Week of 04/19/2010

Washington: Stop Stringing Us Along!
– by David Matthews 2

There is nothing more infuriating than a relationship that is based on some distorted concept of “kindness”.

Take, for instance, a relationship between a socially-awkward lonely guy and a beautiful woman. For the lonely guy, this is the relationship that he’s always dreamed of. But for her it is a relationship of convenience… and only at HER convenience. There may be something at first. She may initially find his attention endearing. She may like the fact that he is fawning over her, curious about every aspect of her life, concerned about her well-being, and eager to be there for her to help solve every problem and support her in her times of need.

But she doesn’t love him. In fact in most instances she is just biding her time until someone more attractive comes along. Someone she truly desires. Someone that is all that she ever wants. And the lonely guy will never BE that person, and she knows it. So she’ll string him along, playing up to his need to be appreciated, his need to be loved, tossing out the occasional hug or kiss, holding his hand like a high school romance, but never really giving him what he truly wants or needs. She will never give him her heart, even though she has already taken his.

Even worse is when she DOES find that certain someone she really wants, but she still doesn’t want to let go of the fawning lonely guy. Maybe he’s giving her money, helping her pay the bills, giving her gifts, and she certainly doesn’t want those to end. She loves the attention he gives her… and all she has to do is keep him thinking that the feelings are mutual… even if they clearly aren’t.

That, I feel, is the kind of relationship America has with our current White House leadership, especially when it comes to the economic well-being of those who need help the most.

This past week, President Barack Obama signed into law yet ANOTHER jobs bill. This would be the fourth or fifth or sixth… I’ve lost track… since he took office in January of 2009. They all sound the same… extending unemployment benefits “X” number of days, offering help to those who truly need it, encouraging businesses to hire more people. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Except they all have a short-term expiration date to them. It’s always a month, or two months. And then they have to do the whole thing all over again.

There are just two MAJOR problems with this.

First, every economic advisor says that America is dealing with a LONG-TERM unemployment problem. What part of “LONG-TERM” does an otherwise intelligent person like President Obama NOT understand? Short-term fixes WILL NOT be enough!

Secondly, and most devastatingly, is that every time the expiration date runs near, Congress is always adjourning without passing the needed extensions. The career obstructionists known as the GOP are woefully guilty of maliciously carrying out a scorched earth policy to let each and EVERY extension expire, putting MILLIONS of Americans who truly need that assistance in jeopardy until Congress reconvenes.

It is easy at this point to just pin the blame on the scorched-earth vandals. The GOP helped to CREATE the mess that America finds itself in, and they are guilty of doing everything in their power to ensure that the misery continues no matter the cost. To call them “obstructionists” is being too kind. Their actions are borderline nihilism.

But in truth the blame falls rightly on President Obama and the Democrat-run Congress. They KNOW the GOP are intentionally sabotaging the economy. They KNOW that the GOP will let every extension to help out Americans expire. They KNOW that the GOP’s actions will cause misery and anger. And yet they continue to play this game over and over and over again. They continue to string Americans along, offering momentary assistance, and then watching as the GOP lets that assistance expire before offering yet another “lifeline”.

The first time around could be considered a misunderstanding.

The second time around could be considered accidental.

The third time around is incompetence.

The fourth time is nothing sort of malicious.

Let’s get brutally honest here… President Obama and the Democrat-run Congress need to STOP stringing Americans along concerning the problems of this nation!

The problems with unemployment are NOT short-term, and it high time that the President Obama and House Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid RECOGNIZE that and actually come up with LONG-TERM solutions to deal with this LONG-TERM problem!

This idea that additional unemployment assistance should be provided on a month-to-month basis is nothing short of an INSULT to the very voting public that put these people in power in the first place!

You tell me, Washington elites: how is it that tax BREAKS can have a TEN-YEAR life expectancy to them… that even the most repressive laws on the land can have FIVE YEARS before they get renewed…but unemployment assistance for a LONG-TERM unemployment problem can only get two months at best?

Even if the Democrats try to excuse this gross legislative incompetence as being some sort of political tactic it only serves to undermine their own integrity and credibility. Once it has been established that the GOP are evil to the core and hate Americans, it is the responsibility of the Democrats in Congress to do everything they can to MINIMIZE that threat, not to ENCOURAGE even more of it.

Senate Majority Leader Reid needs to actually DO HIS JOB for once and make it his mission in life to ensure that those extensions be passed BEFORE members of the Senate adjourn. No more procedural holds. No more lone-vote obstructionism. He needs to start talking about providing extensions for YEARS, not weeks or even months, but YEARS. If the problem will take YEARS to fix, then he needs to make sure that every bill to extend benefits lasts that long. Anything less than that is GROSS INCOMPETENCE and he needs to join the ranks of the unemployed if that doesn’t factor into his veal-fed brain.

Likewise, as the symbolic leader of the Democrats, President Obama needs to get into his thick skull that this kind of ongoing ineptitude does far more damage to the American people than anything that the GOP has come up with so far. He needs to bring his party’s powerbrokers in line and recognize that this is not a game and that they are dealing with MILLIONS of American families, not to mention registered voters, that will be keeping this in mind come election time. If they have nothing but time on their hands come Election Day, they will vote accordingly, and that does NOT bode well for the Democrats.

America deserves far better than what it is getting right now from the career politicians. It has lost far too much already, and unfortunately it stands to lose far more as long as the career politicians in Washington continue to play this endless game of unrequited affections.