Uglysasquatch, Mercenary Major wrote:
Jophiel wrote:
decayed wrote:
So its a political maneuver? Neat!
Well, I don't think there's anything in there that would cause him to cry if it passed. But it's certainly to his advantage to present centrist ideas and leave it to the GOP to either climb aboard the Obama train or refuse things like payroll tax cuts and employer tax credits for hiring returning veterans.
These aren't centrist ideas and I'm sure when gbaji finally pops into this thread, he'll explain why.
Where the hell is the "chicken" smiley? Could use it right about now.
As Ugly points out, just saying that your plan is centrist and consists of stuff both parties agree with and it should be passed right away (which he repeated like 5 times in the speech) doesn't make that actually true. It just means you said it. This is hardly the first time the Democrats have fallen over themselves to insist that something they're doing is "exactly what Republicans want, so if they oppose it they're just being partisans!".
The problem, as I've pointed out numerous times in the past is the incredible flexibility the Left seems to have when using descriptive words. They use the phrase "tax cut" in ways that don't actually involve cutting any taxes. They use the word "saving" in a way that is nearly synonymous with "spending". The word "fair" often means the exact opposite when used by the Dems. And these are just a few examples off the top of my head.
In the specific case of this jobs plan, it sure looks like he's doing more of the same thing he's done in the past. He's using the promise of jobs to throw money at the unions who support him, while leaving the more productive parts of the economy to pay the bill. Does anyone really think the problem with our economy is that we don't have enough public school teachers, or that our schools don't have sufficient interwebs? As I said in the other thread about jobs, we can choose to spend money on building up infrastructure, but it's a mistake to do this thinking it will create jobs or boost the economy.
While I'm sure there are a few ideas in there that conservatives will agree with, I'm equally certain that the proposed plan contains many times more poison pills within it. The very discriminatory application of funding for these new jobs is just the start of the problems. What exactly does he propose in terms of helping people refinance their homes, for example. What are these tax credits he proposes for as well?
There's also some interesting contradictions in the speech. He talks about how important it is to simplify the tax code and eliminate deductions, but then turns around and immediately proposes what are essentially just another set of deductions and exemptions to the tax code. So he's not so much for simplifying it as changing it to benefit groups he likes (to vote for him!). And predictably all the costs rest on his political enemies while the benefits go to his friends (with a bit sprinkled about for the regular people as well of course!).
He also talks about how it's different because it'll be paid for "and here's how:", but then follows that with basically saying we'll just pile it onto existing debt we have to pay for. I'm sorry, but when we just got dinged for basically failing to be aggressive enough about reducing out debt and questions about this super committee's ability to actually deliver on the debt reduction they've been asked to provide, it seems bizarre to just handwave away the costs of this program by saying that the super committee will just have to find another $500B to cut "somewhere".
And for those of us who already suspect that the Dems will do everything they can in that committee to pay off those debts with tax increases of some kind, this just ups the ante on an already questionable process. What happened to not just kicking the can down the road? This is basically just an extreme example of this and is just putting more pressure on an already boiling over debt problem.