Republicans Preemptively Reject Obama Jobs Plan
Comments (4)
An easy path for President Barack Obama's job plan, which he will outline Thursday night, never seemed realistic, but a key Republican stated his preemptive opposition to the president's proposals even before details of the package emerged.
Mitch McConnell at CPAC
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, according to Talking Points Memo, said on the Senate floor Tuesday that the president would use the "same failed" approach to the nation's unemployment problem that he has in the past. This "same failed approach" refers to government stimulus. Obama signed into law $787 billion in stimulus in 2009.
Unemployment stands at 9.1 percent nationwide, and the latest monthly report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the had no net job growth in August.
Leaks from Obama's new jobs proposals, reported by Bloomberg, tally about $300 billion in spending, tax cuts and aid to local governments. It also promises increased tax revenue in the future.
Joan McCarter argues on The Daily Kos that Republicans who offer advance critiques are doing Obama a political favor by appearing to be obstructionists on the issue Americans feel is most important.
Politicians such as Rep. David Camp (R-Mich) and Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) have voiced their early opposition.
Republican candidates such as Mitt Romney are pushing their own plans, which focus on tax breaks for business and spending cuts. Analyst Michael Linden writes that Romney's plan could yield "approximately $6.5 trillion in deficits from 2013 through 2021."
Reach Ryan Faughnder here.
Comments
Most reasonable people would support another stimulus/jobs package, especially if it is paid for by improved gov't efficiency and better management of program budgets, waste. fraud, and abuse. However, there are two historical problems still in the minds of reasonable people:
1.The first is a stimulus three times, OMB says closer to four, the reported size of this second one. It was poorly managed and executed because, IMO, a VP is too political and too busy to be assigned the responsibility of tracking and following up on what amounted to a huge trillion dollar business, opened and owned by the Federal gov't. Most reasonable people believe it was a failure. The President himself practically admitted it when he said "Shovel ready wasn't as shovel ready as we thought.
2.The Federal gov't has a terrible history of not only mismanagement of the peoples money, but worse, never following through with the 'savings' promised to offset the cost of programs they claimed would pay for themselves. It mostly never happens.
Reasonable voters have every right to be suspicious this program will be any different. Humans are wired to remember their mistakes, so they don't make the same ones over and over. In prehistoric times, this would cost you your life. In modern times, it can cost you your financial survival.
The President has a strong duty tonight to explain in detail how he is going to pay for this stimulus, if he is going to claim it will be. He has a strong responsibility to respect, look after, and account for the peoples money he is asking for. We will see. Failure to deliver a detailed Plan on paper will be the first red flag....and likely self-inflicted knockout blow.
PS:Yes the partisan political hacks voting against it before seeing the details are just that. Political hacks on both sides are the problem, not the solution.
FUCK EVERY POLITICIAN. RIGHT IN THE FACE
Obama knows they will reject it. This is just ammunition for the 2012 election so he can say that he tried and cite evidence that the Republicans have rejected all measures to improve the job situation.
He'd be right then. It's been proven that this republican tickle-down economics just doesn't work. If you want the poor & middle class to have more money, make it easier for THEM to keep money, not the upper-class $250,000+ a year hiring them. Most people in that bracket say they don't even mind tax increases.