The new Congress starts on Wednesday and the Republican-led House will vote to repeal or overhaul the healthcare bill passed in the last session. Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) said to Fox News Sunday, the vote will take place before the State of the Union address. He also said Republicans have 242 votes and will have additional votes from Democrats. But is healthcare the number one priority during this early session?
The vote will most likely not pass and, in any event, the chances of it being repealed or overhauled are low. The Democrats still have the majority in the Senate and the White House. Even if the vote passed in the House, it will most likely not make it pass the Senate. If it did somehow make it pass the Senate, President Obama will veto it. The House and Senate would need two-thirds of their members to vote to override the veto.
The number one priority should be job creation. That was number one on the Pledge to America platform the Republicans ran on during the midterm election. So why the focus on healthcare so early? The republicans believe that the midterm election was a mandate on healthcare reform. Although it was a part of it, the lack of jobs, wall street, and unemployment were the higher concerns. The states are currently fighting it in the courts and most of the provisions start in 2014.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the last unemployment figure was at 9.8% and 15.1 million Americans are currently unemployed. 3.3 million manufacturing jobs have been lost over the last ten years, with Los Angeles losing the most at over 301,000. These numbers should make Congress jump into action immediately and work on job creation. Healthcare overhaul can wait, unemployed Americans cannot.
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Comments: 10
That said, democrats made many mistakes, not the least of which was making so-called "health care reform" the major priority. Jobs should have been the priority - but not the way they went about it. During the 2008 campaign, there were many promises re: "green jobs", but that has scarcely been mentioned since. There probably is no driver of good jobs in this country than an overhaul of this country's energy infrastructure, which includes real energy independence. In all fairness, the democrats did more than any other administration and/or congress in history, but who knows about that - AND - compared to size of the effort that was needed, it was inadequate (thanks also to special interests and republican filibusters).
So - republicans can make the same mistake as democrats and fail to make jobs and the economy a priority. They can fail to make the case with the voting public that all of this is an integrated whole - jobs, economy, energy, medical insurance, etc. However, I doubt either party is actually going to "lead" in this country. That's not going to happen until there is a firewall between money and politics.
Why do McDonalds, the New York Teachers Union, and over 200 companies get exemptions from Obamacare? Why does my employer who has 20 employees get stuck with Obama care?
If it's not bad for business and job creation, why the exemptions?
American Job Loss Is Permanent
The claim that jobs offshoring by US corporations increases domestic employment in the US is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated. "The myth is that for every job outsourced to Bangladesh, nearly two jobs are created in Buffalo and other American cities." I bet Buffalo "and other American cities" would like to know where these jobs are.
Over the last decade, the net new jobs created in the U.S. have nothing to do with multinational corporations. The jobs consist of waitresses and bartenders, health care and social services (largely ambulatory health care), retail clerks, and while the bubble lasted, construction.
These are not the high-tech, high-paying jobs that the "New Economy" promised, and they are not jobs that can be associated with global corporations. Moreover, these domestic service jobs are themselves scarce.
How was it possible to have simultaneously millions of new good-paying middle class jobs and virtually the worst income inequality in the developed world, with all income gains accruing to the mega-rich?
To keep eyes off of the loss of jobs to offshoring, policymakers and their minions in the financial press blame US unemployment on alleged currency manipulation by China and on the financial crisis. The financial crisis itself is blamed by Republicans on low-income Americans who took out mortgages that they could not afford.
In other words, the problem is China and the greedy American poor who tried to live above their means. With this being the American mindset, you can see why nothing can be done to save the economy.
No government will admit its mistakes, especially when it can blame foreigners. China is being made the scapegoat for American failure. An entire industry has grown up that points its finger at China and away from 20 years of corporate offshoring of US jobs and 9 years of expensive and pointless US wars.
"Currency manipulation" is the charge. However, the purpose of the Chinese peg to the US dollar is not currency manipulation. When the Chinese government decided to take its broken communist economy into a market economy, the government understood that it needed foreign confidence in its currency. It achieved that by pegging its currency to the dollar, signaling that China's money was as sound as the US dollar. At that time, China, of course, could not credibly give its currency a higher dollar value.
As time has passed, the irresponsible and foolish policies of the US have eroded the dollar's value, and as the Chinese currency is pegged to the dollar, its value has moved down with the dollar. The Chinese have not manipulated the peg in order to make their currency less valuable.
The major cause of the US trade deficit with China is "globalism" or the practice, enforced by Wall Street and Wal-Mart, of US corporations offshoring their production for US markets to China in order to improve the bottom line by lowering labor costs.
The correct conclusion is that the US trade deficit with China is the result of "globalism" or jobs offshoring, not Chinese currency manipulation.
From the article...
http://www.economyincrisis.org/content/american-job-loss-permanent-0?page=1
So, why aren't they being created? That was Bush's argument for lowering the taxes for the richest Americans - well, they've been lowered for years now and were just continued. Why aren't you asking them where the jops are? I thought the right didn't believe that the government creates jobs, only business people create jobs. Well, start asking the rich business people why they aren't creating them.