Cross Posted at www.faithfuldemocrats.com

 

Pungent piles of Republican nay-saying to the American jobs and stimulus package are getting so deep in Washington that shovel-ready jobs are needed to shovel it all to the dump. Could this be the Republican job creation package?

 

The rigid ideological orthodoxy leading Republicans to oppose the jobs bill ignores the pain of middle and working Americans. We have seen this approach already and we have suffered its outcome too deeply.

 

Their answer to the imploding economic situation is much like the answer they had to Katrina – unleash the awesome power of under-funding, inexperience and an unwilling, pervading philosophy that sees no possibility and allows for no creativity.

 

Consider some of the things they call waste:

 

–         Resources to design and construct a boat for the Coast Guard. How in the world could we allow such? This would create jobs in places like the coasts of Virginia and Mississippi while adding to the ability of the Coast Guard to do their jobs.

 

–         Funding for housing the Department of Homeland Security. We can not allow construction jobs be created in order to create space for the agency charged with our safety.

 

–         Money for screening and preventing STD’s. What are the Democrats thinking? Health care jobs created while making Americans healthy? What?

 

–         More support for the National Endowment for the Arts. Yes, I can see how creating jobs by putting more teachers in the schools to educated and teach our children is a nasty, horrible big government plot.

 

–         Resources for putting computers in community colleges. Well, we certainly can not allow computers to go to the community college students. People may have to be hired to make those computers and for who? Community college students?

 

–         Funding for flood reduction on the Mississippi River and canal inspection in urban areas. That is a bad idea, folks. Jobs to protect rural Americans along the River and make sure canals are safe that run along places such as the Lower 9^th Ward in New Orleans are just bad ideas.

 

Their list of “wasteful spending” is long. I could continue. And, yes, I have a problem with it. They have an agenda and it does not match up with the urgency for action in which our nation finds itself.

 

I do not have a problem with Republicans speaking their minds and assertively putting their markers down, and concerns on the table. Heck, it’s their job. They are part of the process and their input is needed. But, they are doing themselves a disservice and the American people additional pain when they readily and without thought revert to the same old tone death and ideological-based attacks they have been using over the past 25 years.

 

In their attempt to “im-Palin” the Democrats with the divide and conquer approach, ripping off constituency after constituency by trying to find the various hot buttons that add up to sizeable opposition and disengagement they are really further impaling the American people through inaction.

 

Creating jobs can and should have multiple positive results such as jobs that teach our children, jobs that build boats and jobs that make Americans healthier. Our families and communities deserve no less. Enough of narrow agenda-driven approaches that have proven results – failure.

 

Sometimes rigid ideological orthodoxy gets so caught up in its own hubris, its own rules and beliefs that no one notices, anymore, the baby in the manger.

 

American families and communities need help. Shovel ready jobs should be about more than shoveling away the failed agendas of the past.

 

Amen.