The President announced today a series of special gimmicks designed to entice the middle class toward feeling better about Democrats. None of his announced gimmicks will do anything to create a single job anywhere in the economy. Indeed one could argue that the net effect of his announcement will be to put a further damper on the economy and job creation.
What the middle class needs and what it knows it needs is a healthy economy -- an economy in which businessman are looking optimistically toward the future and are expanding their hopes, their dreams, and their workforce. Nothing in the Obama initiatives accomplishes any of this. Not surprising, since the President views the business community as the enemy not as an ally.
Most of his policies help relatively affluent folks who already have jobs. Lets take them one by one:
1) A Child care tax credit for families with incomes up to $ 85,000 per year. The vast bulk of families earning under $ 85,000 per year don't pay income taxes, so their benefit is zero. The real beneficiaries would be those who earn close to the max of $ 85,000 nearly double the average family income in America. Hmmmm
2) A $1.6 billion increase in federal funding for child care programs (not needed if you are unemployed). No limit on family incomes for this one.
3) A program to cap student loan payments at 10 percent of income above "a basic living allowance." This benefit helps affluent Americans whose children choose to borrow while in college (which they can do easily) and then in their early working years, Obama proposes to forgive some of the loans.
4) Those with student loans who later take "public service" jobs will have some or all of their loan forgiven. This means you have to be rich enough to go to college in the first place. In the second place, public employment now has higher pay, better job security and better benefits than private employment. So, if you can get one of these cushy non-demanding union-protected public-be-damned kind of jobs, you get your loan forgiven. The poor or lower middle income folks need not apply...there is no benefit in this package for them.
So, who benefits? Certainly not the unemployed. They get zero benefit from any of these programs. Those who do benefit tend to be wealthier Americans (who goes to college in America -- poor people?). Once again, Obama targets folks that he think most likely to vote for him in 2012 and directs other people's money to his favored constituency.
The joke is, of course, that this is something that benefits middle class Americans.
More "Reverse Robin Hood" policies from the Obama folks and the back of the hand to the unemployed and economically disadvantaged.
