Main Street

How will the “Super Committee” affect jobs?

Thankfully, at least one elected official is asking that question.

Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), is suggesting that the 12-member Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction, aka the “Super Committee,” submit their proposals to the Congressional Budget Office to determine their effect on jobs and unemployment. Greg Sargent explains:

He doesn’t want the CBO to evaluate the proposals just for their budgetary impact. Rather, he wants the CBO to reach a conclusion on the impact the proposals will have on unemployment, whether positive, negative, or neutral.

“We need to have every proposal that the super-committee brings out to have it scored by its jobs impact,” Merkley told me in an interview this morning. He plans to urge Democratic and GOP leaders to agree to this standard, and hopes to build a campaign to make it happen.

Members of Congress routinely submit pieces of legislation to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to be “scored” for their effects on revenue and debt. While Sargent points out that there is precedent for similar scoring on jobs impact, it’s not done often.

Merkley hopes this move would encourage the supercommittee — and the rest of us — to view the supercommittee’s work through the lens of job creation. At best it could create an incentive for the “supercommittee” to incorporate a meaningful push for jobs creation into its mission. But, barring that, this could also alert us when its proposals risk causing further job loss, which in theory would dissuade committee members from adopting such proposals or at least keep the public in the loop on what’s happening

“We need to have a `no-harm’ standard,” Merkley says. “At a minimum, people on both sides of the aisle should be able to agree that the proposals do no harm to jobs.”

In our nearly 20,000 weekly conversations with working men and women across the country, we rarely hear anyone express that the deficit or the debt is their most pressing issue. Regularly, they express concerns about jobs and the economy first and foremost, with a combination of health care, education, and retirement security after that.

That’s why we’re glad to hear that at least the six Democrats on the Committee are considering Merkley’s idea. Unfortunately, for the six Republicans, their recent statements indicate that they might not listen to the nonpartisan CBO no matter what it finds.