The American Jobs Act

After watching President Obama's address to the Congress last night, I think he made one thing perfectly clear: he wants Congress to pass his "American Jobs Act" immediately! To make his point perfectly clear, he repeated it seventeen times.

Ok, I'll give the guy credit. At least he came up with a plan. With the ailing jobs market, having a jobs plan is a pretty good place to start. But will it really work? And if it does, how many jobs will be created as a result of it? After all, the price tag on Obama's latest "stimulus" plan is estimated to be around $450 billion. This is only a couple of years after Obama pitched his first $800 billion stimulus plan. And that sure hasn't jump started the economy the way it was supposed to.

Ok, onto the speech......

First off, I was happy to hear Obama stay on the topic of jobs. With the reelection season heating up, I was worried that he would transition into campaign mode (it's not like we haven't seen this before) and get sidetracked. Of course, Old Faithful (aka the teleprompter) would be there just in case.

I also like that he was interested in bringing jobs back to America, However, this thought quickly lost steam when the CEO of General Electric was noticed conveniently sitting next to the First Lady  (the Chairman of GE is under fire for shipping jobs off to China). Seeing the GE bigwig in the VIP section just didn't look good when the President was pushing for more "Made In America" labels.

I liked that, according to Obama, the average working class family will get a tax break. The social security payroll tax would be cut for workers as well as employers. Since I don't expect to collect a dime of social security money, the less I have to contribute, the happier I am.

I liked that there would be emphasis to hire those who have been unemployed six months or more. And there would be tax breaks for companies to hire veterans. I agree that we need to do everything for our returning veterans. After sending them off to war halfway across the world, the very least we can do is give them a job when they come home.

Overall, I like the benefits of the American Jobs Act. But I kept asking myself, "How are going to pay for this?"  There will be $253 billion in tax cuts and another $194 in new spending. That's a lot of money for a government that's already in a massive amount of debt. Hey, I know past Presidents have ran up big debts too, but this administration is throwing around billions like dollar bills at a stripper bar!

The Republicans have essentially been backed into a corner. They're unlikely to vote for a bill without having a clear explanation of how it will be paid for. And, if they don't pass the bill, they'll look unsympathetic to the countless of Americans who are out of work.

So, whether or not the American Jobs Act is the solution to beefing up the American workforce, I think we can all agree that something needs to be done. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out in the Congress over the next couple of weeks.....

kw