Obama’s Solution For Unemployment? Put ‘Em On The Government Payroll!

The Whistler • February 14, 2008

Yeah, that’ll work!

JANESVILLE, Wis. – Democrat Barack Obama said Wednesday that as president he would spend $210 billion to create jobs in construction and environmental industries, as he tried to win over economically struggling voters.
Obama’s investment would be over 10 years as part of two programs. The larger is $150 billion to create 5 million so-called “green collar” jobs to develop more environmentally friendly energy sources.
Sixty-billion dollars would go to a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank to rebuild highways, bridges, airports and other public projects. Obama estimated that could generate nearly 2 million jobs, many of them in the construction industry that’s been hit by the housing crisis.

Don’t we already have a Federal Highway Trust Fund for the sort of projects that Obama is talking about? And doesn’t it have billions of dollars in it that usually get siphoned away by greedy politicians looking to fund decidedly non-infrastructure-related pet projects?
Maybe Obama should look toward fixing the problems with the way our infrastructure development and maintenance is currently funded instead of inventing a whole new level of government bureaucracy and spending. That’d be the fiscally responsible thing to do. But then again, Obama is a liberal and things like fiscal responsibility are anathema to them.
But his idea to just hire all the unemployed people is a good one. In fact, I think the government should just employ everyone and then we coul….hey wait a minute!

Tags: Asshats, Cultural Marxism, Domestic Issues, Economy, Nanny State, Politics, The Loony Left

http://sayanythingblog.com/ likwidshoe

…but clearly he is just being cynical since he opposes cuts to any liberal programs.

That, and he believes that the entire debt was cooked up in the last seven years. If you bring up the fact that most of the debt is due to his beloved programs, he changes the subject.
http://SayAnythingBlog.com The_Whistler_ofnd

Obviously the illegal issue would solve any so called unemployment problem. The only unemployment problem is that too many people think they’re worth more than the employers do.

They just can’t produce $5 of work an hour and make $20? Wait a minute, Obama’s onto something.
http://sayanythingblog.com/ likwidshoe

WOOF said, Don;t blame spending on liberals
you guys have been in charge for 7 years.

There wasn’t a debt before? 70+ percent of government spending isn’t liberal entitlement programs?

Tell us another story dude.
syn

Obama’s reaching out to those who are skilled at shoving a lit sparkler up their anus while singing ‘screw the McChimphaliburtonoilneoconnazi’ song; spending $100,000 for a degree in Head-up-Your-Rectum has to be worth something, no?
Bat One

Patriot,

Construction jobs? You mean like fat, long-term union contract jobs? The kind that liberals like to use to repay union thugs for their election day support?

The kind where if there’s a shortage of workers, well, we couldn’t possible think about sending any illegal aliens back where they came from.

Those kind of construction jobs?
HG

Somehow we turned into a super power. Maybe it worked.

Woof,

I’ll be very generous and give you a small credit for using the term “maybe”.

Who do you think you’re kiddin’?
HG

Woof, many republicans would privatize SS, not cut it. It is viewed as a retirement plan more than an entitlement. Social programs that redistribute earnings to non-earners are the real losers, except for securing a democrat voting block. I guess that makes democrats the real beneficiaries of such spending.

As for Cheney’s defense budgets, I trust the guy on military issues and spending. Liberal disdain for the military is what troubles us conservatives about a liberal commander-in-chief and defense budgets. Post cold-war defense spending was reduced and we’re fine with that.
patriot

I saw this, and I saw construction jobs. He wants to create construction jobs? What rock has Obama been living under?

Does he not know that there is a shortage of people and too many unfilled jobs in this area? And in fact, if he would send a few illegal immigrants home there would be even more jobs available, without him spending a dime and only enforcing a few laws.

Perhaps that’s it, he wants to create more jobs for illegal immigrants that he can give them drivers licenses and grant amnesty to so they can vote.
robert108

Don;t blame spending on liberals
you guys have been in charge for 7 years.

Not true; one of the largest and most wasteful and useless “programs”, the so-called “War on Poverty”, started in 1964. It’s still going, still wasting our money, and still not doing anything at all about poverty; trillions spent for nothing.
You lefties are the spending champs.
robert108

But everytime a Republican proposes fixing the problem the Democrats demagogue the issue, scare the old people and block any reform.

Yep. The Dems would rather raise taxes to “save” a failed program. In fact, if a program needs ever increasing taxation to make it “work”, that’s the sign that the program is a mistake. A program that actually “pays for itself”(like the Dems always ask of tax rate cuts) would require lower taxes, not higher ones. If social spending worked, it would be paying for itself by now. Social spending has had 76 years to “work”, and we should know by now that it doesn’t. It’s just an ever-deepening hole into which our money disappears.
robert108

SS runs a surplus which goes into the general fund. $175 Billion? last year.

Nice disinformation, leftie. When the SS “bite” was increased in the late sixties(by Johnson), it was in anticipation of the coming demographic crisis, due to arrive in 2014, I believe. This “surplus”, instead of being invested, was frittered away by the political class, mostly Dems.
Bat One

If a Democrat president, Lyndon Johnson, and a Democrat congress had not instituted the theft of Social Security and other trust fund surpluses with the disingenuous gimmick known as “unified budgeting” to help hide the true cost of the Democrats’ “War on Poverty” (I believe the popular expression was “guns and butter”), there would have been no need to raise Social Security taxes during the 1980′s, no need to talk euphemistically about “lockboxes” during the 1990s, and no reason to concern ourselves with the coming Social Security bankruptcy now.

And now the appallingly ignorant Democrats want to raise taxes, choking off the very economic growth we will need to simply sustain or current level of affluence and our ability to deal with the economic problems we’ve created.
HG

That’s how we progressed.

A little conflation going on there Woof.

Socialized medicine or programs didn’t cure anyone. A free market and free people gave us the best health care on the planet. Charity has done far more for people than any social program the creates a dependent class wholly servile to democrats.

R108, is right. America’s success is based on achievement not the common good.
robert108

You sure they are two seperate groups?

Yes; the achievers pay for the social spending; the “poor and downtrodden” collect it. Big difference.

It’s “separate”, btw.
robert108

That’s how we progressed.

You only list the 25% of social spending that actually does something; what about the other 75% that is wasted? War on Poverty(no reduction in poverty).
Our Space Program wasn’t “social spending”, btw.
Even so, none of that spending produced progress toward our being a superpower. It isn’t the “poor and downtrodden” who make us a superpower; it’s the achievers, and they don’t get the benefit of any social spending; they pay for it, and succeed despite the drain on their resources.
robert108

Govt spending is not, and never will be, investment.
robert108

Woof: Furthermore, all of our social progress isn’t due to social spending; a great deal of it is due to the upward mobility of the free enterprise system, and the general overall increase in prosperity we generate, which benefits all, even the invaders.
You have twice failed to address the fact that govt social spending continues to increase faster than population growth, which is proof that it doesn’t work to cure any of the social problems that it claims to address. Even if it just kept pace with population growth, that would be evidence of failure. The only metric of success of social spending is that it shrinks over time, as it becomes less necessary.
That’s not happening.
mora55051

This sounds like a good idea, remember wpa??? it got the country back to work How about hoover dam. This is what we need. To work for what you get. If there is a shortage like some people say, then why is the unemployment rate so high. I say no more hand outs, you work for what you get, get a reasonable wage, and watch how you spend it. Everything will work out fine.
dannyboy

It isn’t the “poor and downtrodden” who make us a superpower; it’s the achievers,

And proud we are of all of them.
Natalie

“…Obama is a liberal and things like fiscal responsibility are anathema to them.”

Do I need to point out the extreme national debt that “fiscal conservatives” such as Reagan, Bush 1 and Bush 2 have accrued? Or the fact that our last liberal president left us with a surplus? No? Ok then.
http://SayAnythingBlog.com The_Whistler_ofnd

Right and Obama’s going to put the illegal aliens to work doing stuff that doesn’t need to be done.

That way there will be room for their cousins to come here as well.
HG

Woof is right that republicans didn’t do anything much less enough to cut entitlements, but clearly he is just being cynical since he opposes cuts to any liberal programs.
HG

We ought to give Clinton some credit for the surplus given his 13.1% cuts in defense spending in the 90′s. If we do the math by liberal standards, then factoring in inflation and the proposed increases thats like a 60% “cut” or something.
robert108

Somehow we turned into a super power. Maybe it worked.

So, according to you, social spending made us into a superpower? That’s ridiculous on its face, but you miss the real point: If social spending worked to improve social conditions, less of it would be necessary as time goes on. The reality is that it’s growing like a cancer on our economy. We are a superpower in spite of our wasteful social spending.
http://sayanythingblog.com/ likwidshoe

There was a surplus.

Thank the Republican Congress.

The Democratic party that spent trillions giving us, not eliminating, poverty has no business giving anybody economic criticism.

Repubs controlled all branches of gov’t and did not end entitlements.

How would they do that?

They can’t. You guys have engineered the game to prevent freedom from these Ponzi schemes, and now you have the audacity to bitch about it. There’s a word that describes what you’re doing: stupidity.
http://SayAnythingBlog.com The_Whistler_ofnd

Robert, there was also a large SS tax bump in the Reagan years to shore up Social Security.

That surplus is going to evaporate in the next few years. The general fund has no way of paying off the “debt” that it “owes” to Social Security.

If the Democrats would work with the Republicans we could fix this. But everytime a Republican proposes fixing the problem the Democrats demagogue the issue, scare the old people and block any reform.
Bat One

Right and Obama’s going to put the illegal aliens to work doing stuff that doesn’t need to be done.

That’s what Democrats, and unions, do, isn’t it?
WOOFX

Over Cheney’s four years as secretary of defense, encompassing budgets for fiscal years 1990-93, DoD’s total obligational authority in current dollars declined from $291.3 billion to $269.9 billion. Except for FY 1991, when the TOA budget increased by 1.7 percent, the Cheney budgets showed negative real growth: -2.9 percent in 1990, -9.8 percent in 1992, and -8.1 percent in 1993. During this same period total military personnel declined by 19.4 percent, from 2.202 million in FY 1989 to 1.776 million in FY 1993. The Army took the largest cut, from 770,000 to 572,000-25.8 percent of its strength

No, No, No, It Just can’t Be
WOOFX

The Earned Income Tax Credit

Ronald Reagan heralded it as “the best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress.”
WOOFX

There is not plenty of money in the budget there is growing deficit.
It’s an election year and the stimulus and lowering of interest rates are designed to throw money into the economy.

If prices went up, people demanded not a stable purchasing power for the marks they had, but more marks to buy what they needed. More marks were printed, and more, and more.

-Adam Fergusson, When Money Dies

Don;t blame spending on liberals
you guys have been in charge for 7 years.
WOOFX

There was a surplus.
Repubs controlled all branches of gov’t and did not end entitlements.
WOOFX

Why repair and construct infrastructure , let’s just send everyone a check.
WOOFX

We put money into the
GI bill, education, (thank sputnik),
we supported orphans and widows, people out of work, allowed old people to live independent lives,
cured the sick , rehabilitated the broken, fed children and adults.

That’s how we progressed.
WOOFX

Somehow we turned into a super power. Maybe it worked.

Social spending has had 76 years to “work”, and we should know by now that it doesn’t.
http://sayanythingblog.com robport

There’s actually plenty of money in the federal budget for a rebate and increased care for infrastructure (not that I’m terribly enamored with the rebate-as-economic-stimulus). We just need to cut back on some of the totally unnecessary things our government funds.

Earmarks, for one. Our massive entitlement spending, for another.

The rebates aren’t the problem, Poodle. Liberal-spending politicians are.
http://sayanythingblog.com robport

I said “liberal spending,” poodle. Liberal has more than one meaning.

Learn to read.

I’m not defending Republicans here, but let me point out that you’re not exactly one to lecture me about government overspending.
http://sayanythingblog.com robport

I thought construction jobs were the ones Americans wouldn’t do. You know, the ones we needed illegal immigrants for.
WOOFX

SS runs a surplus which goes into the general fund.
$175 Billion? last year.
WOOFX

It isn’t the “poor and downtrodden” who make us a superpower; it’s the achievers, and they don’t get the benefit of any social spending;

You sure they are two seperate groups?

Think medicine amazing?
Feds pump money into med schools, research, etc,

How bout that internet?
WOOFX

Now with Apellate Court approval in Texas.

reaching out to those who are skilled at shoving a lit sparkler up their anus
Leah

We are sick and tired of talk when the unemployment numbers are over 5 million! He needs to sign an Executive order.. for unemployment extensions to be passed until the promise of jobs equals the numbers of employed. Also.. what about the Outsourcing taking our jobs?

http://intensedebate.com/profiles/robport robport

If you want to talk about outsourcing, blame big government for taxing and regulating jobs out of the country. You can hardly blame businesses for choosing friendlier economic climes.

And calling on the President to mandate unemployment expansions through executive order is the height of folly. We have a President and a Congress with separated powers. WE don't have a king.

Besides, what you need is a job. Not more unemployment benefits. Saddling businesses with yet another expansion of unemployment benefits isn't going to create any jobs.

Bat One

No president, including this one, has the constitutional authority to extend unemployment benefits arbitrarily as Leah suggests… regadless of the circumstnaces. Such an Executive Order would mean about as much as an Obama campaign promise.

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Obama’s Solution For Unemployment? Put ‘Em On The Government Payroll!

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