President Obama is shifting his Jobs Bill rhetoric a bit and, in doing so, he is making clear his real plan for the economy. For the last month or so, Obama has been going from rally to rally yelling "Pass this bill now!" The bill, of course, is Obama's American Jobs Act. The sudden urgency to pass the bill was amusing since Obama spent years doing nothing and even put off discussion of his "critical" bill in order to complete his vacation on Martha's Vineyard. Nevertheless, Obama was out there on the hustings imploring Congress to pass a bill that provides a bit of temporary tax relief in exchange for a permanent long term tax increase. The rhetoric began to change a bit about ten days ago. At that point, Obama shifted from asking Congress to pass the bill to saying that the Republicans were blocking the bill. Today, he shifted further and is now saying that if the economy gets worse, it will be because the Republicans blocked his jobs bill.
Let's translate this into English:
1) Obama has known all along that his bill will not pass. He is undertaking a political effort, not and effort to help the economy. This is clear. If Obama were trying to help the economy, there would have been no reason to wait until September to introduce it. If the economy needed help, it needed help immediately and not just once the ratings on the TV news shows rose after the August doldrums were over. Further, if Obama seriously thought that his bill would pass, he would have gotten someone to actually introduce the bill so that it could proceed down the path on which legislation gets approved. Of course, Obama had no senator or congressman introduce the bill for a while after he began his "pass the bill now" chants. It makes as much sense as my going to a local car dealer and chanting "give me my car now" even though I never bothered to place an order for it.
2) Obama realizes that the economy is getting worse and he has no clue what to do about it. Once Obama began blaming Republican for the failure of the jobs bill to pass, it became clear that he had no idea what to do. Obama is trying to pass the blame for his own failure onto the GOP. If Obama thought he actually had a way to help the economy, he would have called in the Congressional leadership and tried to explain his plan. He could also then have discussed modifications to that plan, if any, suggested by the Congressional leaders. Instead, we just get the insipid rallies with the chants about passing a bill that for the most part had not even yet been introduced into Congress.
3) Obama is hoping that the American people are so stupid that he can convince them that the problems in the economy are not due to his mistakes, but rather due to the failure of the GOP to pass his bill. It is not going to work. First, the American people already know that the Obama plan was not going to help. Recent polling shows that a substantial majority of American voters say that the Obama jobs plan would not help the economy. That will make it hard for Obama to place the blame on the GOP. Let's see, the Republicans refused to pass a plan that would not work. So???? Beyond this, there is ample proof that the Democrats in Congress are just as opposed to the Obama plan as anyone else. The senate has refused to even vote on the Obama plan despite Republican efforts to put it to a vote.
There is a lot more to be said about this subject, but basically it boils down to this. Obama is hoping that American voters are so stupid that they will believe his claims that the economy would have gotten better due to passage of a second small stimulus bill when the first big one did not help. He is hoping that he can convince those stupid voters that the GOP blocked the bill when it was both parties who recognized it for the failure that it is. Obama is hoping that he can transfer the blame for his own mismanagement of the economy onto Republicans who had no hands on the levers of power for the first two years of Obama's term.
All I can say is that the American people are not that dumb.
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