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Townhall...
The
Jobs Speech
By Rich Galen
9/9/2011
President
Barack Obama’s speech wasn’t
awful. It wasn’t great. It had some excellent lines “Last thing [vets]
should
have to do is to fight for a job when then get home.” It some tired
union-soothing
rhetoric.
At
7:35 Eastern I Tweeted: “Officially
bored. This could have been a 20 minute Oval speech.”
True.
Here’s
the thing the President left
out: He never told us how many jobs this would create and how far down
it would
bring the unemployment rate.
Let’s
spend more money and hope for
the best.
Having
listened to the 127 times
President Obama said some variant of “pass this bill” I pinged a
leadership
staffer office only to find there IS no bill. No paper. No package. No
nothing.
Here’s the text of the e-mail I got having asked if the President
dropped off a
bill on his way into the House chamber:
“Of
course not - no one has seen it.
No consultation with House or Senate GOP. No Pay fors [identified].
Just more
of his “I decree” this is the plan and [is, therefore] bi-partisan.”
Immediately
after the speech ended
reporters began Tweeting that the cost of the bill would be $447
billion
according to a White House “fact sheet.” If there is no bill, how can
the WH
say that?
Ok.
I’m over it.
Here’s
what I would do if I were
Speaker John Boehner. I’d ask the President to send up a finished bill
-
semi-colons, where-as’s, therefore’s and all. Then I’d get the House to
pass it
as is. No changes, no amendments, no nothing.
I’d
bring it to the House floor and
make the Democrats provide the votes to get to 218 votes for the
Democrat
President’s bill.
If
it works and unemployment goes down
to the low-eight-percent range then the Republican-controlled House can
take
credit for bipartisanship and retain control for the next 10 years.
If
it works, and the Presidential
candidates don’t like it … too bad. They should have come up with their
own
$447 billion dollar bill to bring down unemployment.
If
the President’s plan doesn’t work -
which is likely because we’re sort of at the mercy of the European
banks, the
central bank of China, and some guy in Chile - then Obama will not be
able to
blame the Congress because the Congress will have given him the exact
bill he
proposed.
As
there are tax issues involved that
pesky Constitution requires, in Article I, section 7 that:
“All
bills for raising Revenue shall
originate in the House of Representatives.”
So,
if the House passes it first,
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will have no choice but to take it to
the
floor as is because it will have been the bill blessed by the White
House...
Read
the rest of the column at
Townhall
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