I was just watching This Week with George Snuffleupagus
Michael Steel, the new Chairman of the RNC, made an excellent point. I would love the Obama supporters to comment.
He said "There is a difference between 'work' and 'jobs'. This stimulus plan is full of 'work'."
(that is a paraphrase as this was just on TV)
He continued by explaining the difference. Government funded infruastructure improvements, construction, research, etc are by nature temporary. They are funded for a period of time that expires when the work has been completed. A job is created by a company that takes risks, that grows, that is self-sufficient. Barack has said that he is going to create 3-4 million 'jobs'.
These aren't jobs!
That is a good point. To be honest, I really hadn't considered that.
ReplyDeleteI think it is inaccurate to call them jobs, but I don't think that necessarily means creating "work" is a bad thing right now.
However, I think the Obama people realize this and the idea is to provide "work" while the economy recovers, at which point there will be more "jobs" which "workers" could transition into.
Also, I think there is a large portion of Obama's plan that is meant to create "jobs." I think these are also the parts that Conservatives are most opposed to.
Much of Obama's rhetoric has to do with reinventing the energy industry and auto industry with green jobs of the future! oooooh, green future!
I'm not going to claim these are good ideas necessarily, i don't know, my only point is that I think Obama has considered that weakness when it comes to "shovel ready work" and has at least tried to proposed plans to create more job jobs in the future.
Matt, yeah I don't think creating 'work' is wrong either. You should have hear Snuffleupagus though, he really didn't get that difference though. It was like he was being purposely dense, very annoying.
ReplyDelete"reinventing the energy industry and auto industry with green jobs"
Here is the funny part... I would be totally cool with that! But go through the spending and show me how much goes to those things? 10%, 15%?
Its really not that much.
I just checked:
$45b for energy
$125b on infrastructure
$1.5b on science and tech
via MSNBC
George Will made an excellent point on This Week too.
ReplyDeleteOne of the liberal panelists was making the case that Barack has reached out to Republicans and that it is the Republicans who are grandstanding.
George Will countered by saying something to the effect of: There are 2 fundamentally different philosophies on how to solve this problem, asking the Republicans to abandon their core values and blaming them for standoff is not an effective way of reaching consensus. This is how we make laws, both parties need their input and say into the bill.
I couldn't agree more. The prevailing attitude coming from Obama, Pelosi and Reid has been "we won" therefor we "dismiss" and "reject" alternate theories so don't be influenced by Rush Limbaugh. I have already provided numerous quotes in numerous posts documenting this.
Can you ever remember Bush saying anything critical of Democrats or blaming Democrats specifically for anything? I never remember Bush being this direct in attacks on Democrats.