Economic Issues Facing Our Country

Economic issues facing our country during this mid-Term election cycle.

The current electoral cycle: What issues are important?

The 'jobless' recovery

Although the economy is no longer officially in a recession, job growth has lagged. This is particularly true for young college graduates with little job experience and people without college educations. Amongst college-educated young adults, nearly 17% are either unemployed or not seeking work compared with 9% of the job force as a whole (Uchitelle 2010). The question as to whether the stimulus 'worked' is the constant undercurrent of all of the economic debates during this election cycle. Democrats and Obama supporters credit the new administration's stimulus as helping the U.S. recover from the failed policies of George Bush; Republicans cite the lack of job growth not as an infrastructure problem or a reflection of a dearth of manufacturing jobs in many areas of the nation but as 'big business' being hampered by 'big government' regulation and taxation. The question of what will revitalize the economy and be a future source of new jobs -- either green jobs or business expansion driven by tax cuts -- has been debated in virtually every race in the nation.

Healthcare

Many have said that President Obama staked his political future and reputation upon healthcare reform. In fact, the recent healthcare compromise bill that passed was a relatively moderate measure. It was actually based upon the Republican alternative offered to the more ambitious Bill Clinton healthcare package defeated during the early 1990s. Current healthcare legislation has been tarred and feathered as a radical maneuver in political attack ads, and Republicans are attempting to gain political capital by criticizing so-called 'Obama-care' as unwarranted government intrusion upon American's personal lives, because it 'forces' Americans to buy health insurance. To show how his reforms have benefitted ordinary Americans, at one rally President Obama "used their stories -- of a woman who had cancer but could not get coverage until the new 'high risk pool' started on July 1 or a woman who had not been able to buy an insurance policy to cover her son's eye surgery -- to strike back at the healthcare bill's opponents" (Zengerle 2010).

The economic stimulus

Because of the 9% unemployment rate overall, many Republican campaigns are touting the fact that their opponents voted for the stimulus as a reason to vote against him or her: whether the stimulus failed is an open question -- it certainly created some jobs, although not as many as hoped. Critics to Obama's left have alleged that it was not large enough, like Noble-prize winner Paul Krugman, in a New York Times editorial: "[The] modest rise in federal spending was barely enough to offset cutbacks at the state and local level" (Thrush 2010, p.1).

Bank bail-out