american jobs act logoOn Monday, President Obama sent his much anticipated American Jobs Act to Congress and implored lawmakers to pass it immediately. Because, you know, it worked so well in 2009, when it was called the stimulus.

Seriously people, can we learn from our mistakes, please? The government does not know how to spend our money better than we do. In 2009, we were warned that the unemployment rate might rise over 8 percent if the stimulus bill wasn’t passed. Since the unemployment rate has held pretty much steady at or around 10 percent ever since, it’s hard to take the president seriously.

What makes this economic stimulus bill (whatever you call it, it’s still just a large amount of money borrowed at our children’s expense to pump an infusion of cash into the economy) different from the one before it? Many Democratic lawmakers said that the problem with the 2009 stimulus was that it didn’t go far enough. Why are they now lauding this one, which is just over half the size of the first? By their own logic, they should vote against this bill, because it will have no chance of working unless it’s at least eleventy billion dollars.

What’s that? President Obama says this $447 billion bill won't add to the deficit? Excuse my skepticism, but how is adding to our debt not going to add to the deficit? Oh, that’s right. We’ll just tax the greedy rich people that lollygag around on their corporate jets.

Of course, as David Burge points out, excessively taxing the wealthy will barely put a dent in the debt we already have, so it’s silly to think that it would cover this extra half-a-trillion-dollar or so bill.

Aside from the issue of paying for this monstrosity of a spending bill, how will spending money on government jobs and infrastructure turn the economy around? If everyone is on the government’s dime, who will fund the paychecks? The government itself does not have any money – it only has what it takes from us, the taxpayers.

The only way to get Americans back to work is to create a stable economic environment. Raising taxes on the wealthy job creators isn’t the way to do that.