Obama's Jobs Bill: Read It and Weep
The dim news about the current economic situation has prompted the Obama administration to put forward its latest, desperate effort to reverse the tide by urging passage of The American Jobs Act (AJA), a turgid 155-page bill. The AJA’s only certain effect is to make everything worse than it already is by asking Congress to tighten the stranglehold that government regulation has already placed on the economy.
That sad fact would certainly elude anyone who accepted the president’s justification for the AJA when he sent the bill to Congress. This bill, he said, will "put more people back to work and put more money in the pockets of working Americans. And it will do so without adding a dime to the deficit." How? Why, by closing "corporate tax loopholes" and insisting that the wealthiest American’s pay their "fair share" of taxes.
What is so striking about Obama’s shopworn rhetoric is its juvenile intellectual quality. His explanation for how the AJA will create jobs is a non-starter because he does not explain how we get from here to there. As in so many other cases, the president thinks that waving a wand over a problem will make his most ardent wishes come true, even when similar earlier efforts have proved to be dismal failures. This dreadful hodgepodge of a bill will likely be dead-on-arrival in Congress, but it remains a patriotic duty to explicate some of its worst provisions, which I do over at Defining Ideas.
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Jun '10
Re: Obama's Jobs Bill: Read It and Weep
I think the bill was designed to be dead-on-arrival. Obama wants to run against "do-nothing Republicans" that refuse to "create jobs" (with borrowed money) and refuse to "make millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share." Because, if millionaires and billionaires "paid their fair share," then "recovery would be just around the corner."
May '10
Re: Obama's Jobs Bill: Read It and Weep
Sort of brings to mind the phrase, "The Aduacity of Hope"
Dec '10
Re: Obama's Jobs Bill: Read It and Weep
Hence the redundant “Pass this plan now” redundancy in his recycled son-of-stimulus speech to the joint session of Congress.
These frothy campaign stratagems pouring out of the Oval Office in the place of governing policies give it the air of a frat house without the self-discipline to limit the damage, the seriousness of purpose to make others want to repeat the experience, or the self-awareness that they are not acting as adults.
Apr '11
Re: Obama's Jobs Bill: Read It and Weep
"His explanation for how the AJA will create jobs...does not explain how we get from here to there. ...the president thinks that waving a wand over a problem will make his most ardent wishes come true, even when similar earlier efforts have proved to be dismal failures."
Obama's approach to the country is what the party machine is telling the faithful.
I am on several Democratic fund-raising e-mail lists, and they are all full of confident assertions of effects, and utterly empty of any explanation of how hypothetical event A (e.g., blah-blah Tea woof-woof Party eek!-eek!) will result in calamity B.
Of course, the President is fighting to create good, middle-class jobs for America's working people, but the Tea Party Republicans and Karl Rove moneybags want to give tax breaks to their billionaire pals and to corporate jets: "...without a Senate firewall, some Republicans would seize it as the moment to end Social Security forever, gut Medicare benefits for more tax giveaways, and instantly repeal our historic health care reform."
Well, that last one is a fair cop, but does any Democrat understand the situation, let alone the Republican critique?
Aug '10
Re: Obama's Jobs Bill: Read It and Weep
We have to pass the bill so we can see what's in it. Pass this Jobs bill now!
Never mind that it contains policies that have been rejected by lawmakers of both parties over the past few years. They rejected them in a bi-partisan fashion. Therefore, the plan is bi-partisan.
Pass this Jobs bill now!
Approve those free trade agreements while you're at it -- even though the White House has yet to submit them.
Mar '11
Re: Obama's Jobs Bill: Read It and Weep
Sorry, but had to requote that as best summary of Dem talking points ever!
Dec '10
Re: Obama's Jobs Bill: Read It and Weep
There is an interesting piece on Fox by Juan Williams of all people (soft on Obama). He shows just how vulnerable Obama is with the 18-29 age group. He has high negative numbers especially related to the economy. It is a very tough world for the young right now and it won't be getting any better between now and the election.
As far as Mr. Epstein noting "What is so striking about Obama’s shopworn rhetoric is its juvenile intellectual quality", I am surprised. I have always perceived Obama for the intellectual lightweight that he is. 38 years of quota based affirmative action and pc doctrine have lowered standards relentlessly. Clarence Thomas went through school before all of this happened and that is why his mind is so good. Starting at University long after the decay had set in, Obama was able to serf on top of this nonsense wave his whole life. Now, his unchallenged and shallow outlook can no longer be hidden. President Zero must be removed from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. ASAP.
Dec '10
Re: Obama's Jobs Bill: Read It and Weep
It's an interesting intellectual dissection, but the audience is not intellectual.
That document is a junk mail sales flyer, geared solely for ginning up apprehension in the least intellectual segments of the population. It is all of a piece with his buddy Steven Lerner's SEIU protests on Wall Street, the buffoons in the Congressional Black Caucus parading about the country spewing hate, etc. This is all about emotion and building a fire under racial and economic divisions and has nothing to do with economic policy.
It's the First Quarter of the election season and Obama is already throwing his Hail Mary.