On Wednesday night, President Barack Obama addressed our Union with a fierce and fiery determination, almost daring a challenge. Joe Wilson and his party were, for the most part, quiet.
The President’s message was job-creation – the word “job” appears in his speech 30 times.
“We should start where most new jobs do,” he said. “In small businesses, companies that begin when an entrepreneur takes a chance on a dream, or a worker decides it’s time she became her own boss.”
The Standard & Poor’s stock index has returned from its March 2009 low of 682.55 to just around 1,100. Department store price indexes have also seen modest increases, suggesting at least some consumers are buying their products again. U.S. GDP is estimated to have grown at an annualized rate of 5.7% in the fourth quarter of 2009. By most measures, the economy is in recovery.
Since the start of the recession in December 2007, however, unemployment has marched uncontested to the ten percent mark as of last month and, as President Obama said Wednesday, many “wake up with the anguish of not knowing where their next paycheck will come from.”
It’s clear something has to be done. The President has proposed a new jobs bill, urging Congress to spend $30 billion of the recovered Wall Street funds to float credit to small banks and businesses hiring new workers. He has also suggested tax benefits.
Can the President deliver on these ideas, though? One student does think he can, but not for any particularly altruistic reasons.
Matthew Sandler, a senior Finance and Accounting major, says “Keep your eyes on the stimulus package passed back in January 2009. Only about $200 billion of the $787 billion has been unrolled. Watch for the rest to filter out as we move closer to midterm elections when Democrats begin to fear losing their jobs, and Obama becomes wary of losing an overwhelming majority in Congress.”
It is certainly true that there is a large political aspect to job-creation and the stimulus bill in general. If the President does ultimately fail, it would represent a large blow to the Democratic Party, one from which they may not recover.
Interestingly, many conservatives are suddenly anxious about the deficit. While the previous administration launched two wars, which were a reasonable pretext to cut taxes and increase spending, apparently the second-worst economic crisis in American history does not merit any spending at all.
While the previous administration orchestrated the greatest expansion of the Executive branch since George Washington, the current administration is apparently bent on a socialist plot to overthrow the government.
The common denominator seems to be fear, and conservatives are masters of manipulating it. Where before fear was used to sell agenda, now it is used to block agenda. Between Palin’s death panels and Limbaugh’s idiotic comments about Haiti, some individuals have created an environment of unease and distrust in the American public. The question, then, is not whether the President can pass a bill to save jobs, but whether the Republican Party will let him.
To be fair, the Republicans are not solely to blame, and do have ideas worth considering. Democrats, too, have engaged in mud-slinging and ignored some of the meaningful contributions of Republicans. But for us students, these political maneuverings and destructive agendas seem to be a little childish and counterproductive. We have put our futures in the hands of these men and women. In his Q&A with the Republican caucus, President Obama expressed his anger about these political ploys: “That’s why I say if we’re going to frame these debates in ways that allow us to solve them, then we can’t start off by figuring out, A, who’s to blame; B, how can we make the American people afraid of the other side… But that’s how we operate. It’s all tactics, and it’s not solving problems.”
Between this discussion and the State of the Union, the President has come out of 2009 swinging. If he keeps this up, maybe we’ll have the change we were promised.
Barring that, at least we might have jobs when we graduate.