The White House formally threatened a veto of the House version of a surface transportation bill, opening the question of whether any long-term bill will get signed before March when current funding on roads and bridges expires. Between the terrible House version and the Senate’s, it’s choosing between one with a bunch of disastrous elements, and another which has none of those but which is too small for the task at hand.

Members of the Occupy Wall Street movement said today on a conference call that the police action to evict protesters from Zuccotti Park will only amplify future efforts, starting on Thursday with a planned day of action that will occur at sites across the country.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the economy added 80,000 jobs in October, and the topline unemployment rate ticked down a notch to 9.0%. This is the seventh straight month that the unemployment rate has been between 9.0 and 9.2%, a period of stasis for the economy, a low-growth holding pattern. The private sector led the way with 104,000 jobs gained, as the depression in the public sector continued, with 24,000 jobs lost.

Republicans successfully filibustered the Rebuild American Jobs Act today, rejecting a cloture vote on the motion to proceed to the bill by a count of 51-49. 60 votes were needed for passage. All 47 Republicans voted against cloture, and they were joined by two members of the Democratic caucus – Democrat Ben Nelson and the Connecticut for Lieberman Party’s Joe Lieberman. Both cited the pay-for on the $60 billion infrastructure measure, a tiny 0.7% marginal surtax on incomes over $1,000,000, as their reason for opposition.

Democrats for some reason allowed a Republican version of an infrastructure bill, which set spending for transportation projects at current levels in exchange for cutting “unused spending.”

At the time that the American Jobs Act was announced, it was clear that it would only have value as a rhetorical measure, to delineate between one side trying to put people back to work and the other side protecting millionaires. That does seem to be working in a broad sense. The White House even put it in infographic form. Of course, that doesn’t do much for the long-term unemployed.

The House GOP leadership has written a memo to their caucus picking and choosing what they would be willing to support in the American Jobs Act. The numbers come out to support for 1/44th of the overall price tag, about 2% of the total bill.

As you may know, the AJA is comprised of about 57% tax cuts and 43% spending initiatives. So in the main, House Republican leaders tossed out the spending and embraced a few of the tax cuts. They also rejected the tax hikes on corporations and the wealthy to pay for the bill.

James Carville thinks the White House should panic, something that usually doesn’t inspire confidence in leadership. I actually like some of his specific steps – indicting the banks is a good idea way past its time, and defending the Democratic Party platform sounds like a plan. Overall, a Carville agenda sounds like an improvement on the current agenda.

It may be too late for all this, however.

There’s the issue of trade. Now this starts unexceptionally. Romney supports the existing trade agreements with South Korea, Panama and Colombia (on this point, the President agrees). And he wants to finish off the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Obama also supports. He also wants to pursue a “Reagan Economic Zone,” which I assume is important because it has the word “Reagan” in it. But then he starts in on China.

Let’s briefly look at the numbers. A $300 billion scheme would amount to around 2% of total GDP, and that’s being charitable by saying that this would all be used up in one year. That would have an impact, but half of this would be supply-side solutions that haven’t inspired much confidence during the recession. The question of whether temporary tax cuts are spent is a good one to ask. Especially on the employer side; if minimum wage increases have no effect on jobs, then surely tax subsidies to make hiring cheaper wouldn’t either.

In a speech in Detroit tailored to the union audience, President Obama paid respect to the need for a strong American labor movement as a lever to move families into the middle class. He also previewed his jobs address coming on Thursday to a joint session of Congress, highlighting steps like “rebuilding roads and bridges,” which could put 1 million unemployed construction workers back on the job.