Lori Montgomery at the Washington Post gives it the old “my lefty editor went to a cocktail party early Friday so I was on my own” try, but, still kinda misses the mark
One month after President Obama declared jobs his “number one focus,” Congress has been unable to push through a single measure aimed at putting people back to work, as lawmakers haggle over how best to create jobs and how much to spend in the face of soaring budget deficits.
Say, Lori? You do not mention the Generational Theft Act (Stimulus) till way down in the article, which was meant to create jobs immediately, and only then in passing because of something Jim Bunning stated. Furthermore, you fail to mention that Obama and the Democrats almost immediately went back to work primarily on the health system destruction boondogle after the SOTU, during which Obama said jobs were his “number one focus.”
On Friday, Obama’s jobs agenda stalled on both ends of the Capitol. In the House, leaders delayed a vote until next week on a Senate plan to extend tax breaks to employers who hire new workers. Liberals called it weak medicine for a 9.7 percent jobless rate, and conservatives said that it would worsen a deficit projected to approach $1.6 trillion this year.
What the Washington elite do not understand is that if a company needed to hire, they would if they could. Giving them a little tax break means nothing, since companies, especially the big ones who have the people on staff to make the recommendations, are still massively concerned over which way the economy will go, and are in “wait and see” mode.
In the Senate, Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) blocked a vote on a House-passed bill that would have extended emergency unemployment benefits past Sunday, arguing that lawmakers should come up with a plan to pay for it. As lawmakers left town for the weekend, more than a million people, by one estimate, were in danger of losing federal aid by the end of March.
Unemployment benefits do not create job, except for some extra people hired by the government to deal with all the extra unemployed people and their benefits.
Leaders in both chambers hope to return to the issue next week, and aides expressed confidence that a jobs bill in some form would soon be approved. But the intense squabbling over even modest initiatives cast doubt on Democrats’ ability to deliver on Obama’s request for another big dose of tax cuts and spending, which many economists say are needed to push the recovery into high gear.
Bunning said we should take what is left of Stimulus (over 60% has still not been spent,) and redirect it from it’s proposed spending periods (which are set to be just in time for the 2010 mid-terms) and use it towards jobs. Better ideas: stop spending so darned much, and stop trying to push through legislation (not limited to cap-and-trade and health system) which makes employers too nervous to consider hiring. Stop talking about taxing to death the people who run businesses, create new businesses, and hire people. Reauthorize the 2001/2003 tax cuts in full. Heck, if Obama, Reid, and/or Pelosi simply announced they were going to do that, it would create confidence. Lower corporate taxes. Reduce federal spending and show that something is actually being done about the record breaking deficit.
Meanwhile, China, which doesn’t have the insane ideas of our Washington elite, is facing a shortage of workers nowadays, just a year after having high unemployment. Of course, the NY Times attempts to subtlety spin this as negative, in order to protect what the idiots in Washington are doing.
PREACH IT BROTHER!!!!