Boehner: A Better Plan for Jobs

[spursncowboys]

A better plan for jobs
By John Boehner
Friday, December 11, 2009


During a meeting at the White House this week, House Republican leaders presented (http://johnboehner.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=159982) President Obama with a plan to create jobs and get our economy moving again. It is a responsible blueprint for action based on common-sense solutions that recognize that small business, not government, is the engine of job creation in America.

Republicans took the opportunity to question the impact of the president's proposals to raise taxes on small businesses and expand government at a time of double-digit unemployment. Unfortunately, instead of addressing our concerns, the president said that Republicans are primarily interested in unemployment because of the 2010 midterm elections, and that we seem to be almost rooting against recovery. I told the president very directly that everyone -- Republicans and Democrats -- wants to get people back to work.

The president also accused (http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/12/09/politics/politicalhotsheet/entry5955472.shtml) Republicans of "scaring" the American people, but the truth is that double-digit unemployment is scaring people and his job-killing agenda is making it worse.

American families and small businesses face daunting economic challenges. Instead of receiving relief from Washington, they have watched with anxiety this year as the government has focused on implementing a takeover of health care, a "cap-and-trade" national energy tax, "card check" legislation for union membership and more tax increases.

I used to run a small business. I know what it takes to meet a payroll and a bottom line. Employers will continue to hold off on hiring as long as Washington pursues these job-killing policies and piles more debt on our children and grandchildren.

What are the president's new ideas for job creation? This week he outlined (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/08/AR2009120802016.html) even more federal spending on programs that haven't worked to keep unemployment below 8 percent as they promised. He didn't call it another "stimulus" program, but that's what it is -- more Washington spending that expands government but does little to create jobs.

That's why Republicans have offered common-sense solutions to break down barriers to economic growth and help small businesses create jobs, starting with a recovery plan focused on encouraging investment and allowing families and small businesses to keep more of what they earn. Instead of the national energy tax, Republicans would implement an "all of the above" strategy to create jobs, lower energy prices and clean up our environment.

In contrast to Democrats' government-focused approach on health care, Republicans have proposed the only plan that would, according (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm) to the Congressional Budget Office, lower premiums by as much as 10 percent, cut the deficit and consistently reduce federal spending on health care over the next two decades.

The most recent employment report (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm) provides a glimmer of hope for our economy. Any decrease in the unemployment rate is encouraging, but a "jobless recovery" and double-digit unemployment are not what the American people were promised. Democrats' job-killing agenda is making matters worse. Americans are asking where the jobs are, but all they are getting from Washington is more spending, more debt and more policies that hurt small businesses.

Republicans believe it is important to pursue policies that help expand the economy and support job creation without additional government spending, new bureaucracies or debt that will be left to future generations. Moody's Investors Service has indicated (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704825504574582303781275842.html) that should we fail to address the growing national debt, the U.S. credit rating could be downgraded.

When the president said this week (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-job-creation-and-economic-growth) that we need to "spend our way out of this recession," he made clear that he is not willing to admit the $787 billion "stimulus" isn't working. A bunker mentality won't put people back to work. Mr. President, it's not the GOP that's scaring people -- it's your job-killing policies.

The writer, a Republican congressman from Ohio, is House minority leader.

[TeyshaBlue]

I can't find a proposal anywhere in that link...only references to it.

[clambake]

is this guy still submitting budget proposals that don't include a single number?

[admiralsnackbar]

Exhibit A for why I have trouble taking anything Boehner says seriously. I mean, isn't this whole piece one long throat-clearing that never arrives at any substance? Since Obama's come to power, Suntan Johnny's done nothing if not repeatedly allege the GOP have presented all manner of health-reform bill items, business-stimulating ideas, cost-cutting measures, etc... but when it's time to prove these assertions, the dog ate his homework.

[boutons_deux]

Boner must be a stoner.

http://gopleader.gov/UploadedFiles/GOP_No_Cost_Jobs_Plan.pdf

[ChumpDumper]

So the plan is to not really give a plan.

Gotta admit, it has worked so far.

[symple19]

So the plan is to not really give a plan.

Gotta admit, it has worked so far.

classic republican obstructionist policy.

[Winehole23]

classic republican obstructionist policy.It's what the minority party does best, regardless. But Wino readily concedes the GOP is much better at obstruction, and that that's to their credit.

[mogrovejo]

As Oakeshott said about Hayek, a plan to resist all plans isn't the ideal but it comes close. Boehner is right.

[ChumpDumper]

He's right to not actually have a plan?

Nice.

[spursncowboys]

It's what the minority party does best, regardless. But Wino readily concedes the GOP is much better at obstruction, and that that's to their credit.

it's easy when your obstructing view is the popular opinion.

[clambake]

they offer everything that is nothing.

baynur is the king of that.

[Winehole23]

Boehner is right.To do the emperor's new clothes bit again, you mean? Don't you remember that other sham, mogrovejo?

We've seen the gimmick before. Pretend to submit a plan. It's much cheaper than a real plan, practically nugatory in 21st century terms, and there are no substantive promises you have to keep, since practically nothing was actually disclosed in the first place, and it has zero chance of actually passing.

Oppose the majority, and submit only plans that have a minimal, even laughable, budgetary impact. Submit fake plans only, seems to be a strategic motif.

[Marcus Bryant]

Were not great plans from politicians the cause of the current economic discontent? My God, who on Earth would want another such "plan"?

[spursncowboys]

To do the emperor's new clothes bit again, you mean? Don't you remember that other sham, mogrovejo?

We've seen the gimmick before. Pretend to submit a plan. It's much cheaper than a real plan, practically nugatory in 21st century terms, and there are no substantive promises you have to keep, since practically nothing was actually disclosed in the first place, and it has zero chance of actually passing.

Oppose the majority, and submit only plans that have a minimal, even laughable, budgetary impact. Submit fake plans only, seems to be a strategic motif.

Why do they need a plan. What is wrong with just being against a plan without having a plan of your own? If the Repubs had any kind of leverage, I could see where they come up with an alternative to negotiate. That's not the case here though. Socializing healthcare in anyway is against 90% of republicans stands all two of them.

[ChumpDumper]

What is wrong with just being against a plan without having a plan of your own?Because they are lying about having a plan.

[spursncowboys]

Because they are lying about having a plan.

No, the dem's are dishonest and making closed door deals without any repubs. the repubs have put amendments and bills. it's hard for them to go around and get real focus when they have no power.Why would anyone want to spend time debating or hashing out specifics when they won't get out of comittee?

Like I said, what is to their benefit to come up with their own, when they don't have to? Also with all these trillions being spent there will still be 20+million uninsured. So this spending bill will insure 6 million, cost trillions, and socialize medicine while destroying jobs, and innovationn.

[ChumpDumper]

No, the dem's are dishonest and making closed door deals without any repubs. the repubs have put amendments and bills. it's hard for them to go around and get real focus when they have no power.Why would anyone want to spend time debating or hashing out specifics when they won't get out of comittee?

Like I said, what is to their benefit to come up with their own, when they don't have to? Also with all these trillions being spent there will still be 20+million uninsured. So this spending bill will insure 6 million, cost trillions, and socialize medicine while destroying jobs, and innovationn.So you are fine with their lies.

We understand that.

You think it is ok for your side to lie. You have proved that time and time again.

And you seriously think the Republicans have never passed legislation without input from Democrats?

:lmao

[boutons_deux]

"What is wrong with just being against a plan without having a plan of your own"

That's all the Repugs do.

They have no credibility, they're nothing but bad-faith, destructive, bloody-minded partisan obstructionism. They aren't interested in America, or governing, only in winning power and abusing government.

I really, really hope their Repug purity drive is an overwhelmingly success. :lol

[exstatic]

The only smart thing the GOP has done in the last 8-9 years was to NOT pass the nuclear option. What goes around comes around, and that shit would be jammed up their asses right now. There would be no "60 senators needed" for anything. Health care with the full public option would have passed like a week after BHO's innauguration, with a simple majority of 51. Somehow, in the middle of their 2001-2009 drunken power orgy, they saw a tiny hint that they would not always be in power.

[mogrovejo]

To do the emperor's new clothes bit again, you mean? Don't you remember that other sham, mogrovejo?

We've seen the gimmick before. Pretend to submit a plan. It's much cheaper than a real plan, practically nugatory in 21st century terms, and there are no substantive promises you have to keep, since practically nothing was actually disclosed in the first place, and it has zero chance of actually passing.

Oppose the majority, and submit only plans that have a minimal, even laughable, budgetary impact. Submit fake plans only, seems to be a strategic motif.

I'm surprised, even confused, by this post of yours. In coherence to your theory of the just complaining, shouldn't any post of yours in this thread constitute in a virulent bashing of the liberals complaining about what you call Boehner's "gimmick"?

And yes, if Boehner's plan is no plan at all I praise him.

[mogrovejo]

(...)

There are some minds which give us the sense that they have passed through an elaborate education which was designed to initiate them into the traditions and achievements of their civilization; the immediate impression we have of them is an impression of cultivation, of the enjoyment of an inheritance. But this is not so with the mind of the Rationalist, which impresses us as, at best, a finely tempered, neutral instrument, as a well-trained rather than as an educated mind. Intellectually, his ambition is not so much to share the experience of the race as to be demonstrably a self-made man. And this gives to his intellectual and practical activities an almost preternatural deliberateness and self-consciousness, depriving them of any element of passivity, removing from them all sense of rhythm and continuity and dissolving them into a succession of climacterics, each to be surmounted by a tour de raison. His mind has no atmosphere, no changes of season and temperature; his intellectual processes, so far as possible, are insulated from all external influence and go on in the void. And having cut himself off from the traditional knowledge of his society, and denied the value of any education more extensive than a training in a technique of analysis, he is apt to attribute to mankind a necessary inexperience in all the critical moments of life, and if he were more self-critical he might begin to wonder how the race had ever succeeded in surviving. With an almost poetic fancy, he strives to live each day as if it were his first, and he believes that to form a habit is to fail. And if, with as yet no thought of analysis, we glance below the surface, we may, perhaps, see in the temperament, if not in the character, of the Rationalist, a deep distrust of time, an impatient hunger for eternity and an irritable nervousness in the face of everything topical and transitory.

Now, of all worlds, the world of politics might seem the least amenable to rationalist treatment--politics, always so deeply veined with both the traditional, the circumstantial and the transitory. And, indeed, some convinced Rationalists have admitted defeat here: Clemenceau, intellectually a child of the modern Rationalist tradition (in his treatment of morals and religion, for example), was anything but a Rationalist in politics. But not all have admitted defeat. If we except religion, the greatest apparent victories of Rationalism have been in politics: it is not to be expected that whoever is prepared to carry his rationalism into the conduct of life will hesitate to carry it into the conduct of public affairs.

But what is important to observe in such a man (for it is characteristic) is not the decisions and actions he is inspired to make, but the source of his inspiration, his idea (and with him it will be a deliberate and conscious idea) of political activity. He believes, of course, in the open mind, the mind free from prejudice and its relic, habit. He believes that the unhindered human 'reason' (if only it can be brought to bear) is an infallible guide in political activity. Further, he believes in argument as the technique and operation of reason'; the truth of an opinion and the 'rational' ground (not the use) of an institution is all that matters to him. Consequently, much of his political activity consists in bringing the social, political, legal and institutional inheritance of his society before the tribunal of his intellect; and the rest is rational administration, 'reason' exercising an uncontrolled jurisdiction over the circumstances of the case. To the Rationalist, nothing is of value merely because it exists (and certainly not because it has existed for many generations), familiarity has no worth, and nothing is to be left standing for want of scrutiny. And his disposition makes both destruction and creation easier for him to understand and engage in, than acceptance or reform. To patch up, to repair (that is, to do anything which requires a patient knowledge of the material), he regards as waste of time: and he always prefers the invention of a new device to making use of a current and well-tried expedient. He does not recognize change unless it is a self-consciously induced change, and consequently he falls easily into the error of identifying the customary and the traditional with the changeless. This is aptly illustrated by the rationalist attitude towards a tradition of ideas. There is, of course, no question either of retaining or improving such a tradition, for both these involve an attitude of submission. It must be destroyed. And to fill its place the Rationalist puts something of his own making--an ideology, the formalized abridgment of the supposed substratum of rational truth contained in the tradition.

(...)

The modern history of Europe is littered with the projects of the politics of Rationalism. The most sublime of these is, perhaps, that of Robert Owen for 'a world convention to emancipate the human race from ignorance, poverty, division, sin and misery'--so sublime that even a Rationalist (but without much justification) might think it eccentric. But not less characteristic are the diligent search of the present generation for an innocuous power which may safely be made so great as to be able to control all other powers in the human world, and the common disposition to believe that political machinery can take the place of moral and political education. The notion of founding a society, whether of individuals or of States, upon a Declaration of the Rights of Man is a creature of the rationalist brain, so also are 'national' or racial self-determination when elevated into universal principles. The project of the so-called Re-union of the Christian Churches, of open diplomacy, of a single tax, of a civil service whose members 'have no qualifications other than their personal abilities', of a self-consciously planned society, the Beveridge Report, the Education Act of 1944, Federalism, Nationalism, Votes for Women, the Catering Wages Act, the destruction of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the World State (of H. G. Wells or anyone else), and the revival of Gaelic as the official language of fire, are alike the progeny of Rationalism. The odd generation of rationalism in politics is by sovereign power out of romanticism.

Rationalism in Politics chapter 1, Michael Oakeshott (http://www.amazon.com/Rationalism-Politics-essays-Michael-Oakeshott/dp/0865970955)

[mogrovejo]

plans
http://brokenworld.wikispaces.com/file/view/five_year_plan.jpg/30617147
http://owardbodie.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/greatleapforward_poster.jpg

http://www.paul-n-paul.com/nu757.jpg

[Winehole23]

Were not great plans from politicians the cause of the current economic discontent? My God, who on Earth would want another such "plan"?There could be a plan to trim fat and let the states take on a little more, as well as pay down debt. The GOP strategy seems to be submitting marginal plans. Even better would be to pare counterproductive military and welfare responsibilities IMO.

[Winehole23]

The devolution of more power to subsidiary federal units is much to be desired in the Wino worldview. The state unit is slightly less susceptible to exogenous steering. At any rate, it is far less remote than Washington, D.C., and the temptations of office, although substantial, are lesser in number and ready cash.

[Winehole23]

plans
http://brokenworld.wikispaces.com/file/view/five_year_plan.jpg/30617147
http://owardbodie.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/greatleapforward_poster.jpg

http://www.paul-n-paul.com/nu757.jpgI was talking about plans to restore fiscal and budgetary well-being. Did you not notice?

[Winehole23]

Why are you trying to change the subject again, mogrovejo?

[mogrovejo]

I was talking about plans to restore fiscal and budgetary well-being. Did you not notice?

No, I did not. Can you please put in bold where you did that?


It's what the minority party does best, regardless. But Wino readily concedes the GOP is much better at obstruction, and that that's to their credit.


To do the emperor's new clothes bit again, you mean? Don't you remember that other sham, mogrovejo?

We've seen the gimmick before. Pretend to submit a plan. It's much cheaper than a real plan, practically nugatory in 21st century terms, and there are no substantive promises you have to keep, since practically nothing was actually disclosed in the first place, and it has zero chance of actually passing.

Oppose the majority, and submit only plans that have a minimal, even laughable, budgetary impact. Submit fake plans only, seems to be a strategic motif.

[Winehole23]

The two statements are not incongruous. Any time the GOP actually deigns to disclose its actual ideas instead of just more fake bullshit, would be just fine with me.

[Winehole23]

The opposition can make itself an actually existing alternative to the powers that be, if it so desires. The GOP, apparently, does not so desire.

[spursncowboys]

The opposition can make itself an actually existing alternative to the powers that be, if it so desires. The GOP, apparently, does not so desire.
Judging by the reaction of the public, the GOP just has to say no and they get more and more votes. I believe they should do something. That is why I am glad to see tea party people taking over precints and nominating the people that want to be fiscally conservative. However with how stupidly the Dems are using their super majorities, the Repubs could not even show up for work and still get their majorities back. Plus get the WH in 3 years. I hope they make another contract style domestic issues promises but doubt they will need to.

[mogrovejo]

The two statements are not incongruous. Any time the GOP actually deigns to disclose its actual ideas instead of just more fake bullshit, would be just fine with me.

I didn't say the statements were incongruous. I've already covered the incongruence between your theory of declaring guilty of fake outrage and deserving of acerb criticism anyone who complains about the use of politics as usual tactics by their opponents, no matter the validity of the claims, and your reiterated practice of quickly doing it yourself to criticize the GOP and conservatives.

What I want to know is where in those statements you were "talking about plans to restore fiscal and budgetary well-being"? Can you bold the exact sentences or not?

[Winehole23]

What I want to know is where in those statements you were "talking about plans to restore fiscal and budgetary well-being"? Can you bold the exact sentences or not?Your powers of reading seem to have failed you again. You get my sympathy, sir, but no help.