Obama's Labor Day Gift to Labor

On Labor Day this week, President Obama interrupted his 7th vacation since July 4th to jet to Milwaukee for yet another address from on high. That the President chose to deliver his message to a crowd composed of AFL-CIO union members was only right. After all, he bought them, he should be able to get some use out of them.

The line that got the most attention from the President was the "off-the-teleprompter" remark that, "They talk about me like a dog." This is patently untrue, since the majority of Americans like their dogs. Obama's poll numbers, in the meantime, have been falling faster than a fat man's pants on America's Funniest Home Videos. As usual, the White House has determined that this is because they have a "communications problem". To their way of thinking, whenever the American public doesn't like something, it is obviously because we are too stupid to understand the brilliance of their thinking, so they send out the Professor-in-Chief to explain it to us - over and over and over again. Hey, Chief, here's an idea - maybe your poll numbers are slipping not because of your communication, but because of the message that you are trying to communicate.

Of course, the usual suspects on the left are equally as convinced that the problem is that the President and his lackey-controlled Congress are having problems because they have been, get this, too moderate! That's right, according to former Enron-advisor Paul Krugman, Thomas Friedman, et al., this president, who has nationalized two thirds of our auto manufacturers, nationalized our largest lending and finance institutions, nationalized our health care system, wishes to tax us for using energy, appeased our enemies while snubbing our allies, and has increased the federal deficit more than all the presidents from George Washington through Ronald Reagan combined, is too "moderate".

This brings us back to the Labor Day speech. Obama obviously borrowed a page from out-going Chairperson of the President's Council of Economic Advisors, Christina Romer’s, resignation speech when she said (paraphrased) that the stimulus bill didn't work and, therefore, what we need is more stimulus. As one wag on Twitter stated, “President Obama is the type that, when he walks into a wall, feels the next time he should walk faster.”

Yes, that’s right. Obama is proposing more spending. He announced a $50 billion new plan to spend on infrastructure. According to Obama, this will create new jobs immediately while jump-starting the economy. Why didn’t someone think of that before? Oh, that’s right, they did. The first stimulus plan, we were told, would provide money for “shovel-ready” jobs that would keep unemployment under 8% while ramping up the economy and putting a unicorn in every garage. Okay, I made that bit about the unicorn up, but it is about as believable. In fact, unemployment promptly climbed to about 10%, where it has hovered for the past several months. The “Summer of Recovery” has become the Summer of Wreckovery as the economy stumbles, zombie-like, with practically no growth. Now, President Obama, who just last week told us that, “The economy is right on track,” now tells us that he wants to spend another $50 billion to, apparently, get the economy right on a better track.

President Obama has never run a business. He has never had to meet a payroll or balance a budget. As a community organizer, his job was, basically, to try to get as much money from the government as possible to put toward whatever community he was organizing at the time. It is understandable that he would think the way to solve every problem is to throw money at it. The problem is that money has to come from somewhere. Cutting spending is unacceptable to a Democrat (and most Republicans), so that leaves printing money and devaluing the currency, borrowing, taxing, or some combination of the three. While Obama, as a crumb to Democrats running for Congress in the midterms, sounds like he will extend the Bush tax cuts for the “middle class” (though don’t believe it until you see it), he says that he has no plans to extend the Bush tax cuts for “millionaires and billionaires”, redefined by this administration to include anyone making over $200,000 a year. Of course, many of those filing taxes that make over $200,000 are small businesses filing as individuals.

This new infrastructure bill is merely yet another sop to the Democrat’s favorite special interest group – the unions. Now, I admit that there is a real need for some infrastructure repair and restoration, though in my opinion, like almost everything else, infrastructure repair would be better performed by almost any entity that is not run out of Washington. The fact is, according to the Davis-Bacon Act, any public works project funded by Washington is required to pay union scale wages and benefits. If we really wanted to put Americans back to work and reducing our deficit, Obama would suspend this act, as was done by Franklin Roosevelt, Nixon and both Bushes during times of emergency. Actually, he should repeal it, but the fact that he would rather have bamboo skewers inserted under his fingernails than upset the unions tells us all we need to know about how serious he is about turning around the economy.

If Obama really wanted to help the economy, he would dispel the climate of uncertainty around business by extending all the Bush tax cuts. He would push for a decreased business tax, and relax some of the ridiculous small-business strangling regulations. He would push for a repeal of Obamacare, which places huge taxes on businesses and individuals. He would announce a series of austerity measures to concentrate on reducing the deficit and he would resist the urge to insert the government in every crisis, allowing the free market to regulate itself, as it is meant to do.

Of course, the chances of any of this happening is approximately equal to that of Santa Claus sliding down my chimney on Christmas Eve and leaving Catherine Zeta Jones in my stocking (or better yet, in her stockings.)

Our economy needs a stimulus, but the stimulus it needs can only come from the private sector when the government gets out of the way. What we don’t need right now is another union handout.