$86 Million A Day

President Obama sent his tax and spending jobs bill to Congress on Sept 12th claiming it was fully paid for. Unfortunately somewhere between the $447 billion introductory speech the prior week the stimulus bill grew to nearly $650 billion.

In order to pay for the bill the president asked for a $50 billion tax hike on the oil and gas industry, the closure of some corporate tax loopholes and for the wealthiest in the country to pay their fair share. Personally I think the 51% of Americans who don't pay taxes should be forced to cough up a few bucks rather than continuing the tax the job creators in the economy.

If you continue to tax the rich, the number of rich to be taxed will continue to decline. That will force the government to tax them at an even higher rate to make up for those who are no longer rich. If you do the math you will see this plan does not work.

There is another gotcha in the bill. It makes being unemployed a protected class in America and allows unemployed persons turned down for a job eligible to sue the employer for not hiring them. I am not kidding.

With 24 million people out of work or working part time just to get by, that is a huge number of people who will take this provision literally and immediately begin suing employers for not hiring them. This is a jobs act alright but not for the unemployed. This is a jobs act for lawyers.

A real jobs act would have been to drop all the needless regulation on oil and gas companies and begin approving drilling permits at the pace they were before the Horizon disaster. The API believes a government that was pro business and pro oil and gas could create another 1.4 million new jobs by 2020 with one million by 2016. They would produce billions more in royalties and lease fees and not cost the taxpayers a dime to enact the program. Turn the job creators lose! Deregulation, not taxation.