The bill to extend payroll tax cuts and extend unemployment benefits is part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012, H.R. 3671, a $1 trillion dollar omnibus spending bill that funds several federal government departments, including Defense and Homeland Security.

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that “the House voted Tuesday to scuttle a deal brokered in the Senate to extend the payroll-tax holiday and federal unemployment insurance for two months.”

The Journal adds that the “vote leaves Congress at a familiar impasse, just days after a final deal seemed to be in sight. Senate leaders reached an agreement late last week to extend for two months the payroll-tax cut, federal unemployment benefits and a measure to reimburse doctors for treating Medicare patients.”

The 2012 Appropriations Act includes funding that raises the number of immigration detention beds to about 34,000.

The final Fiscal Year 2012 Appropriations 1,200-page bill package includes “a total of $39.6 billion in regular discretionary funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – a decrease of $2 billion below last year’s level and $4 billion below the President’s request.”

According to a detailed summary (.pdf), “the bill provides $5.9 billion for [Immigrations and Customs Enforcement], which is $50 million more than last year’s level. This includes funding for 34,000 detention beds – the largest detention capacity in ICE’s history – and increases in immigration enforcement activities.”

Residents of Pembroke Pines and the town of Southwest Ranches are opposed to the federally funded and privately managed detention center set to be built in South Florida.

The 2012 Appropriations Act also includes $11.7 billion for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, “an increase of $362 million over last year’s level.”

Photo: An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer (ice.gov)

GOP Senate candidate Craig Miller (Photo: Flickr/Gage Skidmore)

Taking a swipe at an unexpected group, U.S. Senate candidate Craig Miller tells Creative Loafing Tampa that “young people” are too reliant on the government and need to “get off [their] butt, go get a job,” according to an interview posted yesterday.

During his interview with Loafing, Miller said:

“We’ve created a culture with our young people where ‘If you can’t find a job we’ll put you on the government payroll for 99 weeks, and we’ll extend it and extend it,’” he says. “At some point you have to step back and say, ‘Are we creating this whole idea that the government, every time somebody runs into a problem, is the outlet for the solution?’”

He then says his late father, who would have been 100 this year if he were still alive, would have laughed hysterically if he had to keep his son on his own health insurance plan until he was 26, as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) does.

“It was the culture I came from,” he says. “Now it seems like every kid who gets out of school at 25, if there’s not a $50,000 job waiting for him, then he’s been unfairly treated. Okay? I say, get off your butt, go get a job.”

Current research shows that young people have been strongly hit by the economic problems in the U.S. — much more affected than many other groups.

A report released last month by Demos, “The State of Young America,” found that “the percentage of young adults with jobs is at its lowest point in a generation.”

Here is just an excerpt from that study:

Unemployment among the youngest adults is almost twice the national average. Almost 60 percent of survey respondents said they would rather be working and earning more; not surprising given their falling incomes, particularly for less-educated young men.

While young people show a remarkable belief in the power of postsecondary education and postsecondary enrollment numbers, graduation rates are abysmal and there remains a significant achievement gap when it comes to race. Rising tuition is taking its toll, sometimes closing higher education’s doors to low-income students or forcing them to take out ever-increasing loans. Americans now owe more student debt than they do on their credit cards.

The cost of health care is rising as well, though coverage levels will likely improve over the next few years due to recent reforms. In fact, that trend has already started as a million young people joined their parents’ insurance plan over the past year. Nevertheless, young adults remain the most uninsured age group in the country.

Rent as a share of income is also rising, and the economic downturn has not helped. Almost 40 percent of 18 to 34 year-olds reported that their personal debt increased in the last four years.

Raising a family is similarly difficult. While Americans have delayed marriage and kids for a variety of reasons in recent decades, the Great Recession has taken a toll as well. The economy has caused one in four young people to delay marriage, 30 percent to delay starting a family, and 46 percent to delay buying a house. The high cost of child care and lack of paid parental leave (almost 90 percent lack it) make it even harder.

Just this week it was reported that the Affordable Care Act provision Miller criticized helped 2.5 million young adults find health insurance. As the Associated Press pointed out, “traditionally, young adults were more likely to be uninsured than any other age group.”

“Some are making the switch from school to work,” the AP reports. “Others are holding down low-wage jobs that don’t usually come with health care. And some — termed the ‘invincibles’ — pass up job-based health insurance because they don’t think they’ll use it and would rather get extra money in their paychecks.”

The GOP-sponsored “Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act,” which extends payroll tax cuts and extends but reduces unemployment benefits through 2012, passed in the U.S. House Tuesday night, but it will not pass in the Senate.

The bill — filed by Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., and cosponsored by five other Republicans, including Rep. Ilena Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami — also cuts “$8 billion from the Harkin Prevention Fund“ and reduces “Medicaid spending by more than $4 billion.”

CBS News reports today that the “measure would keep 160 million workers from seeing their payroll tax jump on Jan. 1 from this year’s 4.2 percent back to its normal level of 6.2 percent,” and would “also renew expiring extra benefits for long-term jobless people.”

The National Employment Law Project said Tuesday the House vote, which includes cuts to unemployment insurance, “will hurt millions of unemployed workers and their families and will further damage the economy.”

The Employment Law Project adds that the House GOP bill would:

• Cut federal unemployment benefits by more than half in 2012, eliminating 40 weeks of payments.
• “Allow the last leg of the federal unemployment insurance extension – the 13 to 20 weeks of Extended Benefits (EB) that are available in the hardest-hit states – to expire, mostly over the course of the first half of 2012.”
• Cut extended benefits in states with unemployment rates higher than the national average, which stands at 8.6 percent.

The Law Project report indicates that under the GOP bill approved Tuesday night, Florida’s unemployed workers would see their unemployment benefits cut by 40 weeks.

Politico reports that the bill, which also “calls for construction of the controversial Keystone KL oil pipeline,” “is dead on arrival in the Democratic Senate and faced a veto threat anyway.”

According to The New York Times, “members of both parties said the payroll tax cut would put money in the pockets of consumers, increasing the demand for goods and services and shoring up a weak economy,” adding that the House bill “would extend jobless benefits for some of the unemployed, while reducing the maximum number of weeks of benefits that a worker could receive.”

The Research Institute on Social and Economic Policy at Florida International University said Tuesday that “if congress does not renew the Extended Benefits (EB) and Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) programs by January 1, 2012, tens of thousands of Floridians currently receiving unemployment benefits funded by the federal government will be cut off.”

The Research Institute, known as RISEP, adds that in Florida, “unemployment has been consistently decreasing since the end of 2010, but labor force participation rates have been decreasing as well. At the end of 2010, the labor force participation rate was 62.7%, but by October 2011, the percentage of working-age population in Florida looking for jobs decreased to 61.8%.”

The RISEP report (.pdf) also argues that whatever Congress decides to do, a law signed by Gov. Rick Scott in June, “will further reduce the number of weeks of federally funded benefits that unemployed workers will be eligible for”:

Last spring the Florida legislature reduced the maximum number of weeks of unemployment from 26 weeks to 23 weeks, depending on how high the unemployment rate is. Starting January 1, the approximately 15,000 people per week who file initial claims for unemployment benefits will be eligible for only 23 weeks of benefits. The state estimates this change will save the Unemployment Compensation Trust Fund $103 million annually, representing a savings to employers but a loss to families and businesses which depend on UC benefits.

CBS News reports today:

The GOP-run House was expected to approve the roughly $180 billion legislation Tuesday in a battle that each party thinks gives it a chance to win over voters as the 2012 election year approaches. [...]

“The American people want jobs,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said. “This is as close to a shovel-ready project as you’re ever going to see.”

According to CBS, Democrats “complain that the bill does not do enough for unemployed people coping with one of the worst U.S. economies in decades. The bill prevents extra benefits for the long-term unemployed from expiring on Jan. 1, but would gradually wind down maximum coverage to 59 weeks, well below the current 99-week ceiling.”

According to CNN, “lawmakers could vote as soon as Tuesday on a controversial plan by House Republicans to link the payroll tax cut to government approval of a proposed oil pipeline.”

In early November, House Ways and Means Committee Democrats introduced the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act, legislation to extend federal unemployment insurance programs through 2012.

The National Employment Law Project, which supports the proposed Democratic legislation, writes that “the leadership of the House of Representatives has proposed [a bill] to slash the federal [Unemployment Insurance] programs and also do substantial harm to the basic state UI system.”

The Employment Law Project adds (PDF) that the new GOP bill, filed by Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., would:

• Cut the federal program by more than half in 2012, eliminating 40 weeks of benefits.
• “Allow the last leg of the federal unemployment insurance extension – the 13 to 20 weeks of Extended Benefits (EB) that are available in the hardest-hit states – to expire, mostly over the course 2of the first half of 2012.”
• Cut extended benefits in states with unemployment rates higher than the national average, which stands at 8.6 percent.

Florida, with an unemployment rate slightly higher than 10 percent, will “feel the impact of the full 40-week cut in benefits” by July 2012.

Camp’s bill also includes tax, Medicare and welfare provisions and “repeals provisions in the Democrat’s Health Care Law.”

According to the Employment Law Project, “over the past three years, federal unemployment insurance has helped more than 17 million Americans,” during the Great Recession’s tough job market.

Among the most staggering numbers highlighted during the program was “of all the families without shelter in America, one third are in Florida.”

The state’s foreclosure crisis, coupled with high unemployment and austere budget cuts, has resulted in countless homeless families in Florida living out of their cars — if they have them, 60 Minutes explains. Many families with small children are left hoping for a job or charity before food runs out. Caught in the crosshairs of this epidemic, the program showed, have been young schoolchildren.

According to this year’s KIDS COUNT data, Florida was “the state with the 2nd highest percent of children impacted by foreclosure since 2007.”

The account of a handful of young children had a persistent theme: Most homeless families in the state had run out of options. Many saw their unemployment benefits dry up, and public services were too scarce and maxed-out to provide any help.

Most of the families interviewed by 60 Minutes said they were relying solely on the generosity of donations from their community.

What was not mentioned, however, was the state’s missed opportunities to help.

One example was a line in the the state’s 2011/2012 budget that allocated $12 million dollars from the state’s general revenue fund to the National Veterans’ Homeless Support Group for “homeless housing assistance grants.” While this appropriation made it through the budget process, the item was one of the many vetoed by Gov. Rick Scott.

Scott spoke about the funds this weekend, the Naples Daily News reports:

“I care completely about all these programs,” said Scott, whose budget cuts earlier this year slashed funding to some veteran and farm surplus programs that helped the homeless.

“All the programs are very important, but nobody wants their taxes to go up,” Scott explained, noting that businesses also can help spur the economy. “They’ve got to grow. We’ve got to make this a place people can do well.”

The state also reduced unemployment benefits, even though the state has yet to get a handle on its unemployment rate. A bill signed by Scott this year reduced the maximum number of weeks someone can receive state unemployment benefits. The limit went from 26 weeks to 23 — and if the state’s unemployment rate continues to fall, benefits could be limited to as little as 12 weeks.

There are currently no assurances that legislators in the state are looking to beef up public assistance programs either. Already, there are warnings of deeper budget cuts as the state prepares for a $2 billion shortfall.

You can watch the 60 Minutes segment here:

Image via {link url="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonypeters/5401906036/"}Flickr/Tony Peters{/link}

Charles Evans, president of the Chicago Fed, shared the new page on Facebook this morning with the comment: “I’ve spoken a number of times this year on the Fed’s Dual Mandate — a congressional requirement to promote both maximum employment and price stability. We’ve just launched a Dual Mandate site with background information and links to my speeches on the topic.”

The page features graphs of the unemployment rate and changes in consumer inflation since 1999, together with the current projection from the FOMC, the Fed’s policy committee, of what the unemployment rate and inflation rate will be in the next five years. The Fed’s most recent projections, from the start of November, say that the unemployment rate will remain above 7.5 percent through 2013, and the inflation rate will remain below 2 percent during that same time period.

That’s an unacceptably high level of unemployment for Evans, who has said that it’s worth tolerating a higher rate of inflation, up to 3 percent, in order to accelerate a return to full employment.

Evans has been the loudest voice on the FOMC in favor of using monetary policy to stimulate the economy further. In the FOMC’s most recent policy statement, which announced that it would continue to maintain its current level of monetary stimulus, Evans was the lone dissenting vote. He voted against the majority because he favored “additional policy accommodation.”

In a conversation with reporters at the Council on Foreign Relations today, Evans reaffirmed that he is calling for “increasing amounts of policy accommodation” in order to reduce the unemployment rate, which is currently 9 percent. “We ought to be behaving as if there’s a very big problem out there.”

Evans’s vote was the first dissent for further stimulus since December 2007. Since then, all dissenting votes have come from inflation hawks who have opposed the FOMC’s efforts to further stimulate the economy in the wake of the recession. That the vote for further stimulus comes from Evans is particularly noteworthy because all of the dissenting votes against stimulus in the past three years have come from his fellow Federal Reserve Bank presidents on the FOMC.

Seven seats on the FOMC are appointed by the president and confirmed by Congress, but five seats are reserved for presidents of the regional Federal Reserve Banks. As the American Independent has previously reported, these presidents aren’t selected by democratic representatives but rather by the Federal Reserve Banks’ boards of directors, which are predominantly made up of senior business and financial executives.

Some of Evans’s fellow Federal Reserve Bank presidents have made statements indicating they don’t believe that unemployment should be reduced by government at all. In a speech on the same day as the most recent Fed statement, Dallas Federal Reserve Bank president Richard Fisher criticized government efforts at reducing unemployment. ”Pliant fiscal authorities,” Fisher said, “have run out of enabling money.”

Fisher added that were the Federal Reserve to support Congress’ spending by “monetizing their debts”, it would end “in the most ruinous of scenarios, the onset of hyperinflation.” The government must not, Fisher said, “hide under the skirts of the Federal Reserve.”

This is not only a rejection of Evans’ belief that the Federal Reserve should directly undertake more stimulus, it is also a rejection of Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke’s statements at his most recent official press conference that Congress should engage in short-term fiscal stimulus in order to reduce unemployment.

But as the Chicago Fed’s new dual mandate page explains, the Federal Reserve does have a legal obligation to reach maximum employment. The Chicago Fed page quotes exactly where in the Federal Reserve Act the mandate is written:

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal Open Market Committee shall maintain long run growth of the monetary and credit aggregrates commensurate with the economy’s long run potential to increase production, so as to promote effectively the goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates. [emphasis added]

The most recent FOMC statement is at odds with this mandate, as it currently states in its own projections that unemployment remains unacceptably high, but is simultaneously committed to maintaining policy constant. Moreover, under current policy, inflation is projected to remain under 2 percent, below what it has been in past decades, and talk of “hyperinflation”, or extremely rapid or out of control inflation, is considered by most economists to be a red herring in the debate over whether to stimulate the present day American economy.

Here are the Chicago Federal Reserve’s charts showing unemployment and inflation over the next five years:

The conventional wisdom in Washington seems to be that another year-long extension of federal unemployment benefits is likely to be approved in Congress despite strong Republican opposition in the House.

The Hill reports:

Congress is expected to pass a yearlong extension of unemployment benefits before they expire, although the process is uncertain.

Advocates of reauthorizing the program feel confident that a yearlong extension will get tucked into one of several different bills that could pass by year’s end — a supercommittee budget deal or a tax extenders bill that would renew the Medicare ‘doc fix’ along with other expiring program provisions.

Without hitching a ride on one of those vehicles, the measure may have to fly solo, likely igniting a heated battle between Democrats and Republicans, inevitably pushing the fight to the brink of expiration…

A positive sign is that while talk about the issue has been subdued, discussions are escalating on reauthorizing the federal benefits, which expire Dec. 31, Conti said.

Democrats say they have the offsets if Republicans insist on them to fund the program without increasing deficit spending.

The report also noted revisions to past job numbers. BLS initially estimated that zero new jobs were created in August, but that number has now been revised to 104,000. The increase in jobs for September was initially estimated to be 103,000, and it has been revised to 158,000.

The job numbers report is a statistical estimate based on a survey of non-farm establishments, and thus is never 100 percent accurate. Typically each month’s Establishment Survey estimate is revised in future months, and the BLS report will note any revision made to past job numbers. Those numbers count not just for record-keeping, but they drive policy and become fodder for politicians.

The American Independent looked at the initial estimates of previous job reports, and found that recently BLS has tended to be pessimistic in its initial monthly estimate. The following graph shows the difference between the initial jobs estimate and the revised estimate over the past year:

The particularly erroneous August 2011 report, which initially found that zero job growth took place, has been partially blamed on the month’s Verizon strike, during which the striking workers were counted as unemployed. Nevertheless, an upward revision occurred even after the Verizon strike was taken into account.

This doesn’t mean that the establishment survey is always pessimistic. In fact, as the following graph shows, the biggest errors in the establishment survey analysis in recent years were during the height of the recession. Unemployment reports in late 2008 repeatedly underestimated the staggering quantity of monthly job losses in the U.S. economy.

Although BLS doesn’t claim to be delivering perfectly accurate numbers when it releases the monthly job estimates, politicians and the mainstream media nevertheless closely watch the monthly figures and make pronouncements based on them.

When the August report of zero new jobs was first announced, presidential candidate Herman Cain said, “Sadly, the fact that zero jobs were created last month is only fitting for this administration, which is led by a president with zero leadership, zero plans, zero results and zero understanding of basic economics.”

Although the August job numbers have now been revised from zero to 104,000 new net job, it’s doubtful that Cain will have a tripartite acknowledgement of the change.

The monthly job numbers also influence policy.

It’s no coincidence that in the wake of the August report, the Federal Reserve announced its “Operation Twist” policy, as the negligible job growth was taken by many as a sign of an incipient double-dip recession. But now that monthly job growth is once again mediocre but positive, the Federal Reserve’s policy committee has voted not to increase stimulus, despite acknowledging that “the unemployment rate will decline only gradually toward levels that the Committee judges to be consistent with its dual mandate.”

The fact that BLS undercounted new jobs in the past year does not mean that the employment situation has been dramatically improving. Economist and blogger Mark Thoma estimates that 100,000 to 125,000 new jobs are needed each month just to keep up with population growth, much less return to full employment.

The current stagnation can be seen in the employment to population ratio, the clearest indicator of how many people in the United States have a job, which BLS calculates using data from a survey of households rather than employers. That ratio was 58.4 percent in October 2011, and 58.3 percent in October 2010, which shows that in the past year there has been almost no recovery in the job market.

For an idea of where the employment to population ratio is now compared to previous decades, here’s a graph showing the substantial decrease in the proportion of the population with a job in the past few years.

About 80,000 non-farm jobs were added in the past month, less than the 103,000 the Labor Department reported for September, when the jobless rate stood at 9.1 percent.

Automatic Data Processing, the massive payroll systems company, projected two days ago the economy would add 110,000 private-sector jobs last month. The Department’s own private-sector figures indicate 103,000 private-sector jobs were added to the economy in October.

The Labor Department reports 26,000 government jobs were cut last month, continuing a long trend of payroll squeezes dating back to 2008.

The civilian labor-force participation rate stood at 64.2 percent in October, and the employment-population ratio was little changed at 58.4 percent — meaning jobs were added without more workers giving up on looking for employment opportunities, as has been the case in previous dips in the unemployment report.

Jobless claims have also sloped downward.

Along demographic lines, the jobless rate among Blacks declined slightly to 15.1 percent. Other worker groups saw very little to no changes at all: 8.8 percent of adult men, 8.0 percent of adult women, 11.4 of Hispanics, and 7.3 percent of Asians were unemployed.

The top jobs generators in the economy were in retail, health care, and business services.

Construction shed 20,000 jobs after adding 27,000 in September.

Other factors point to a labor market that marginally improved despite recession fears a month ago. The number of workers holding onto part-time positions because they were unable to find full-time work dropped by 374,000 people to 8.9 million.

The jobs report indicates average hourly wages jumped slightly as well, growing by 5 cents to $23.19 an hour.

The average workweek for all private-sector employees was 34.3 hours; manufacturing workers work more — 40.5 hours.