Administration Continues to Worry about Elections over Jobs
October 2, 2012 at 10:14 am in News by Dustin Siggins 3 Comments
It’s not even subtle anymore. From National Journal via Hot Air:
The White House moved to prevent defense and other government contractors from issuing mass layoff notices in anticipation of sequestration, even going so far to say that the contracting agencies would cover any potential litigation costs or employee compensation costs that could follow.
As Ed Morrissey described it at Hot Air:
In other words, taxpayers will cover the costs of these layoffs through more spending, even though the point of sequestration was to force cuts in government spending. Instead of paying contractors — mainly defense workers — to work, we’ll start paying them not to work. And why? Because the White House doesn’t want massive numbers of layoff notices coming in the last few days ahead of the election.
For those who are unfamiliar with this issue, the Budget Control Act’s hits to defense spending are going to cause a significant number of layoffs for defense contractors. By law, these contractors must let employees know 60 days in advance if they are being laid off. Sixty days prior to January 1, 2013 is early November. And as Ed noted, this could be problematic for the Administration; the election is only a few days later and the final pre-election unemployment report comes out the Friday before the election, after all.
Unfortunately, the President is not the only one play political games with these layoffs. From the close of the National Journal article:
Democrats, including House Armed Services Committee ranking member Adam Smith, D-Wash., and Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, have also said there is no reason to needlessly alarm hundreds of thousands of workers—but many Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., have said that they hoped constituent concern resulting from the notices would spur compromise on Capitol Hill.
In other words, Democrats want us to trust Congress to come up with a better solution (‘cause that worked so well for the American people with the Super Committee), and Senator Graham is hoping the threat of higher unemployment will cause both parties to work together. The responsible nature of these elected officials is underwhelming.
In the end, the Administration’s actions are clearly about re-election and nothing else. Considering that taxpayer dollars are not supposed to be used for campaign efforts, perhaps Congress should open an investigation into this. It wouldn’t be the first time the White House used official resources for campaign-related work, after all.
If I understand this the American taxpayers are gong to keep paying for Americans not working? .Wouldn’t that be considered wrong?Please and after the elections if the Incumbent wins he will lay them off anyway? .Please this is wrong we need to stop this .How much more can we borrow from China? and the other nations? . our dollars that are in circulation now is worthless. Stop spending what we don’t have.
To understand the Oministrations complete lack of concern for the employment – the avaiablity of jobs – for Amaicans to sustain themselves you have to understand Obama. He is a totalitarian wanna be dictator who’s sole purpose is to destroy any confidence and pride that resides in the hearts of the American people. The best way to do that is to make them loathe their success, distrust their judgement, and create insecurutiy in their hearts when it comes to their own ability to take care of themselves and their own. To continue to achieve this work in progress, for he needs his office and as many useful idiots in government to work nearly unopposed, he needs to be re-elected.
It is for this reason, based on his actions and words, that I content that O is in no way an American.
I believe you and I are in a small percentile of people who believe the same thing. Obama is a destroyer of anything American. He knows what Conservative Americans love about America and is doing whatever he can to eliminate it.
All a person has to do is put George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama side by side, then have a catastrophy in the United States and step back and look at what each one does to help the American people sustain themselves.
Take the very first crisis America had to deal with just after Obama took office. BP Oil spill in the gulf. Do you remember, it took almost 90+ days for Obama to respond to this spill and sit down with BP’s CEO Tony Hayward?
Obama in an interview about 60 days into the spill was said he didn’t like to talk with people “like” Tony Hayward. Was it Mr. Haywards skin color Obama didn’t like?