With the nation in the grip of a jobless recovery, a second stimulus package may be on the way. In an interview with Fox News, President Barack Obama said:
I don’t take anything off the table when unemployment is close to 10% and a lot of Americans are hurting out there.
It drives me nuts when Obama talks about the specter of double-digit unemployment. An awful lot of African Americans are hurting right now. Ten percent unemployment would be a welcome change.
While a second stimulus package would give Obama an opportunity to get it right, it would be a tough road to hoe. A Rasmussen poll found that 60 percent of Americans oppose a second stimulus.
Still, Obama is beginning to own the recession. A new Quinnipiac poll of Ohio voters shows that 48 percent disapprove of the way he is handling the economy.
Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said:
The economy in Ohio is as bad as anywhere in America. These numbers indicate that for the first time voters have decided that President Barack Obama bears some responsibility for their problems.
Until now voters have given President Obama high ratings on the economy, blaming former President George W. Bush for their problems. They might be taking out their frustration on President Obama, possibly deciding that the change he promised has not come as quickly as they expected.
The poll numbers got the White House’s attention. So on Thursday, Vice President Joe Biden will be in Ohio, where he “will discuss how the Recovery Act is building a 21st-century economy in Cincinnati and across the nation.”
Hmm. What would it take for Biden to go to, say, Detroit, where the black middle class is in freefall?
Biden is in charge of the White House Middle Class Task Force. So, he can discuss what the Obama administration is doing to help the black middle class avoid “downward mobility.”
