Obama’s promises are a work in progress

ELKHART, Ind. - When President Barack Obama last visited Elkhart, Ind., in February, he was trying to generate popular support for a massive economic stimulus package, then facing growing opposition in Congress. It was his third visit to the economically hard-hit area in less than a year, and he used his visit to tout the benefits of his program to Elkhart and the nation.

“I promised you (during the election campaign) that, if elected I’d do everything I could to help this community recover," he told a cheering crowd. "That’s why I came back today, because I intend to keep my promise.”

At the time, Obama listed a number of promises he has made. Some of them involved specific measures in the stimulus package. Others were broader pledges to put the economy in Elkhart —and the nation — back on track.

As Obama prepares to return to Elkhart County Wednesday, here is an assessment of the progress he has made in fulfilling some of his promises.

Tax relief
In his February speech, he touted the stimulus plan for providing "tax relief for 95 percent of American workers."

"So that you who are being pinched, even if you still have a job, with rising costs, while your wages and incomes are flatlined, you'll actually have a little bit of extra money at the end of the month to buy the necessities for you and your children," he said.

The $787 billion stimulus package ultimately passed included $287 billion — about a third of the total — for temporary tax breaks. This included a broad range of targeted cuts and credit, the biggest of which, the “Making Work Pay” tax credit of up to 6.2 percent of earnings, provided up to $500 per worker. The bill cut the amount of money withheld for taxes from weekly paychecks, releasing the money immediately to individuals and families and encouraging them to spend it.

The rest of the tax relief was highly targeted, including earned-income tax credits for lower-income families, incentives for energy-related home improvements and a break for first-time homebuyers.

“If you add in the checks that old people got out of the stimulus and the fact that the stimulus bill reduced the taxation of unemployment benefits, Obama has cut taxes for a large fraction of the population — pretty close to 95 percent,” said Gerald Prante, senior economist at the Tax Foundation. “And I would say that he's basically held true to that campaign promise.”

One caveat: The promise applies only to 95 percent of “American workers.” That doesn’t include the more than six million people who have lost their jobs (and therefore don’t pay wage taxes) since the recession began.

Related story: Who wins, who loses with tax relief plan
Related story: Stimulus plan projects in Elkhart County

Jobs
"The plan that we put forward will save or create 3 million to 4 million jobs over the next two years."

Obama’s critics note that this is one of the hardest promises to assess because there is no way to measure how many jobs are “saved.” To do so, you’d have to poll employers and ask them how many people they decided not to fire because the stimulus package came along.

On the “creating” side of the employment ledger, the Obama administration still has a huge job ahead of it. Jobs are still being lost at a pace of roughly half a million a month. Assuming that pace tapers off by year-end, as some economists are predicting, as many as 7.5 million jobs will have been lost to this recession. Unless and until the majority of those people can be put back to work — with wages to fuel the consumer spending that makes up two-thirds of the U.S. economy, future “growth” won’t feel like good times to millions of sidelined workers.

Indiana jobs
"Between the investments our plan makes and the tax relief for small businesses it provides, we'll create or save nearly 80,000 badly needed jobs for Indiana, right here, over the next couple years."

Job losses in states like Indiana — where roughly a quarter of the work force is employed in construction and manufacturing — have continued since February, as the auto and commercial real estate industries continue to contract.

Since Obama's speech in February, at least 66,438 Hoosiers have lost their jobs, based on June figures, the latest available. Elkhart has fared a bit better: Employment is up by 762 jobs.

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