Economy takes lead in latest spin cycle

Congress plays political games. We all know that. It does it with health care, education and many other issues. The spin cycles on both sides are continuously rotating, depending on the subject at the time. And now since the health care debate seems to have died down, the newest round of spin and political plotting has centered around the economy. On April 2, it was reported that the economy had created about 162,000 new jobs in the month of March. There would be no way to spin this type of news, right?

GOP House member Peter Roskam of Illinois was quoted as saying that the jobs numbers were “the economic equivalent of cotton candy.” Really? 162,000 more people waking up and going work is cotton candy? This time last year we were losing over half of a million jobs a month and you call the largest job gain in 3 years cotton candy? It’s not nearly where we need to be, but it’s a very welcome improvement.

Closer to home, Rep. Tom Price of Georgia said “we have still yet to see the robust private sector job creation the Obama administration said would come from its $862 billion failed stimulus.” Price seemed to have selectively forgotten to mention that only about $300 billion of the $862 billion has been actually paid out. So, saying that it has already failed is a little much.

I can guarantee if the president had an “R” instead of a “D” next to his name, Roskam and Price would have sung an entirely different tune to these jobs numbers.

Democrats can’t be let off the hook either. When Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky held up unemployment benefits for thousands of people in February, Democrats were gleeful. Yes, they were mad about what Bunning was doing but inside the ranks, they loved the controversy because it made Republicans look bad and gave them a few points on the scoreboard for the week.

And not surprisingly both parties are at it again. Last week over 200,000 laid-off workers saw their unemployment benefits expire because the Senate couldn’t stop fighting about how to pay for an extension of the benefits. Democrats wanted to pay for it on an emergency basis and the GOP wanted to use stimulus funds. So when the benefits expired, what did they both do? They blamed each other for the fallout. Now what does that do for those 200,000 people who won’t be getting those benefits? I don’t think I even have to answer that.

There’s a time and place for everything. I don’t expect these elected officials to always do the right thing because that’s how politics works. But this 24-hour cycle of spin and plotting is creating a myriad of real problems that are piling up fast. At some point these legislators are supposed to do what they were sent the Washington to do, which is to actually legislate.

Posted by Ian Bridgeforth on Apr 9 2010. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry