Brief Analysis Of Obama's Job Initiative

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Dan Rackley

Dan Rackley is a US Naval veteran living in Philadelphia and a contributor to "Will They Ever Trust Us Again?"

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September 7th, 2011 9:51 AM

Brief Analysis Of Obama's Job Initiative

The old saying goes, if at first you don’t succeed, you try and try again. We’re taught this almost from infancy. You fall off your bike? Get back on or you’ll never learn how to ride without the training wheels. Sometimes it’s pretty painful to learn things in this manner. But unlike learning to ride your first bike, most of the time when it comes to politics you only get one shot.

Earlier in the summer, during a speech President Obama unveiled a plan that would give a tax credit to businesses that hired unemployed veterans. While it was considered to be a great sentimental gesture, there was some backlash; if you can actually believe it. There were folks crying foul over the idea of even proposing that the men and women that served our country should get a little bit of extra help. Yes, the same country that gives tax credits to millionaires that equal more than most of us make in a year actually had people saying that veterans get too much help. Hell, some folks in the military couldn’t even get bullet proof vests unless they paid for one themselves; but helping them find a job when they get back is too much for some people. Folks getting upset about trying to help veterans just makes me ill. But still, folks got upset and cried unfair.

So a little bit of time goes by, and Obama has to scramble a little bit. Now there’s almost what appears to be the “include everyone” addendum to the Veteran’s Job Initiative. If the President’s plan goes through, anyone now that hires anyone that’s unemployed will be getting a tax credit. Speaking strictly from common sense here, just about anyone that’s getting hired anywhere right now is unemployed. From Fannie Mae to McDonald’s, almost nobody that already has a job is going to suddenly roll the dice at a new place of employment. It’s just too risky to uproot oneself from one workplace to go looking for another.

The President is also pushing that the tax credit which allows business to deduct the full value of equipment to go on for another year. I don’t know if Mr. Obama realizes this, but even in a good economy most businesses fail in the first year. More so in a bad one. So the following scenario isn’t too far out of actually happening. A guy goes to open a business. He purchases a few thousand dollars of equipment to get himself started. The business has to close its doors after a months. The owner of this failed business then takes the equipment, sells it to cover his losses. Then finally, he deducts the full cost of the equipment on his taxes; probably starting out financially exactly where he started. That sound like a stimulus to you?

Announcing any kind of job initiative is a pretty risky thing for Obama to do. Especially in an election year. There’s going to be the Obama diehards that simply will not do say anything wrong about anything he does. He’s got those folks safely in his pocket. Then you got your GOP supporters that would vote for Rick Perry or Mitt Romney even if they set fire to their front lawn. Those middle ground people are going to be really hard to get this year.

Obama simply cannot run the risk of announcing too many jobs plans, or anything that causes a drastic change in the way the government spends money. Or diverting money from its original destination to a plan of his design. To some it’s going to look like he’s spending money he does not have, especially after the debt ceiling fiasco. I hope for his sake that this jobs plan actually works this time. He doesn’t have too many chances left.