Morning Bell: The Jobs at Stake in the Tax Cut Fight

Conn Carroll / December 06, 2010

Last Friday the Labor Department reported that private sector employers added an anemic 50,000 net jobs to the U.S. economy in November. That is far fewer than what is needed to absorb discouraged workers reentering the workforce or population growth. As a result, unemployment rose to 9.8 percent, marking the 19th consecutive month that our nation’s unemployment rate topped 9 percent, a post–World War II record.

Faced with this record breaking unemployment, what did the leftist Senate majority do the very next day? They voted to raise taxes, of course. Fortunately, a bipartisan coalition of Republican and Democratic Senators defeated the Obama tax hikes, setting the stage for an all-or-nothing tax showdown this week.

With unemployment at 9.8 percent and President Barack Obama 7.3 million jobs short of where he promised the economy would be by December 2010, just how many jobs are at stake in this week’s negotiations? The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis crunched the numbers on various possible tax proposals and estimates that: (more…)