How Can Washington Help Create Jobs?

washingtonpost.com — The White House is promising a pivot to jobs. But pivoting doesn’t create jobs. Demand creates jobs. And two of the three ideas Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner laid out in his op-ed this morning — the Social Security payroll tax cut and extended unemployment benefits — are already in effect. Letting them expire would hurt the economy, but simply extending them isn’t the same as adding support for a weak labor market. But there are other ideas out there. A canvass of economists and policy analysts returned five suggestions that have, at times, enjoyed bipartisan support, and that could potentially make a real difference.

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