Which Direction Is *That*, Mr. President?

The Drudge headline screams “We’re Moving In The Right Direction” as it points to the article which tells us we gained jobs, but we lost jobs, and our unemployment numbers increased…all in the same month. Elsewhere on the page, we’re told that Obama Promises New Economic Proposals Next Week:

In the wake of a new jobs report showing increased unemployment, President Obama today said the steps his administration has taken to improve the economy are working, but not fast enough. He called on Congress to pass a small business bill and said he would announce next week a broader set of ideas to accelerate job creation.
[snip]
The president emphasized the bill is budget-neutral and hammered Republicans for opposing it. GOP opposition has created a “needless delay” that has caused businesses to put off spending and hiring, he said.

But there are no “new” initiatives coming forward beyond trying to figure out new ways to break the lines of resistance from the Republican minority. And what he also did not say, was why Republicans don’t like the bill in the first place. Now, mind you, even a slightly-more-than-cursory skim of the text of this bill would offer up a good number of reasons for almost everyone to be against the bill in its current form, but having said that and given this President’s track record, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to learn that he hasn’t even read it himself.

It’s 122 pages long, and well worth the read. Decide for yourselves if you have it in you, but understand at least this much; “the Small Business Lending Fund Program” hands over full control to the Dept. of the Treasury to control the development of a program to loan money to banks that will then be allowed to loan money to any small business that comes forward and tries. These small businesses will be greeted with a mountain of paperwork, a bureaucracy few can afford the time needed to deftly navigate, and a set of rules for how they will be allowed to define and manage their workforces that even fewer still can afford (financially) to actually comply with.

It’s worth pointing out, I should add, that if a small business were unionized…or sub-contracted out to unionized workforces…then these sham loans would be a great way to go. Decide for yourselves, after a quick skim, whether this is good for small business and whether it opens up the floodgates for small-staffed and lightweight entrepeneurs to put all of America back to work, or whether it just greases the palms of the Unions and the other special interests (that already bloats the Federal Government) even further while handing over even more control of the private sector to the central ruling authority on Capitol Hill.

Oh-and as a side note, I encourage you to find the part in the bill where the Fed (via the Treasury) will take over ownership and or control of any small business that fails to pay back the loan on time, or violates any of the HR rules they’ll be made to follow…and then ask yourselves – again – whether the Republicans are just being difficult, or whether they are actually doing small businesses across America a monstrously big favor by saying no to this behemoth.

**image via Powerline
[Note: This post originates at Liberty.Com]