Jobs Act

Well the good news is the political people applied a worthy label to this one. Of course we're two years too late but there it is.

White House spokesman Jay Carney told CNN that Obama will send Congress legislation titled the American Jobs Act next week, based on the plan that one Democratic source said will exceed $400 billion in tax cuts, extend unemployment benefits and offer other measures intended to boost job creation and economic growth.

I, and a lot of poor people like me, certainly are not going to argue against having our payroll taxes cut again. Lamar Alexander and a lot of people like him would argue against it, of course. Oh except for that one person like Lamar Alexander who argued for it.

NPR had a great story this morning featuring Republican Senator Lamar Alexander saying he was against the payroll tax cut. They then re-played an interview with him from about nine months ago where he argued that it was a great idea that would put money in people’s paychecks and thus stimulate growth and jobs.

Extending unemployment benefits, of course, is simply a necessity. What most of us were hoping for would be more money put into infrastructure which it looks like we might see although not nearly enough. Also I suspect a lot of what gets proposed will be more Obama-esque overcomplicated carom shots designed to buy off various interested parties. Take, for example, the stupid "repatriation tax holiday" that basically rewards corporate tax cheats. Or the language about "patent reform".

So there’s no shortage of difficult policy questions. And yet the patent-reform bills that are currently wending their way through the House and Senate don’t actually do all that much tackle broader patent issues. Instead, as Zach Carter detailed in a long Huffington Post piece on Thursday, Congress has been reduced to adjudicating specific corporate claims and counterclaims.

For instance, Carter looks at DataTreasury, a company with few actual employees that thrives for one big reason: It owns two patents on a process for scanning checks and submitting them over the Internet, and it has sued banks such as J.P. Morgan for infringement and forced large settlements. But rather than sift through the underlying patent issues, Wall Street’s allies in the Senate simply inserted language in the patent-reform bill that would immunize banks from DataTreasury’s lawsuits. It’s a loophole written specifically for banks, not a policy-minded overhaul.

Basically it's a couple of good but not overwhelmingly good ideas opportunistically packaged with some bad to very bad ideas. Which, if you've been paying attention at all, you'll understand is how we keep getting sold very bad ideas by this administration.