Reasonable Grounds: An Unfulfilling Jobs Speech
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With unemployment yet again set squarely above 9% and 14 million Americans still out of work, President Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress last Thursday served as a blunt reminder of the dire condition of America’s flailing economy. Obama seeks to fulfill the unanswered promises of TARP with a new recovery initiative carrying a price tag of nearly a half trillion dollars. Among the parts of his plan that he failed to elaborate on, Obama mentioned yet again the need to raise taxes on the wealthy and close tax incentives to corporations. In a joking tone, Obama observed that some in Congress had made a promise to never raise taxes. Although the pledge signed by many in Congress to Americans for Tax Reform most certainly promised to not raise taxes, it was a pledge to citizens concerned with the growth of government spending and an unsustainable addiction to debt. Obama’s glib reference to this pledge is one of many reasons that his divisive jobs speech imbued his newest initiative with the political rancor necessary to all but guarantee its failure in congress.
The moment that Obama decided to schedule his speech one day earlier, at the same time as a significant Republican primary debate, he cast a shadow of politics over what should have been a unifying message for all Americans. Upon House Speaker John Boehner’s refusal to host the speech at a time when many Americans would be forced to choose between watching a debate between presidential candidates and the president’s speech, President Obama backed down and rescheduled. Despite his embarrassment over the scheduling snafu, Obama proceeded to play partisan politics by presenting a plan that would be “paid-for” by the same bipartisan super committee that the president and congress established to confront government spending. Rather than allow the super committee to draw up its own plans and make a real dent in this nation’s debt crisis, Obama decided to pass the buck of his plan over to them. He also discussed reforming entitlements to help pay for the plan, again taking away the authority of the bipartisan super committee on an item committee members expected to confront in a bipartisan fashion. Obama used the word “taxes” 23 times, and urged Congress to “pass” his jobs bill 20 times, yet did not use the word “bipartisan” even once. You do the math.
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