Are the parties content simply to point fingers and cast meaningless votes from now until Election Day 2012? Or are there smaller ideas that might do some good?

Amid the failure of Obama’s proposal, the mini-deal gaining the most traction is one that would link the infrastructure spending in the Obama bill with a temporary tax break allowing corporations to bring back overseas profits. The infrastructure idea has considerable merit. The tax idea, not so much.

We’ll explain. First, though, something needs to be said about the general approach that Congress and the president should take on jobs: Focus on the long term.


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This economic mess is not a typical recession. It was caused by an epochal financial crisis, one that came amid the globalization of labor markets and sweeping technological changes. This helps explains why three previous stimulus measures (President Bush‘s in early 2008, Obama’s a year later and a bipartisan measure late last year) haven’t sparked a robust recovery. Both presidents misunderstood the nature of the threat, but there’s surely no reason now to believe that a fourth time will be the charm for gimmicky fixes.

The single most useful thing that Congress could do is to reassemble the pieces left when a $4 trillion deficit-reduction deal blew up last July. That would send a clear message that Congress, all

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