The American Jobs Act -- a few details

The text of the Obama jobs bill is finally available. Here are a few of the more interesting tidbits that come from the bill:

1) Thirty billion dollars is to be given to states to pay for teachers' salaries. The teachers are to be either ones who had previously been laid off or new hires. Each state receiving the funds has to certify that it will keep the expenditure levels at least as high in the following years. In other words, a state can get funds but it has to agree to keep paying for those extra teachers by itself after the first year. Given the precarious nature of the finances of many states, this is like guaranteeing that there will be serious future budget problems.

2) Obama has four billion dollars of the new money going to high speed rail construction. This is a failed boondoggle that has no place in government programs. It makes no sense to pump money into rail lines that will never pay for themselves (or even come close to do ing so.)

3) Two billion dollars is directed to capital expenditures to be made for Amtrak. Again, this is maniacal. Amtrak has few riders except in the Northeast. Why would two billion dollars be wasted fixing up the line in Nebraska or Missouri? It is throwing money down the drain.

4) The bill establishes a program under which an employer can reduce the hours that its employees work and those workers can then receive partial unemployment insurance. In other words, if a company with twenty employees only needs 18, it can cut the hours of all employees by 10% and those folks can then get 10% unemployment insurance in addition to their reduced wages. This is a plan to introduce inefficiency into the private sector at government expense. Instead of laying off two workers who will then seek other work, the whole group will take the hit with the government picking up the difference. There will be inefficient use of all the workers as a result.

5) The Act establishes a new class of people against whom there can be no discrimination: the unemployed. It will be illegal for an employer to favor someone who is already employed in the hiring process. Think of that. We will soon see lawsuits that show that some company like Walmart hired 4000 people and 96% of them were employed at the time even though the unemployment rate is 9%. This will be the evidence that Walmart discriminates against the unemployed. Of course, there is probably a valid reason why many of those who are unemployed remain unemployed. Obama's answer is "so what!" This provision is a gold mine for lawyers.

The last thing this country needs is another avenue for greedy trial lawyers to follow to further mess things up.

6)There are major tax increases set forth in the bill. perhaps the strangest is the repeal of a long list of oil and gas provisions that were passed to encourage domestic production and to reduce dependance on foreign oil. Simply put, these changes make no sense.

7) The bill provides that if the Supercommittee set up in the debt ceiling compromise finds an additional 450 billion in savings, then none of the tax increases set up in the Jobs bill will go into effect.

These are just a few of the items that struck me on the first review of the bill. The name of this monstrosity ought to be changed from the American Jobs Act to the Obama Joke Act. It is a messs!