The speech has won plaudits from labor groups and most of the Democratic base for its extension of unemployment insurance benefits and direct jobs training and hiring subsidies for employers, while the package of household and business tax cuts has piqued the Republican Party’s interest as well.

Among the direct jobs spending the president called for, $30 billion would be spent on retaining 280,000 teachers as a counter-cyclical measure to wait out the sluggish economy. After a several-month period of 100,000-plus job gains in the labor market, hiring has slowed, with the most recent monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics noting job growth was completely flat, with net zero new hires.

Going into the 2011-2012 school year, nearly 85 percent of all school districts face budget cuts, according to labor groups; the depletion of 2009 stimulus money that relieved state legislatures from cutting even deeper into education spending meant more layoffs and school infrastructure neglect. The National Education Association, the largest teachers’ union in the country, have said the first round of stimulus funds helped 90 percent of school districts avoid spending cuts. Though with many state legislatures passing expansive tax cuts, school spending was on the cutting block.

Many states have dramatically thinned out spending streams to education. From Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

21 of the 24 states analyzed are providing less funding per student to local school districts in the new school year than they provided last year, and 17 of the 24 are providing less than they did before the recession, after adjusting for inflation. In 10 of these 24 states, per student funding is down by more than 10 percent from pre-recession levels. The three states with the deepest cuts — South Carolina, Arizona, and California — each have reduced per student funding to K-12 schools by more than 20 percent.

Though state contributions to school district spending varies by state, nationally, 47 percent of public education spending comes from state coffers. Since the start of the Great Recession, 229,000 teachers were laid off. And with the housing market at a standstill, local communities are strapped as their chief revenue stream runs dry.

Still, a few states upped their primary and secondary education spending: Alaska, Iowa, New Hampshire, Maryland, Massachussetts and Pennsylvania sent more dollars to K-12 education since the start of the recession.

Because public education allotments follow ‘formula’ spending as indicated by federal law — in which dollars are sent over based on district financial need — a disproportionate amount would flow to poorer neighborhoods, meaning middle-class zones would feel the squeeze. New Jersey, for example, is under court order to withhold any more spending cuts affecting school districts in low-income areas.

The remaining $25 billion would go to refurbishing school structures while funding new science labs, internet-ready classrooms, and modernizing rural school houses while bolstering public school facilities’ green bonefides across the country.

A statement from the American Federation of Teachers, the second largest teachers’ union, read in part:

President Obama also made it clear that the path to our future is through education. We have seen a loss of 300,000 education jobs since 2008 as well as long-delayed school repairs and modernization projects. We can’t equip our kids for the knowledge economy if we continue to slash education budgets. This robust plan will put people to work teaching and modernizing schools, and it will save money in energy costs that can be reinvested in education.

For a spending breakdown of the president’s proposed jobs bill, click here [PDF].

Tom Harkin

“The urgency of President Obama’s job speech tonight cannot be overstated,” Harkin said Thursday morning during a conference call with reporters. “Last week the Labor Department reported that zero net jobs were created for the month of August. The United States remains mired in the most protracted period of joblessness since the Great Depression.

“Count me among those who believe the President needs to be bold tonight, very bold.”

For starters, said Harkin, Obama needs to speak out against “the mindless march to austerity” while continuing to find compromise on necessary spending cuts and tax increases to address the long-term national deficit.

“But in the short-term we need a robust federal agenda to boost the economy and create jobs,” he said.

A similar message was delivered Wednesday night during a lecture at the University of Iowa by Reich, who called for additional government stimulus and state loans to boost the fragile national economy. A proposal that only addresses continued unemployment needs and ongoing tax cuts, he said, would not be enough to get the country back on its feet.

Robert Reich

“The debt — the national deficit — although real, is manageable,” he said. “What needs to be addressed right now is jobs and [economic] growth.”

Both men also advocate directed government stimulus toward a hurting middle class, which both agree have been the worst hit by the ongoing economic downturn. They also agree that not enough attention is being paid to issues surrounding America’s middle class — a subject that Harkin, most recently joined during the August recess by U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley, has discussed at length in HELP Committee hearings as well as Iowa-based town hall meetings and roundtable discussions.

“I can report that there is a serious disconnect between Washington, D.C. and Iowa,” Harkin said. “In Washington, politicians have persuaded themselves that the number one issues is the budget deficit. Iowans are focused on a more urgent deficit, the jobs deficit.

“But I’m also concerned about a third deficit — the deficit of vision and courage in Washington. We have failed to confront the jobs crisis with the boldness that earlier Americans summoned in times of national challenge.”

Regardless of Obama’s proposals during his jobs speech Thursday night, Harkin said there will be a certain element within the Republican Party that will oppose it.

“Their mantra is, ‘Government can’t create jobs.’ Well, that’s just nonsense,” he said, added that it was government visionaries who funded and built the nation’s interstate highways, created the Internet, advanced the bio-sciences and explored space.

“These government initiatives spawned countless inventions and new industries, creating 10 of millions good, middle-class jobs,” Harkin said.

It’s been hinted that Obama will proposed $300 billion stimulus package that would include both tax cuts and spending. That won’t be enough, Harkin argued, especially if it is too spread out to make a real difference.

“If [that amount] is really focused on infrastructure — school modernization, for example, [or] roads, bridges, sewer and water systems that will help our local communities — that could be a good shot in the arm,” he said. “But if it is $300 billion spread all over the place, I’m not certain it is going to do much good. If you are going to spread it out, it’s going to have to be a lot more than $300 billion.”

Since it is a given that some will be opposed to whatever Obama proposes, “even if it is $10,” then Obama needs to “do an FDR, a Harry Truman, a Dwight Eisenhower type program that is big and bold and captures the imagination of the American people,” he said.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the Republican Party had a brief flirtation with the 20th century,” Reich wrote while discussing the Sept. 7 GOP presidential debate.

… Mark Hatfield of Oregon, Jacob Javits and Nelson Rockefeller of New York, Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, and presidents Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon lent their support to such leftist adventures as Medicare and a clean environment. Eisenhower pushed for the greatest public-works project in the history of the United States — the National Defense Highway Act, which linked the nation with four-lane (and occasionally six-lane) Interstate highways. The GOP also supported a large expansion of federally-supported higher education. And to many Republicans at the time, a marginal income tax rate of more than 70 percent on top incomes was not repugnant.

But the Republican Party that emerged in the 1970s began its march back to the 19th century. Ronald Reagan lent his charm and single-mindedness to the charge but the foundations had been laid long before. By the time Newt Gingrich and his regressive followers took over the House of Representatives in 1995, social conservatives, isolationists, libertarians, and corporatists had taken over the GOP once again. …

An emphasis on the type of infrastructure Harkin described above, Reich advocated in a recent video message that is embedded below, is the nation’s way forward and the path to American jobs.

This is a shift from just four months ago, when the same question, asked in December, found 36 percent of respondents advocating spending cuts alone and 60 percent advocated tax increases and spending cuts together (the precise numbers are now 31 to 64 percent). Increasing taxes alone remained by far the least popular option, with just 3 percent of those polled supporting such a tactic, up 1 percentage point from December.

The overwhelming popularity of combining the traditionally liberal notion of tax increases with the traditionally conservative notion of spending reductions cut across party lines, though it was more popular with Democrats than Republicans. Nearly half — 47 percent — of Republicans chose that option, compared to 77 percent of Democrats. Independents were right in line with the overall picture, with 64 percent of them choosing the twofold approach to fixing the deficit.

That wasn’t the only indication in the poll that the majority of Americans are more moderate than vocal extremists on either side of the political divide would have it. A full 71 percent of those polled said that Republicans have not been willing enough to compromise with President Obama over the budget, while only 16 percent said Republicans were too willing to compromise.

The American Independent previously reported on the poll’s findings that more than half of all Americans are now in support of legalizing same-sex marriage.

Some of the more shocking charts, after the jump.

When adjusted for inflation, the top 1 percent have seen runaway increases in average household income since 1979 and the top 20 percent have seen a steady rise; everyone else saw stagnation or decline:

Image courtesy of Mother Jones