I think clearly we need to move on unemployment insurance and COBRA. Beyond that, you mentioned a couple: public jobs, job tax credits, infrastructure. There are a lot of options available; we are discussing those. We are discussing with economic advisors as to what is the most effective. And, frankly, there are differences of opinion on that.

Asked about the size of the jobs package, Hoyer offered no hints. “I don’t have a figure,” he said tersely.

Obviously, there may be different figures for different things that you do. But it is clear that we need to act in a way that does get to the creation of job opportunities for people in the short term. That is what we are trying for.

Of course, that’s also what Democrats were trying for when they passed their $787 billion stimulus bill in February, when unemployment was 8.1 percent. How many more business tax breaks does Congress have to pass before recognizing that well-targeted infrastructure spending — including money for public transit – just might offer more bang-for-the-buck?

The $787 billion economic stimulus bill addressed the issue, providing additional federal funding for the state-federal Medicaid program. But that extra help expires at the end of next year, when unemployment rates are expected to remain near double digits. The looming expiration has left state health officials and children’s welfare advocates anxious about the effects on kids’ health care.

Enter the House health reform bill, which would provide more than $23 billion to continue the additional federal funding for six months. The Washington Post explains:

Under the Affordable Health Care for America Act, the federal government would continue to pay a higher share of all Medicaid costs — 66 percent on average, up from 57 percent before the stimulus — for an additional six months, and erase in one fell swoop a major chunk of states’ projected shortfalls for the coming year.

“It would be a huge help — critical,” said Cindi Jones, chief deputy director of Virginia’s Medicaid program, which quickly estimated last week that it would receive an extra $360 million to $380 million next year under the bill. At a meeting last week of the nation’s Medicaid directors, Jones said the group is unanimously in favor of the provision.

That provision isn’t included in the Senate’s health reform bill, but states are hoping that it will work its way into the final bill. Of course, the temporary help is no remedy to the flawed Medicaid funding formula. It’s worth asking when Democratic leaders plan to tackle that larger problem, if not in the context of the most sweeping health reforms since the program was created.

Showing signs that they can learn from history, lawmakers are now eying another tax benefit, but only for businesses that create new jobs. That proposal, still in the nascent stages, is designed to address the runaway unemployment numbers that plague many regions, while having the additional advantage of appealing to members of both parties. Indeed, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told The New York Times that there’s “a lot of traction for this kind of idea.”

If the White House will take the lead on this, I’m fairly positive it would be welcomed in a bipartisan fashion.

There’s good reason for Congress to do something. On Friday, the Labor Department reported that the economy shed an additional 263,000 in September, knocking the unemployment rate up to 9.8 percent — the highest level since 1983.

The good news here, if Cantor’s comments are indication, is that Republicans, while poised to exploit the jobless numbers to their advantage in next year’s elections, also wouldn’t stand in the way of every proposal addressing the problem.

“This gives consumers a break, reduces dangerous carbon pollution and our dependence on foreign oil, and strengthens the American auto industry,” he said last month, urging Congress to approve the additional funds.

Yet The New York Times captured a wholly different sentiment coming out of the White House yesterday, quoting an anonymous senior aide doubting that the environmental benefits are worth mentioning at all.

“What we ended up with,” said one senior Obama administration official, who would not speak on the record because he was being critical of his own administration’s environmental bona fides, “is a program in which you trade in old clunkers for new clunkers.”

It wasn’t supposed to be that way. Indeed, the numbers pouring out of the Department of Transportation last week seemed to indicate that drivers were turning in their gas guzzlers for vehicles with much better fuel efficiencies. The department’s official top-10 list of newly purchased vehicles included only small cars.

Yet, a reworking of that list by Edmunds.com, the auto-sales analysis group, found that the administration was playing the numbers to their advantage, CNN reported. Indeed, when Edmunds crunched the new sales by make and model, and didn’t break its analysis down further than that, both the Ford F-150 and the Chevrolet Silverado pickup trucks worked their way into the top 10. (By contrast, the Transportation Department considered each of the five versions of those trucks to be different vehicles for tallying purposes.)

None of this matters in the near term, because the additional $2 billion is already law. But no one’s quite sure how long that funding will last, and you can bet that, if the coffers are dry when Congress returns from recess next month, there will be plenty of pressure on lawmakers to provide yet another expensive lifeline for the program. The question that remains is whether some will fight to alter the guidelines in favor of reduced emissions.

The longer the plan sits out there, the more support sags. GOP leaders should start insisting the plan not be rushed through before the one week Presidents’ Day recess, that whatever comes out of the conference committee (assuming the bill does pass the Senate at the end of this week, which no longer seems a sure thing) has to be posted on the Internet for 48 hours, etc., to prevent a rush to passage.

Kristol is probably revealing too much of his hand. Everyone now knows that he advised Senate Republicans to kill health care reform by standing pat and opposing everything the Democrats proposed. Telling the Republicans to play that same game, and telling them to demand “transparency” in the bill out of bad faith and with the intent to delay, isn’t something he should do in public.

Under the guise of stimulus, House Democrats have brought a partisan bill to the floor … What we ought to be doing is coming together across this middle aisle, across the partisan divide—as our new President has challenged us to do—bring the best ideas, the best minds, the best solutions—the Republican alternative is such a solution.

Does anyone actually believe this? Let’s ignore Pence’s assertion that rejecting the president’s bill in favor of a Republican bill is somehow not “partisan.” Stick with the other assertion, that the Democrats “brought a partisan bill to the floor.” We’ve just been through a week of theater that involved two Democratic climbdowns on controversial stimulus items (contraceptives and National Mall restoration) and two high-profile meetings between President Obama and the opposition party. On the cover of many newspapers today is a photo of the president leaving a meeting with Republicans and talking optimistically about the discussion he just had.

The average voter holds a very high view of Obama, a fairly high view of the stimulus package (if it includes tax cuts and spending, which this does) and a low view of congressional Republicans. This voter just watched the Republicans waste the president’s time and then stab him in the back. No one outside of the Republican base will blame the Democrats for “partisanship.”

More from Pence:

What is $400 million for climate change research going to do to put people back to work in Indiana?

If they’re climate change researchers, I imagine it’ll, you know, put them to work by funding their research. This is some of the worst spin I’ve ever seen.

UPDATE: I just noticed something. Here is Wednesday’s anti-stimulus editorial from the Wall Street Journal:

We’ve looked it over, and even we can’t quite believe it. There’s… $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects.

Here’s Rep. Pence:

Millions of Americans are asking today: ‘What does $50 million to the National Endowment for the Arts have to do with creating jobs? What is $400 million for climate change research going to do to put people back to work in Indiana?

Maybe millions of Americans feel this way, but it’s really Paul Gigot who asked the question.

Frankly, what’s developing here is his biggest problem is with his own party, the Democratic Party, which seems to be drifting away from what he said he wanted, which was for the package to include at least 40 percent tax relief and to be earmark-free.

Indeed, it’s almost as if Republicans are trying to hitch their wagon to the popular president and triangulate against the congressional Democrats.

• Make the Bush tax cuts permanent and “take uncertainty out of the economy.”

• Let small businesses “write off more of their business expenses.”

• Cut the top corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent.

• Cut the capital gains tax.

• Cut spending and “reign in the out of control congressional earmarking practice.”

With the excepetion of the corporate tax cuts, these are all things that Democrats have done some rhetorical spadework for. Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama have both spoken out against the evils of earmarks. That was a testament to the work that people like Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) did in pushing earmarks as an issue, but it’s not something Democrats want to concede as they’re trying to target spending on localized projects.

Mark Zandi, the head economist at Moody’s Economy.com and a seemingly omnipresent witness at Capitol Hill proceedings, released a report today indicating that the Democrats’ plan “will not reverse the current recession, but it will provide a vital boost to the flagging economy.”

From the report:

With the stimulus, there will be 4 million more jobs and the jobless rate will be more than 2 percentage points lower by the end of 2010 than without any fiscal stimulus. Without stimulus, unemployment will rise well into the double digits by this time next year, and the economy will not return to full employment until 2014.

Zandi also supports the proposed tax cuts, which have been criticized by some as a strange way to boost the economy, given that folks likely won’t spend all of that cash. His explanation:

The mix of tax cuts and spending increases in the stimulus package is designed to provide both quick relief and a substantial boost to the struggling economy. The tax cuts will not pack a big economic punch, as some of the money will be saved and some used to repay debt, but they can be implemented quickly. Aid to state and local governments will not lift the economy, but it will forestall cuts in programs and payrolls that many governments would be forced to make to meet their states’ constitutional obligations to balance their budgets. Infrastructure spending will not help the economy quickly, as it will take time to get even “shovel-ready” projects going, but it will provide a significant economic boost. Because the economy’s problems are not expected to abate soon, this spending will be especially helpful this time next year.

Translation: Get ready for a long recovery.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies.

It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break; the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours.

What’s confusing is that, even after all the criticism of the Bush administration for borrowing money to cut taxes, Obama plans to do the same. Indeed, $275 billion of the Democrats’ proposed $825 billion stimulus plan comes in the form of tax cuts, even as the Obama economic team concedes that those cuts lack the stimulating punch of direct federal spending.

(A report this month from two members of that team — Council of Economic Advisers Chair Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein, Vice President Joe Biden’s chief economist –  claims that, “because there is a limit on how much government investment can be carried out efficiently in a short time frame, and because tax cuts and state relief can be implemented quickly, they are crucial elements of any package aimed at easing economic distress quickly”).

Moreover, the Democrats’ stimulus plan includes business tax cuts that would allow companies suffering losses this year to recover taxes they paid going back as far as 2003 — a stark change from the two year window over which they can currently spread those losses. That provision is seen by some critics as a giveaway to the finance and construction industries, both of which lost tons of cash in the past year, but were also largely responsible for creating the economic crisis to begin with.

Notably, the banks and other companies (such as the automakers) who benefited from the Wall Street bailout won’t be eligible for more help under the stimulus proposal. Still, with nothing but giveaways coming down the pike, one wonders what sacrifices Obama was requesting.