Do Your Jobs

As yet more proof that his economic policies are working, President Obama recently highlighted his success with the auto industry and pressed for passage of the Small Business Jobs Act, a measure which Senate Republicans are blocking.

First and foremost, Republicans should not criticize the President for not creating jobs, as they were the folks that adamantly opposed the auto industry bailout. Today, however, that very action taken by Democrats not only saved and created a lot of jobs, but it saved an entire industry.

In the year prior to Obama’s administration, American auto companies were losing hundreds of thousands of jobs. However, instead of making political calculations and shying away from the problem, Obama decided to invest in American businesses and save them from bankruptcy. Now, for the first time since 2004, GM, Ford, and Chrysler are making profits and creating thousands of jobs in communities, such as Detroit, which desperately need them. If Obama had not stepped in and taken such measures, many analysts claim at least one million more Americans would have lost their jobs.

Not only did Obama save and create jobs on American shores, but he also maintained American competitiveness in the world. Allowing the industry to fail would have cost the government billions of dollars in lost tax revenues and millions of out-of-work employees. Our companies cannot compete on a global level if this is the situation.

For this very reason, the President has also emphasized the need to create a $30 billion government fund to help open up lending for credit-starved small businesses. It’s these small businesses which create a majority of all new jobs in America, and it’s these small businesses which need our help. Therefore, the proposed bill would give additional tax breaks and badly-needed lending assistance to America’s small business owners so they can grow and hire, and yes, create more jobs!

However, time and time again, Republicans are using parliamentary procedures to block it from even coming up for a vote in the Senate. It seems to me that they do not care about the welfare of our nation, but instead, for garnering as many political points as possible. They have done everything in their power to stop Obama at every turn because, simply put, they want him to fail. They want to show the American people that the Democratic Party is not fit to lead. They want to enter the November elections and tell the American people, “I told you so.”

But how much more pain and suffering are they willing to cause the American people before they realize you cannot win an election as a party of “NO”? You cannot gain the trust of the voters if you have failed to offer any real solutions, make false accusations of noteworthy proposals, increase hatred for your opponents, and hope for the leader of your own nation to fail. It does not create a “more perfect union”, and it certainly does not help win elections.

So, while GOP leaders wait for Obama’s next “waterloo”, the administration will continue fighting for Americans by doing the one thing Democrats are best at:
doing their jobs.