Infrastructure Bank Plus Repatriation Holiday Equals Jobs: View

Call us optimists, but it’s possible that the Senate’s decision Tuesday to block President Barack Obama’s jobs bill was a blessing in disguise.

With a U.S. unemployment rate of 9.1 percent, jobs legislation is essential. What the president had proposed, however, was expensive and unwieldy. Fortunately, the stall-out on Capitol Hill has given Washington a second chance as it has led to talk of breaking the legislation’s proposals into smaller parts and passing it piecemeal. Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat of New York, has advanced an approach along those lines, one that combines worthwhile goals of both parties that otherwise might not pass.