COMMENTARY | President Barack Obama made it clear to the members of Congress Thursday night that his American Jobs Act needs to be passed. It's a package worth some $447 billion, according to USA Today. He admonished the attendees in the House chamber that the struggling and unemployed in America "don't have the luxury of waiting 14 months (before the election)." Obama's plan calls for tax relief for the middle class and small businesses who employ more people, plus jobs to address the country's infrastructure, veterans unemployment and education crises. But the president also wants tax and Medicare reforms enacted to help pay for his massive jobs package.
Several times during his half hour-plus speech, he cited Republican ideas, including Republican President Abraham Lincoln's foresight in materializing the Transcontinental Railroad, land-grant colleges, and the National Academy of Sciences in the midst of the Civil War. Amidst this economic crisis, America is now considered the fifth most globally competitive place in the world, partly due to political dysfunction, as reported by the International Business Times.
While Republicans and tea partiers in attendance were polite and did clap sometimes, one could still see the fight that is going to come over the American Jobs Act in the less than cheerful-looking face of House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.
Over the next 14 months, there is going to have be more people put back to work, including construction workers, teachers, and first responders, because if this doesn't happen, Obama's opposition in Congress will be held responsible for being more concerned with ousting the president than putting this nation's interests first.
If the Republicans and tea partiers in Congress won't be inspired by the president, then they should take their cue from a generous eight year old girl, a writer named Mackenzie Walsh. Rather than thinking about how she would spend the money for herself from the sales of her self-published book, she knocked on doors during weekends so she could raise money on behalf of the earthquake/tsunami victims in Japan. She was rewarded with a meeting with the Japanese ambassador to the United States, as reported by the Japan Times Friday.
That little girl represents the best of what America is all about, something all politicians should emulate: doing their jobs for the sake of the less fortunate instead of acting only in their selfish interests and uncompromising ideologies.
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