American Jobs Act: A Country Song

"You should pass it right away" was the President's cadenced refrain in tonight's speech to a joint session of Congress in which he unveiled his plan, The American Jobs Act.

Some of the highlights of his proposal:

*Payroll Taxes would be cut in half for individuals and businesses
*At least 30,000 schools would be repaired or modernized
*Emphasis on hiring construction workers, teachers, veterans, and the long-term unemployed
*All measures would be paid for with off-setting "aggressive debt reduction plan" TBA
*No earmarks
*Every aspect of the plan has enjoyed bipartisan support in the past or currently

The President basically wants to create incentives for businesses to hire people, get the government hiring workers to perform construction projects in education and transportation, and reform the tax code so that everyone pays their "fair share". The plan would also continue the President's directive to examine all government regulations (500 of which have already been identified for retirement) to determine which are necessary and which are harmful to the business climate. Unemployment insurance would be extended for another year, allowing those folks to continue to exist and contribute to their local economies. The President also favors cutting red tape in order to assure that government contracted businesses receive their payments quicker and in order to get more homeowners qualified to refinance and take advantage of the nearly record low rate of around 4%. The President also urged the members of Congress to work quickly to pass the current stack of trade agreements so that "the next generation of manufacturing will be here in America and not in China."

And once he had all that laid out in much more detail than I will go into here, once he had the sheet music laid bare upon the piano top, then he began to play the music many of us had so desperately wished to hear. He lifted us from the Blues with lines like these:

"No single American built this nation"
"We are responsible to ourselves and to each other"
"The next election is 14 months away and the people who hired us, who sent us here don't have the luxury of waiting 14 months"
"We're bigger than our politics have been"
"The last thing our veterans should have to do is fight for a job when they come home"

He brought us back to Earth with arias of truth:

"Every rule in this plan will have to meet a common sense test"
"Every project will have to meet two requirements: 'How badly is it needed?' and 'Is it good for the economy?'"

And he belted out cautionary tales with the vibrancy of voice, the glint in the eye of a cause-driven singer-songwriter when he reminded us:

"I know some of you have signed pledges to never pass a raise in taxes on anything for as long as you live, but now is not the time to carve out an exception and raise taxes on the middle class"
"Tax breaks shouldn't go to corporations with the best lobbyists, they should go to companies that create jobs in America"
"We can't afford to do both" (pass the AJA and give breaks to the top earners and corps.)
"I will not allow this economic crisis to be used as an excuse for (taking away) the basic protections that Americans have counted on for decades"
"I do not believe we have to strip away collective bargaining rights to save the economy"

He told us that "This is not political grandstanding, it's not class warfare, it's simple math." He asked that we all be willing to "change the way we do business." He explained that Medicare and Social Security would have to be reformed, not because they are fool's errands but because the future retirees who would need those funds that had been withheld from their paychecks all their working years would not receive their monies unless reforms are made. He did not ask that we soak the rich, but that we all stand in the fountain together and let a little mist fall out way.

Tonight, President Obama spoke of the tapestry of our great nation. He reminded us that we all have a duty to ourselves to be responsible, but he rejected the notion that we should gut the government of all size and spending in order to just be on our own. "There is another thread" that winds through America, he said. "A belief that we're all connected." He asked us to ponder what this country would look like today if nothing had been built because government wasn't supposed to do those things. What if we had no research universities, no high school buildings, no highways, no bridges, no GI Bill (which allowed his own grandfather to receive an education), no internet, no Medicare and no Social Security? "How many would have suffered over some rigid idea of government?"

To circle back to the beginning of the speech in which he enumerated the skepticism prevalent in the country concerning our "greatness" and the promise of the future, he quoted President Kennedy who said that "Problems are man made and man can solve them". He cast his purview back to the beginnings of the Republican Party and President Lincoln who began our land grant colleges, the first trans-continental railroad, and the National Academy of Sciences. And in doing so the President laid out the map of who we've been and who we still should endeavor to be as a nation.

"That's not who we are" he said more than once when speaking of our gridlock or our baiting of one against another. "This is America" he intoned with a sincerity that elevated even the grand hall in which he stood. Tonight, President Barack Obama was a statesman.

When the glow of the moment wears off, what will be accomplished? I cannot say for sure. But I do believe that the President intends to do what he can on his own and go to the American people for support with what (if anything) the Republicans choose not to do. And I hope we'll listen because we are all connected and not one of us can do everything without the others.

I may never meet you, but I've laid metaphorical hands on your child's school books. I may never run into you in the market, but I've heard about your town's flooding and I want you to get those soggy sandbags turned into levees or dams. We may never share a conversation over a cup of coffee, but I want your child to come home safely from the wars. And though you haven't driven on my mountain pass, you have cast the shadow of your largess alongside the spruce trees there.

We are all investors in each other. We are not really labels nor parties, though those are fun rhetorical playthings for us and that's fine. When I'm doing okay I pull you up and when I fall you keep me in gear. We are all in the same chorus with the same sheet music in the same 235-season long opera.

I'm willing to take on the alto parts. Are you soprano or tenor?