Beleaguered President Barack Obama has come out fighting with two recent speeches focused on America's high unemployment rate. First, he gave an address to both houses of Congress, which is now being nicknamed the "jobs-jobs-jobs" speech, because Obama mentioned the word 37 times in 32 minutes. Then, 10 days later, he suggested how to pay for his pro-employment package and how to cut U.S. deficits by $3 trillion.
His message was that everyone must help America to pay its way, including the super-rich. He proposed a special tax on millionaires, who can use tax breaks to pay a lower rate than the middle classes. His plans seem destined to be stuck in in-fighting in Congress. The Republicans claimed that Obama's plans amounted to "class warfare", but Obama responded: "This is not class warfare. It's math."
Official U.S. jobless figures at a horrendously high 14 million (9.1 percent) don't tell the story of the deep economic hole that America is in, uncompetitive and indebted to the world. Some economists say up to 30 million people may be unemployed when account is taken of those who have stopped looking for work or are part-timers. Obama's bigger problem is that the job that is imminently under threat is his own. Worse, the people whose cooperation he needs in the House of Representatives to pass his new jobs measures are determined that he should join the unemployed early in 2013, kicked out of the White House after a single term.