very bad week: “The RNC’s latest made-for-Jon-Stewart sex-related slip-ups — combined with Steele’s previous string of well-publicized gaffes and missteps — are threatening to damage the party’s already lagging fundraising efforts. And that could limit the number of races Republicans win in what’s otherwise shaping up to be a good year for the GOP,” Politico’s Jonathan Martin and Andy Barr report. Gov. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn., on “Today,” offering support for Steele: “He has to take responsibility for that — they’ve done that … So I hope that they’ve learned from that.” John Ensign’s very bad year: “Senator John Ensign sought financial backing for a troubled Nevada energy company in 2008, and at the same time he urged the company to hire his mistress’s husband, according to people involved in the matter,” The New York Times’ Eric Lipton reports. “The senator’s office said [last month] that he had not provided any assistance to the company. But subsequent interviews showed that his most senior Senate aides intervened in an effort to prevent the Las Vegas business from going under, a fact that Mr. Ensign no longer disputes,” Lipton continues. ” ‘Senator Ensign acted appropriately by contacting the company,’ Mr. Ensign’s office said in a statement this week. The office explained its earlier denial that the senator had helped the company by saying that it had meant he had not intervened in Washington to help the firm.” “Real American Stories” — minus a certain Mr. J. “The first installment of Palin’s new periodic series, which aired at 10:00 p.m. ET on the Fox News Channel, is the latest reminder of how [Sarah] Palin is attempting to rewrite the rules of American politics,” ABC’s Teddy Davis writes. “Palin’s latest effort on behalf of the Fox News Channel allowed her to associate herself with ‘inspirational real-life tales of overcoming adversity’ as she continues to preach against the evils of government activism.”
The Kicker: “He said it’s a big deal.” — President Obama, paraphrasing his vice president’s description of the health care law.
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