Obama on Jobs: Mañana
Having just been rolled by tea party Republicans in the debt-ceiling circus, Barack Obama now says that his priority is job creation. Wow, what took him so long? Jobs should have been priority No. 1 when he first took office. Instead, the Obamacans put Wall Street banksters first, dumping trillions of dollars from our public funds into saving the butts of greedheads who crashed our economy. They bailed out Wall Streeters without even requiring that the bankers invest in job-creating, grassroots enterprises. The jobs will come later, they said. Wrong.
A fragile recovery did sprout in 2009, but, oxymoronically, it was called a “jobless recovery,” and workers keep getting pink slips. Obama himself explained that jobs are a “lagging economic indicator.” “Later,” he told us.
Then, last December, with an exploding crisis of joblessness knocking our economy to its knees, who did the White House help? The superrich! Their ridiculous Bush tax breaks were extended for another two years without any requirements to use this windfall to create a single job. “Soon,” Obama said back then; we’ll get to that pesky job issue … soon. Now, just after signing the debt reduction monstrosity that slashed trillions from programs to help working families, the president says that, at last, he’s ready to take action on jobs.
Really? What kind of action? “I will urge [Congress] to immediately take some steps – bipartisan, commonsense steps – that will make a difference,” he boldly declared. But as we’ve seen, “bipartisan” steps only go backward. And, as for “immediately,” the Urger-in-Chief added that lawmakers should do it not right now, but when they get back from their monthlong August vacation.
It’s always mañana with Obama when it comes to workaday families.
Grabbing Earmarks While Slashing Spending
In last year’s congressional elections, the loudest war cry of the Republican tea party contingent was: “Remember the earmarks!“
But, look – who’s that scuttling down the dark corridors of the Capitol, stuffing their pockets with hundreds of millions of dollars in new federal earmarks for their districts? Why it’s those same anti-spending tea party screechers. They’re playing the same old congressional pork-barrel game, but giving it new, spiffed-up names. For example, a $300 million project to dredge a South Carolina harbor for corporate shippers is not an earmark, says tea party earmarker Rep. Jim Scott. Instead, it’s “a merit-based project.”
Also, check out New Jersey’s tea party Republican, Jon Runyan. He defeated a Democrat last year who had earmarked $20 million for replacing sand on the state’s constantly-eroding beaches. So, shortly after taking office, what was Runyan’s top budget priority? Getting federal tax dollars to replace sand on beaches in his district. Not an earmark, mind you – but a “vital” storm-control project.
And Steve Palazzo of Mississippi rode the tea party wave into Congress by pledging to ban earmarks in order to “help restore the people’s faith in their government.” Now inhaling the fumes of power, however, Palazzo has earmarked about $180 million for the already-bloated Pentagon budget for three projects in his district. Ironically, these same earmarks had been sought by the Democrat Palazzo defeated, but this time they’re not to be called earmarks. Huh? This tea partier’s Orwellian PR man explained that, while Palazzo had indeed transferred the money to the three projects, technically he had not directed how the Pentagon should spend it. So, see? He’s clean.
There’s a word for these guys: cynical, disgusting, hypocritical liars. Okay, four words.
This article appears in August 19 • 2011.