{"id":31960,"date":"2011-09-18T21:31:40","date_gmt":"2011-09-19T03:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=31960"},"modified":"2011-09-18T21:31:43","modified_gmt":"2011-09-19T03:31:43","slug":"pass-on-obamas-jobs-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2011\/09\/pass-on-obamas-jobs-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"Pass on Obama’s jobs bill"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Stephan Helgesen<\/p><\/div>\n

Recently I heard an echo, not from a lone hiker in the cliffs of New Mexico. It came from the podium of the House of Representatives… from the president of the United States. His words, \u201cPass this bill,\u201d echoed those chanted by his administration and by the Pelosi-led Congress before the introduction of the stimulus plan, the bank\/insurance company\/automaker\u2019s bailout bill, and the Affordable Healthcare Act (Obamacare).<\/p>\n

Just what is it about good governance and cooperation that this administration and the Democrat members of the House and Senate don\u2019t understand? Legislation designed to get bipartisan support isn\u2019t written behind closed doors, nor is it introduced and voted on with 12 hours\u2019 notice in the middle of the night (as was the case with the health-care bill). That may be considered acceptable governance in a third-world country, but here it\u2019s just plain legislative thuggery.<\/p>\n

The \u201cAmerican Jobs Act\u201d<\/a> is the latest salvo in the wait-and-hurry-up war waged by the Obama Administration. Unable to get its act together for nearly two years to prepare a budget for our country, the administration has shown a remarkable ability to apply this delaying tactic to everything it touches. (Remember the decisions on troop levels in Afghanistan and the Libyan \u201cintervention?\u201d)<\/p>\n

Wait-and-hurry-up has become the hallmark of an administration that is expert at hiding the marbles until the eleventh hour. Its preference for running out the clock is now painfully obvious to all of us with one good eye or ear.<\/p>\n

A mirage in the desert<\/h3>\n

Tactics aside, the American Jobs bill is a mirage in the middle of the very real desert of unemployment. It\u2019s an underwhelming and underthought bill that reveals an amazing lack of understanding about how jobs are actually created, especially in a recessionary environment.<\/p>\n

While I\u2019m not going through the entire bill, I would like to point out what\u2019s not in it. No tax holiday or relief for repatriated profits. No incentives for bringing back manufacturing jobs from overseas (done by letting foreign manufacturing contracts lapse). No fair and equal treatment of the unemployed, only special treatment of certain segments of the unemployed workforce. (If you\u2019re a teacher, firefighter or construction worker you have good reason to be excited, but if you\u2019re an out-of-work middle manager, you might as well go back to your cribbage game at the unemployment office.) No grants for worker re-training, and no long term tax breaks or incentives for increased exports of U.S.-made products.<\/p>\n

What the bill does contain is a number of separate elements that have only a tangential relationship to one another and which were probably cobbled together by academics who once studied job creation but never actually did it.<\/p>\n

A new version of voodoo economics<\/h3>\n

The one big thing that\u2019s missing from the bill is a fair and balanced way to fund it. Instead, much of the cost of all the wonderful small business-related giveaways will be paid by, you guessed it, the small businesses themselves! Anyone earning over $200,000 individually or $250,000 as a couple will cough up more in taxes.<\/p>\n

So, just when we thought there might be a glimmer of reasonableness from the White House on stopping the U.S. job hemorrhage, we\u2019re introduced to a new version of voodoo economics.<\/p>\n

In addition, the president mentioned that he wouldn\u2019t entertain breaking the bill up into smaller pieces. It\u2019s an all or nothing, take it or leave it offer and it must be passed now. Remind me, how is this offer different from all of the other wait-and-hurry-up offers?<\/p>\n

Stephan Helgesen is a retired foreign service officer who lived and worked in 24 countries. He was a small business owner on three separate occasions. He is now the honorary consul for Germany in New Mexico and owner of Second Opinion Marketing, an Albuquerque export consultancy. He can be reached at: helgesen@2ndopinionmarketing.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The \u201cAmerican Jobs Act\u201d is an underwhelming and underthought bill that reveals an amazing lack of understanding about how jobs are actually created, especially in a recessionary environment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1672,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,16],"tags":[118,116],"class_list":["post-31960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary","category-guest-columns","tag-economy","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1672"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31960\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}