Posts Tagged ‘Unemployment’
Walk the Stairs
Oct12
By John Feehery
Dana Milbank had a funny story in the Post today about the pathetic protest movement that has gripped (well, gripped might be a strong word), Washington:
Attempting to emulate the Occupy Wall Street protests, Washington activists and some out-of-town guests set themselves the lofty goal of occupying the Hart Senate Office Building. “We are there to shut the place down!” organizer David Swanson told his small band of followers.
But how to do this with only a few dozen demonstrators? Well, Swanson said, they could push all the buttons on the elevators — the way naughty children sometimes do in apartment buildings. “There are people who are wanting to go into the elevators and fill them and not get out and push all the buttons,” he said. “If you like that, do it.”
Forcing Senate staff to take the stairs is a pretty interesting way to spark rebellion in the streets.
E.J. Dionne earlier this month complained that the left needed its own version of the Tea Part Movement.
Hey, E.J., you can have ours. We are done with it.
If ever there was a time for some real good protests, now is the time.
Congress is dysfunctional. Local and State governments are going broke, mostly because they have been robbed blind by government employee unions. The economy bumbles along. Many of our roads and bridges are in a state of disrepair.
We have a system in place that allows people to get paid to do nothing for 99 weeks at a time, and they don’t even have to get a drug test.
The problem is that once they have been on unemployment for two years on the government dime nobody wants to hire them, because well, they have been doing nothing for close to two years.
And somehow, this is the fault of the people who don’t want to extend unemployment for even longer.
You know who should be protesting?
The 90% of the American people who go to work everyday and pay taxes to the state, local and federal governments.
The people who pay their mortgages, even though they know their houses aren’t worth as much as they were when they first bought them, because, well, those are the breaks in life, and a contract is a contract.
The people who bathe every day, who take care of their personal appearances, who don’t look like complete slobs when they leave the house in the morning.
The people who take care to raise their kids right, who are polite to people they don’t know, who care about being good citizens, who pick up the trash that they leave behind.
The people who don’t envy the rich, don’t blame the rich, don’t really even think about the rich, don’t necessarily want to be rich, but don’t begrudge the rich their wealth, but are more concerned about taking care of their own problems, who carefully take care of their own bills and balance their family checkbooks every month.
The people who worry about our culture going down the tubes, who worry that their kids are learning the wrong values from school, who worry about the crap on television and who generally feel that culturally, America is on the wrong track.
These are the people who ought to protest, but they don’t.
You know why? Because they are busy.
And if they see that all of the elevator buttons are pushed, they will just walk the stairs.
Back to School Night
Sep9
By John Feehery
It was back to school night in the Feehery Household, so I missed the President’s address to the Congress.
Bummer.
I knew the President was giving a big speech because all the roads around the Capitol were closed, complicating my effort to find parking at Back to School Night (my son’s school is about 4 blocks from the white domed building).
I can’t say I was that disappointed to miss the speech. In my Congressional career, I saw plenty of joint sessions where a President makes this or that speech. I remember when George Bush the first gave an address to Congress where he tried, in vain, to shift his attention to the fascinating things that were happening in the rest of the world to a domestic agenda back here at home. But Bush didn’t have much of the “vision” thing, and he ultimately lost.
In fact, Obama’s troubles remind me a bit of Bush’s downfall. Both promised to cut regulations after signing laws that vastly expanded the regulatory framework of the country (Bush signed the Clean Air Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and a new Civil Rights bill; Obama signed Obamacare and Dodd-Frank). Both have had to contend with fiscal crises (Bush had to bail out the Savings and Loans; Obama had TARP). Both had moments where they signed tax policies that went against their political base’s wishes (Bush broke his no-new-taxes pledge; Obama extended the Bush tax cuts for the rich). Both appointed Chiefs of staff from Chicago (Sam Skinner and Bill Daley). Both had notable victories overseas (Bush won the first Persian Gulf War; Obama authorized the assassination of Osama Bin Laden). Both had to contend with high unemployment rates and staggering budget deficits). Both Bush and Obama are left-handed and both have been called wimps by their more ardent critics.
The Obama speech last night (unless of course, you were on the West Coast, where it was yesterday afternoon), wasn’t really supposed to grab the attention of the viewing public. I bet you that more than a few people were either going to school events like me or attending high school football games or getting ready for the Packers-Saints game or were stuck in traffic, trying to get home from work.
The speech was not meant for viewing. It was meant so key passages could be captured on tape, so that the President’s campaign could ready a passel of 30 second (or 30 minute) commercials for when the going really gets tough. Nothing better than having the President standing on the House floor, holding his finger up (with John Boehner sitting behind him), saying: “Pass this jobs bill now.”
That’s the theory, at least.
The White House sent out a memo detailing how his plan will help Hispanics, Blacks, Native Americans and women. It didn’t detail how it was going to help older Irish American Catholics like me, so I had to read the whole plan for myself, and what I found was that it wouldn’t help really at all.
In an era when every major economist says that the best thing we can do for the long-term economy is to flatten out the tax rate, get rid of all the loopholes and make it fairer, simpler and permanent, the President proposed a bunch of temporary little tax provisions that would make the code much more complicated and harder to understand.
In an era when our entitlement programs are running out of money, he proposes diverting the funding from Medicare and Social Security to pass for a short-term economic stimulus.
In an era when small business is asking the government to get off its back, the President proposes a plan to make it easier for small business to get more government into its operations.
In an era when local and state governments are trimming back and fighting their local unions, the President proposes a plan to give the state and local unions more bargaining power to get more money.
In an era when we need to fix the housing market, the President offers a proposal to help homeowners rehab their homes.
In an era when we have persistent long-term unemployment, the President makes it easier for people to stay on unemployment.
And then, to top it off, the President asks the Supercommittee to pick up the 447 billion dollar price tag.
That is kind of like going to a restaurant when you are on a diet and on the wagon, ordering the Surf and Turf and the Cristal, and then having the folks at the other table pick up the tab.
Congressional Republicans were overly polite to this President during and after the speech. They understand that unemployment is a big issue facing the country, and they understand that people are tired of partisan warfare. That being said, this speech was a joke and the proposals are worse than a joke.
The President should go back to school and take some business classes. It might help him understand why his “vision thing” is so bad for the country.
