Titus helps brainstorm ideas to employ Nevadans

By Lisa Mascaro

Sunday, Dec. 13, 2009 | 2 a.m.

Just days before the House voted on its sweeping health care reform legislation, Democratic Rep. Dina Titus explained why she wanted the long debate to come to a close: Southern Nevadans need work.

“I’m ready to vote for it and move on to creating jobs,” Titus said in early November.

Titus has been holed up for several days this month in a hideaway in the Capitol — the nickname given to the cramped working rooms assigned to leadership and hidden among the nooks and crannies throughout the building. It is here where Titus and others have been vetting ideas grand and small to include in a jobs package Congress hopes to pass before year’s end.

The House Democrats’ Task Force on Job Creation is focused first on the low-hanging fruit that will have an easier time winning support — extensions of unemployment benefits and subsidies to help pay employee health premiums for laid-off workers.

But the group of more than a dozen House Democrats is also trying to add a boost in transportation and infrastructure spending to the package. That may be a steeper climb.

Democratic Rep. Betty Sutton of Ohio, co-chairwoman of the task force, said the group’s work will continue into 2010, beyond the jobs bill, as it develops proposals to begin putting people back to work immediately.

“The mission is to re-employ America,” said Sutton, a second-term congresswoman from the northeastern part of the state.

The task force’s work will be done, she said, “when everybody in America who wants a job has one.”

But the jobs program is running into trouble, as Democrats are considering paying for the effort by tapping unused bank bailout money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

The Wall Street bailout was never popular when it passed last fall in a frenzied rush to save the financial industry from meltdown, and it never gained favor even as the banking industry stabilized this year.

Coupled with deep-rooted skepticism over the $787 billion recovery act that Congress passed this year to stop the economy from sliding into steeper recession, any attempt to suggest more New Deal-style government spending to improve the economy is a wasteland of political land mines.

Republicans are tapping into this discontent as the 2010 midterm elections approach. They know federal spending and the growth of government since President Barack Obama took office are volatile issues that could devastate Democrats running for re-election.

Titus is particularly vulnerable, as she narrowly won her first term in 2008 in a state now suffering a deep recession that shows few signs of turning around soon.

In a display of their fiscally conservative credentials, Republicans say the bailout money should not be spent on another stimulus, but used instead to pay down the debt.

“Washington’s rescue efforts have already burdened our economy with the costs of huge bailouts and government takeovers,” Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said in a letter to Obama last week as the president called for a new jobs program from Congress. “When Americans look for relief, they see record debt and deficits.”

Titus had opposed the bank bailout as a candidate last fall, distinguishing herself from her opponent, former Republican Rep. Jon Porter, who was among those in his party who voted for it. Once elected, Titus voted against the bailout when the second round of banking money was released this year.

The freshman congresswoman stands by her earlier opposition to the bailout program, saying she has long been concerned about lack of fiscal oversight. But now, she said, she thinks the mechanisms are in place to manage the program and ensure the money is being properly spent.

In her Southern Nevada district, with the highest unemployment rate since records have been kept, in a state that has one of the top unemployment rates in the nation, Titus thinks jobs aid is more important at the moment than deficit reduction.

“I think we need to invest that in creating jobs,” she said.

In the tucked-away office in the Capitol, the task force meets every week, sometimes twice weekly, chipping away at ideas for fostering job growth that are sent along to leadership.

The group is on a twofold mission: An immediate jobs package that could be passed before the holidays and a more robust package for the new year.

Before the House adjourns for the holidays this week, it may vote on a package of safety-net provisions — a continuation of unemployment benefits and COBRA insurance for those laid off.

Also being discussed this week for the year-end package are infrastructure and transportation projects — money for highways and perhaps a “cash for caulkers” program — to put people to work weatherizing homes.

“There’s a lot of enthusiasm and push for the jobs bill,” Titus said.

This year’s stimulus has been criticized for not doing enough to spark job creation in the economy, but many left-leaning economists have said the government outlay was not robust enough. The original proposal’s infrastructure component was watered down to secure passage among more moderate Democrats who balked at the spending levels.

No Republicans voted for the stimulus in the House, and just three voted for it in the Senate, and one of them is now a Democrat.

In Nevada, stimulus spending has been criticized, particularly by Republicans who say the state should have received more money. The money was allocated under long-standing federal formulas, often based on required state matching funding, and Nevada is stingy in several categories. No earmarked spending by lawmakers was allowed.

Titus expects that any new transportation spending would be distributed to states in a similar way.

With the end of the year approaching, the House is mindful of the logjam in the Senate, where the health care bill has been stalling other legislation. If the first jobs package could hitch a ride on a must-pass Defense Department spending bill, it might have a better chance in both chambers by year’s end.

Next year the task force will turn its attention to proposals that could net larger numbers of new jobs — a Works Project Administration-type undertaking, as the first stimulus had set out to be.

Titus has proposed a manufacturing tax credit for renewable energy developers — to bring the builders of windmills or solar mirrors to Nevada.

Her colleagues have also entertained a program to refurbish national parks and monuments, drawing on the range of skills of out-of-work constituents, from engineering to brush clearance.

“People are coming up with new ideas all the time,” she said. “They see this as a real priority.”