The President Stops Pleading
For anyone coming out of a two-year coma, Barack Obama’s jobs speech to Congress may have looked like the familiar sight of an American President exhorting lawmakers to legislate solutions to a crisis.
For the rest of who have had the misfortune to be wide awake, what was striking was Obama’s discovery of the imperative mood in his address. “Pass this jobs bill,” he kept repeating like the mantra of a hypnotist trying to impose his will on assembled Tea Party naysayers.
Whatever happens to his proposal for $447 billion in tax cuts and government spending to speed up economic recovery, the President’s grammatical shift is a departure from pleading with Republicans to be reasonable, as they never were in arm-wrestling over the debt ceiling, to challenging them to act now on job creation or face the consequences next November.
“The next election is 14 months away,” he told them with sledgehammer subtlety. “And the people who sent us here–the people who hired us to work for them–they don’t have the luxury of waiting 14 months. Some of them are living week to week, paycheck to paycheck, even day to day. They need help, and they need it now.”
Just in case some of the non-attendees missed the point, the President spelled out the message for them:
“Regardless of the arguments we’ve had in the past, regardless of the arguments we’ll have in the future, this plan is the right thing to do right now. You should pass it. And I intend to take that message to every corner of this country…”
MORE.
6 Responses to “The President Stops Pleading”
Face it, it’s the only credible threat that the president can make. His speech was impressive, and more energetic than in the past.
The plan, in the end, still sounds like the same thing. The jobs will be temporary, but the debt will last. The whole “demand side” vs “supply side” argument is a waste of time. Both are attempts to supercharge a broken engine rather than fix it, so both are doomed to fail.
I left a message with my congressman and all I got was a mass generated T-Party endorsement. I called a couple of friends and they said they got the same.
My Tea-Bagger representative can do what he likes. Very few showed up to his “town hall meeting” and from what I hear there are money people here that are looking for an alternative. Pressure is going to build as we get closer to election. Some of these guys are NOT going to be in office next term.
I think for those who are politically in tune with that is going on in our country, we know that the Republicans will stand in the way of President Obama’s objectives passing.
I don’t completely agree with the plan but I think it’s a lot better than what the Republicans are offering.
I would love to see tax cuts for businesses that create jobs here in the U.S. and do it in a targeted way.
Why not invest more in our mass transit? We could invest more money in mass transit.
We could give states money to improve their mass transit system. However, the money would have to be spent with companies that hire U.S. citizens that live in the United States (that needs to be explicit because many of these companies will simply hire U.S. citizens in some other country) AND pay those employees living wages AND provide health-care benefits their workers can afford. Construction companies and manufacturers of buses, light rail trains, etc. would win big.
That’s just ONE idea I have. Sorry to be so long-winded.
I just hate to see all this money going towards highways when we need to be investing in mass transit.
I liked the jobs plan but I have no faith that Republicans will pass anything other than tax cuts. I am fine for tax cuts for small businesses. But businesses that grow and hire overseas, without growing/investing here, really shouldn’t get them. I am sick of jobs getting moved overseas so that businesses can get their 15% ROI. Theire should be some disincentive to moving American jobs overseas.
I think it was a very good move politically, but I doubt it’ll be effective economically. However, it’s better than the Republican proposals, which are mostly supply-side non-solutions and favors to large business interests. I can’t predict what will pass. Cantor sounds strangely conciliatory. What’s happening?
abella-
I agree with you there. Republicans keep saying; “America First”. Well then they need to actually put Americans first.