Obama’s Saved Jobs
Remember President Obama’s great stimulus package that “saved or created” millions of jobs? Time after time the president touted the thousands of teachers, police and firefighter jobs that had been saved by his stimulus; yet it seems that stimulus didn’t save so many jobs after all.
In Obama’s latest ploy to dump taxpayer dollars into the teachers unions, he has called on the Congress to release billions of dollars in funds to counter the damaging impact of teacher layoffs on America’s education system.
But didn’t President Obama’s stimulus, nearly a trillion dollars of it, do that already?
The White House released a report today, Saturday August 18, 2012, that claims that more than 300,000 teaching positions have been lost since 2009, resulting in a 4.6% rise in the student-to-teacher ratios.
In Obama’s weekly address, Obama attacked the Congress, specifically the GOP, for blocking provisions that would support states in preventing further job cuts and help them rehire out-of-work teachers.
What about others that have lost their jobs? Who is helping out the small business owners that have had to lay off millions of workers? Who is helping the unemployed workers in the coal industry collapsed by his EPA? Who is supporting the hundreds of thousands of college graduates that can’t find work? It’s those that don’t have the political influence of the teachers unions that always get screwed.
Obama aimed squarely at Republicans for offering a budget that he claimed would further impact teacher numbers.
Obama said the financial blueprint put forward by his opponents would lead to “fewer teachers in the classroom and fewer college students with access to financial aid, all to pay for a massive new tax cut for millionaires and billionaires”. Yet it is Obama’s own policies that have affected the ability for college students to get financial aid. Nothing in Romney’s plan or the GOP’s budget lowers taxes for the so-called millionaires or billionaires; the GOP/Romney budget keeps current tax levels where they are or lowers them across-the-board while removing deductions from the wealthy to keep their rates constant; Mr. Obama knows this.
Obama: The Panderer-In-Chief
“That’s backwards, that’s wrong. That plan doesn’t invest in our future, it undercuts our future,” Obama said.
The White House is claiming that the proposed Republican budget could strip close to $3 billion from education grants, since Obama’s job plan, offered a year ago, has only been passed in part.
Obama’s “employment blueprint” includes provisions for some $25 billion in educational aid, but can only pay for this second stimulus by raising taxes. The president offered up a plan that he knew would have no support during tough economic times; pure pandering and nothing more.
According to the White House report, average class sizes have climbed as a result of an uptick in student-to-teacher rations from a low of 15.3 to one in 2008 to 16 to one in 2010.
“If we want America to lead in the 21st century, nothing is more important than giving everyone the best education possible – from the day they start preschool to the day they start their career,” Obama said in his radio address.
Well that might make sense if the president’s policies had any hope of providing these educated graduates with jobs. What good is a Ph.D in math if you have to sling burgers at a fast food joint to pay your rent?
In the weekly GOP address, Missouri Representative Vicky Hartzler pointed out that Democrats have failed to restore disaster programs for farmers suffering from the worst drought in a generation. A GOP bill to help suffering farmers died in the do-nothing Senate.
The Senate refused to address the farm aid legislation before their summer break, claiming that Republicans in the House had stripped from the bill provisions related to the extension of food stamps; apparently in Harry Reid’s Senate nothing is better than something.
“A lot was riding on this bill, but the Senate – a body controlled by the president’s party – left Washington for the month of August without bringing it to a vote,” Hartzler said.
This report and Obama’s appeal for more money are totally bogus. The only reason the president is making this an issue is to hang on to his dominance with the teachers unions. Obama is doing what he does best; pretend to care about the future of our children when in fact the only thing he cares about is a future in the White House.
—————————————————————
Subscribe to Mr. Kaplan’s articles at Examiner.com
Read Mr. Kaplan’s blog at Conservatively Speaking
Email Mr. Kaplan at ken@conservativelyspeaking.us
Join Mr. Kaplan on Facebook at ConservativelySpeaking
Follow Mr. Kaplan’s tweets at ConsSpeaking