POINT: Don't expect miracles on job growth

President Obama goes into Thursday's big speech on creating jobs with one hand tied behind his back. Republicans have used their filibuster power in the Senate and control of the House to block any jobs plan that would make a real difference in helping the economy, and there is no sign that will change.

The fundamental problem in the American economy is simple: With so many people unemployed and underemployed - some 24 million - there is not enough demand for what the U.S. economy can produce.

The solution is to pump more money into the economy to get it going, just as if priming a pump to get water flowing again.

Republicans and the president should be able to find common ground on some significant steps toward that end.

Extending or even expanding this year's payroll tax cut would put more than $100 billion into the hands of people who will actually spend it, instead of merely padding the investment accounts of wealthy taxpayers.

Paying for roads, bridges, schools and other construction projects is the kind of investment for which long-term borrowing is justified, because it produces long-term benefits, as well as creating short-term jobs.

Sending more aid to state and local governments would help keep their taxes down while maintaining existing jobs and vital public services.

Yet Republicans say that job-creating efforts along those lines would have to be offset by cuts elsewhere. That would just shift money around, totally negating any net benefit to the economy as a whole.

It's true, the country would have to pay for a lot of the new recovery efforts with borrowed money. Much of the new borrowing, though, will come from cash that would otherwise stay idle or go elsewhere. U.S. companies are sitting on $2 trillion of idle money, and federal borrowing helps recycle dollars that were spent on our gaping trade deficit with China.

Given Republican opposition, Obama will probably be forced to use all his political capital just to take steps that should be no-brainers: extending the payroll tax cut and continuing unemployment insurance.

Republicans have questioned the payroll tax cut - a rare tax cut they don't automatically embrace - professing concern for keeping Social Security financially sound. It's an ironic argument, coming from a party that made a major effort to privatize Social Security.

Some congressional Republicans have also assailed any extra unemployment aid as an undeserved handout that rewards slackers who aren't bothering to find jobs. It's a mean-spirited attack on token amounts of assistance - usually just a couple hundred dollars a week - needed to keep vulnerable people from becoming homeless or going hungry. The aid is also good for the economy, because those who get it will spend every penny of it.

Most of the long-term unemployed would rather work at good-paying jobs; the jobs just aren't there. In the past decade, Fortune 100 companies killed 2.9 million American jobs, while creating 2.4 million in foreign countries. The president should scour the tax code for any incentives for companies that send jobs offshore, and dare Republicans to defend them.

Unlike the millions of unemployed Americans, the investor class has recovered quite well, thank you very much. Even with the recent slump, the stock market is up almost 70 percent since hitting bottom in the crash of 2008.

The burden imposed by federal taxes is the lowest in 50 years, measured as a percentage of the economy. If low taxes were a magic elixir, the economy would be cured by now.

As for the Republican claim that the economy is being strangled by regulation: It wasn't overregulation that allowed Wall Street to gamble trillions of dollars on credit default swaps. It wasn't overregulation that let mortgage companies trap unsuspecting homeowners into escalating payments they couldn't afford. It wasn't overregulation that allowed GE to cut thousands of U.S. jobs while making a $12 billion annual profit and paying no U.S. corporate income taxes.

The president had to shoehorn his speech into an awkward time slot. The political skirmish over the scheduling was a perfect example of the dysfunction that afflicts the nation's government. With our politics so dysfunctional, is it any wonder the economy is dysfunctional as well?

Much as the country needs a bipartisan plan to fix the economy, Americans cannot expect Obama's speech to work political miracles. Remember that Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said his top priority is defeating the president.

There's only so much a president can do when facing an opposition party willing to advance its own political prospects at the expense of the country's prosperity.