Romney’s Jobs Plan Is One That Was Tested and Failed
Idaho is one of the states that participated in the program. McAllister says if people got jobs right away, they were free to take the money as a bonus and spend it how they wanted. McAllister says he thought the prospect of getting a bonus would encourage people to look for work more aggressively. Instead, he says, they mostly used the money for what are called supportive services.
People use the money to pay for things that made it possible for them to hold down jobs. It went to pay for day care or new work clothes or car repairs. McAllister says people didn’t really need encouragement to look for work.
“I think we misjudged the population we were dealing with,” he says. “They had difficulty even getting to a job. They had to solve that before they could get the bonus. We got the cart before the horse is one way to put it.”
The program was never extended after it ended. An independent report issued a few years later concluded the program wasn’t a big success. Now, Romney has talked about reviving the program if he’s elected, though he hasn’t provided many details about what he would do differently.
The Romney campaign didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Ross Eisenbrey of the Economic Policy Institute says if personal re-employment accounts are to work, the government has to be realistic about the cost. He says $3,000 simply isn’t enough to retrain most laid-off workers.