Bam's Jobs Bill Jam

by guest blogger Andrew Roman

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Same body, different suit?

Same septic tank, different commode?

(Make up your own and insert here).

Senator Mike Lee (R, Utah) used the phrase "Old wine in old bottles."

Last week’s jobs bill speech by President Barack Obama should have all but pounded the final nail into the pine box of Obama's presidency - that is, if there is any sense of order, common sense and justice to the universe. 

How bad is it for the president?

A Republican has just won Anthony Weiner's old seat in Congress here in New York City - a district that hasn't gone Republican since before anyone ever heard the term "social security." 

Babe Ruth was only in his fourth season with the Yankees the last time the Ninth District went GOP.  

The first licensed commercial radio station in the United States had been on the air only three years.

Ronald Reagan was not yet a teenager.

In bluer-than-blue New York, in a district that is at best 4 to 1 Democrat over Republican, that's how bad it's getting for Bam.

The Obama "jobs speech" - the highly anticipated, built-up-beyond-proportion, latest-in-a-long-string-of-America-saving-jobs-speeches from Brack Obama - was yet another one of those head-shaking "just wow" events. (I have them cataloged and meticulously cross-referenced using sophisticated database software).

Not that any of us in the thinking class expected anything less than what we received from the Chief Executive. Not that any of us believed for one moment that anything other than the same-old, same-old was coming our way from the podium of the House chamber.

It was simply one of those, "Wow, I can't believe that this guy is in charge of the whole shootin' match" moments.

If it weren't for the fact that the economic well-being of the nation hangs in the balance, one could almost feel sorry for the man being so far out of his league. If it weren’t for the fact that his experiments in nation transformation have resulted in the highest poverty levels in decades, one could almost take him by the hand, slap him on the back and say, “You tried, kid. But we gotta get some people in here who can fix this. Now, let’s go get some pancakes.”

All that's missing at the White House these days are the antlers and headlights.

While Barack Obama continues to make the job of conservative talk radio hosts tremendously easy, he makes America's economic recovery more difficult. It’s almost inconceivable to believe that he cannot see what he and his ever-encroaching big government ways are doing to this country. But once again, he’s peddling the same spend-spend-spend, expansive policies that have already failed - policies that also stunk up the joint when his predecessor, George W. Bush, implemented his own inane "stimulus" package. It was stupid then; five times as stupid when Obama did it the first time; and even more stupid now that the president wants to try it again.

If ever a man has personified - in spades (no slur intended) - Albert Einstein's over-quoted definition of insanity, it is President Barack Obama. If Obama's proposed jump start to an economy already paralyzed by the ropes of big government is to be taken seriously by anyone not under the influence, then Einstein truly had it pegged.

The logic of the President's thinking would have us handing out shots of Jack Daniels at alcohol anonymous meetings.

Seriously, are we to believe that nearly a half-trillion dollars in additional spending is all we really needed to get us over the hump? That the first Obama stimulus was almost the fix we required to bring us back to economic health? Were we really that close to the fix? Just a half billion dollars off? Did we miss it by that much?

Why not get this economy roaring back with a vengeance? Why not a trillion dollars more? Or five trillion more? While we’re at it, why not raise the minimum wage to $18.50 an hour? And tax the rich at a 70% tax rate? (Even if those Americans making $500,000 a year or more were taxed at a full one hundred percent, revenues wouldn’t even cover the entirety of this year’s deficit. There’d still be $500 billion left to fund somehow).

We already tax the rich in this country.

Yet, there’s a block of taxpayers – approximately 47% - who pay no federal income tax.

“Fair share” anyone?

The President’s rhetoric is tired. He talks about tax cuts in his new plan to get Americans working again, but what he’s proposing aren’t genuine tax cuts. They are temporary tax credits (which means the money is being swiped from elsewhere only to be redistributed) to the tune of approximately $500 a year for the average middle class American family. That’s a whole $500 a year. That’s about $42 dollars a month, or about $10 extra bucks a week.

Shopping malls beware. The stampede’s a-coming.

How does taking money out of the economy and returning it in nearly infinitesimal chunks to other people who did not earn it jump start a flailing economy? When did it ever?

The last Obama tax credit – the one that brought the payroll tax down from 6.2% to 4.2% - really got things moving, didn’t it?

And now, he wants to do it again?

Genuine tax cuts are obviously great - nay, necessary ... but they have to be the right kind of tax cuts. Minuscule credits at the expense of the job creators in this country will prove to be, as it always does, nothing more than ineffective, feel-good, campaign-fodder class warfare. 

It will solve nothing.

And don’t think for second that Democrats will back this “jobs bill” without additional stimulus spending tacked on.

Bank on it.

And why didn't the President actually - and finally - define what "fair share" means in regard to taxing "the rich?" What an opportunity it could have been for him for set the parameters of the debate. He could have told us once and for all what the fairest level of taxation for the "fortunate" among us is.

And notice how the President used the word "fortunate" to describe the wealthiest Americans, as opposed to "hard working," "creative" or "successful."

That simply would never do. It would alienate and/or offend.

That's because good fortune suggests randomness and chance - the luck of the draw.

Creativity, innovation and hard work, on the other hand, place the onus directly on the individual. It suggests that wealth may actually be deserved and earned - an anathema to Obama and his equality-over-liberty ilk.

Think about this: The left believes that government is the answer to almost everything, that only government can get things right. But look around. Government is practically everywhere in the form of taxation, over-regulation, the takeover of private industry, and so on. The size of government continues to grow. Yet, there are now 22 million children living in poverty, according to Government figures. There are now more people without health care coverage than there were last year. Unemployment is fixed at around 9%. There was absolutely no job growth in August.

And yet, the President wants more government?

Oh yeah, it's bad.

Paging Mr. Einstein.

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