THE PERMANENT CENSUS
The Obama White House, stung by criticism of the recent May
employment report, which showed virtually no job growth beyond
the 411,000 temporary census workers, is attempting to find ways
to put as many of the 411,000 in permanent government
jobs.
According to White House sources, the Labor Department is
spearheading efforts to identify government jobs created or
enabled by federal stimulus programs, as well as unfilled
bureaucrat jobs, where the temporary workers might be
placed.
“There are policies in place that would allow us to put
those people into federal or possibly stimulus-related jobs
fairly quickly,” says one White House source. “They are already
in the pipeline given the employment forms they filled out for
the census work.”
Federal hiring rules quietly eased and adjusted by the
Obama Administration over the past year will further enable the
administration to place those temporary workers, according to the
White House source. For example, the Obama Administration has cut
back the number of forms job seekers must fill out, ended the
practice of a skills and knowledge essay, allowed the hiring
process to take place with only the use of a résumé and writing
samples, and, perhaps most important, eased hiring rules based on
the “most qualified” requirement, so that less experienced
prospective employees might be hired over better qualified or
more experienced competitors.
Another byproduct of the census hiring? “It’s essentially a
new job created if these volunteers move back to the unemployment
rolls [and then back to a fulltime job in the federal
government],” says a Senate Democrat leadership staffer.
ALL THE RIGHT THINGS
There were peels of laughter coming out of the offices of the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable when
President Obama claimed that speaking to the CEO of British
Petroleum would have been unhelpful because “when you talk to a
guy like the BP CEO, he’s going to say all the right things to
me.”
“Apparently the President hasn’t been listening to all
those CEOs he’s been meeting with over the past 15 months,” says
a senior executive with the U.S. Chamber. “Unless all those
ladies and gentlemen have been lying, those private White House
lunches and dinners and coffees with the President have been
fairly frank. Mr. Obama may just not like what he’s hearing, but
it’s laughable for him to say that his experience is that
executives only tell him what they think he wants to
hear.”
Obama has invited a number of CEOs to the White House for
meetings, sometimes in groups as small as two to four and in
larger groups, as well. The stated purpose of the meetings has
been to discuss Obama administration efforts on employment, the
economy, and legislative efforts like health care. Often times,
the White House reaches out to the CEOs independent of the two
large corporate associations — BRT, but particularly the U.S.
Chamber, where relations between it and the White House have been
less than warm — but after the fact, a number of CEOS or their
Washington representatives will pass along the content of the
discussions.
“Our impression is that our member CEOS have been
respectful, but honest and often blunt when speaking with the
President,” says the Chamber source. “These are highly
accomplished individuals and I think some have gone into these
meetings viewing them as ‘teachable moments’ for an
administration that appears to neither like nor trust the
business community.”
