The American Jobs Act and the Nefarious Party of No

So the President of the United States spends weeks barnstorming the country, from Dallas and Denver to Columbus and Cincinnati, giving barn-burning speeches about his magical elixir known as the American Jobs Act. His $447 billion jobs bill – designed to combat a national unemployment rate stuck above nine percent – is going to create two million new jobs, cut taxes, repair roads, schools and infrastructure, extend unemployment benefits and help local governments prevent teacher and police layoffs, he promises.

The GOP kills it anyway.

Republicans in the U.S. Senate, aided by turncoat Democratic senators Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Jon Tester of Montana, opposed a motion Tuesday night to advance the proposal, meaning now the White House has to shift gears and pressure lawmakers to pass smaller pieces of the package.

The proposal’s been sinking for weeks. One website I visited explained, “The bill included a 5.6 percent surtax on households earning more than $1 million as a way to pay for the package. Obama's bill originally proposed raising taxes on people with an annual salary of $200,000, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) upped the income level to bring reluctant Democrats on board with the offset.”

Yep, that’s right. Even as thousands of angry Americans are protesting class warfare and greed in lower Manhattan and over 200 other locations throughout the country, Democrats are still reluctant to raise taxes on the rich. Senator Jim Webb (D-Virginia), for example, said he wasn’t going to support the bill “because of its proposal to offset costs by raising taxes on the wealthy.”

I used to respect Webb, a Vietnam veteran who earned a Navy Cross, Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart fighting for this country as a First Lieutenant in the Marines. Now he’s apparently decided to fight for the residents of gated communities and for the Party of No, which is dedicated to ending the Obama presidency no matter what it costs.

"Now it’s time for both parties to work together and find common ground on removing government barriers to private-sector job growth," House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said after the vote.

Government barriers to job growth? What might those be, exactly, Mr. Speaker? Republicans controlled both houses of Congress for most of the time between 1995 and 2007. Your guy, Dubya, was in the White House from 2001 to 2009. By the end of 2008, the U.S. had lost a total of 2.6 million jobs. Seems like the only government barriers to job growth are Republicans.

Now it’s back to the drawing board for the White House, which must map out which pieces of the proposal need to be broken out and voted on separately. I hope our 14 million unemployed Americans can wait a little longer for these political games to play out.

I’m no paranoid, tin foil hat-wearing conspiracy nut but it does seem like something nefarious is going on here. The votes are there to cut taxes for the richest Americans, which cost billions, but not for a job creation package that would benefit the middle class.

If I live long enough, I’ll be able to tell my grandchildren that I was watching as our country fell.


Sources: Huffington Post, Voice of America, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.