-By Warner Todd Huston
Texas Representative Louie Gohmert is a genius. He’s absconded with the name of Obama’s jobs bill — the American Jobs Act of 2011 –and used it for his own tax-cutting bill.
Is it a Republican dirty trick? How can Gohmert do this? Because Obama is either incompetent or cynical.
Here is the thing, either Obama was never serious about this so-called jobs bill in the first place and never intended to submit it, or he is one of the most inept politicians in presidential history.
If Obama were an effective president Rep. Gohmert would never have been able to appropriate Obama’s bill name for his own. If Obama was effective he’d have crafted his jobs bill, delivered his speech that night, and lined up at least one Democrat, if not the whole Democrat Party, to introduce his bill the very next morning after the speech.
But Obama did no such thing. Not only was there no bill when he delivered the speech, even this many days after the speech the bill has never been introduced in the House of Representatives where such bills might begin the legislative process.
That means that there was no bill called the “American Jobs Act of 2011” in the House, so Rep. Gohmert was under no compulsion not to use it as a name for his own bill.
Of course, it is also possible that President Obama never intended to submit any bill named the “American Jobs Act of 2011” in the first place. It is possible he never wanted such a bill debated for real because all he was doing was using it as a political ploy for his reelection campaign.
As for Gohmert, his new “American Jobs Act of 2011” (H.R. 2911) among other things the bill would repeal the alternative minimum tax and would make corporate tax rates zero percent.
I am not positive that Gohmert is serious about this particular bill. It may be more of a finger in Obama’s eye because he was so incompetent as not to have introduced his own bill.
What ever Gohmert’s real intentions, it is delicious political theater, regardless.
(H/T Rob Bluey)
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.
This posting is a hoot! So many unanswered questions but who cares. It is still a hoot.
Re: “corporate tax rates zero percent” – Ultimately ALL taxes are paid for by the end-user. Any taxes a business pays are tacked into the price of the items or services they sell.