American Jobs Act

I like the part about creating jobs by rebuilding bridges, roads and schools. It’s work that needs to be done and it will put some people to work. It should be a whole lot bigger, of course, and this part of it certainly isn’t going to pass. If you’re going to propose something that isn’t going to pass, why propose something this small? Why not propose something big and at least impress voters with your imagination? I guess he had to at least pretend he thought it would be passable.

It’s also written to allow the work to be done by private contractors, so that part of the money which goes into business profit will mean the creation of fewer jobs. Direct government action would have meant more jobs, sans profits, but there's the thing about keeping the proposal in a form that he could pretend he thought could be passed by the legislature.

Even if it did pass, it would take well over a year to implement, because the “shovel ready jobs” would turn out to be nowhere near as “shovel ready” as anyone said they were. So in the actual campaign when someone asked him to “show me the jobs” he would have to make something up. Oh wait, this is not a campaign stunt, this is policy. Whatever.

Anyway, give him credit for thinking like a Democrat, and an A for effort.

The other half of the bill is tax cuts, and that part I don’t get in more ways than one, mainly that this is the first Democrat that I have ever heard make the claim that tax cuts are an economic stimulus. Republicans have been claiming this since some drunken idiot drew a curve on a napkin at a cocktail party one night, and Democrats have been fighting a rearguard action against it ever since. Suddenly we have a Democratic president espousing tax cuts (plural) for economic stimulus.

Democrats also decry the complexity of our tax code, and if this part of the bill passes, which it probably will since it is Republican tax cuts, it will even further complicate the code. An employer who hires an unemployed person, who is a veteran, and who has been unemployed for more than six months, get no fewer than three tax cuts for doing so, but imagine the paperwork required for documenting that hire.

No kudos for flinging tax cuts around like a drunken Republican.

The third leg of the stool upon which the tax act sits is that it is “all paid for” with tax increases and additional revenue. What? Here’s your free lunch, pay at the door on your way out. Here’s five dollars for your right hand, now give me five dollars from what you have in your left and, hey, you’re rich.

No praise for a bill that’s 33% Democrat, 33% Republican, and 33% idiot.