By Rick Manning
Unemployment numbers from the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics took center stage last week as economic movers and shakers moved hundreds of millions of dollars in capital assets based upon the report.
This is business as usual.
In related news, the Congressional Budget Office found that Obamacare’s implementation will lead to 2.3 million Americans leaving the workforce in the years ahead for a variety of reasons.
The Obama Administration’s reaction to the report is the real economic story of the week and perhaps of the entire five years of this presidency. Rather than chagrin, Jason Furman, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, argued that this is a good thing, and the Administration is touting the report as showing that the deservedly maligned health care law is helping people work less due to being unburdened by concerns over health care.
Yes, believe it or not, Team Obama truly believes that people deciding that they would be better off relying upon the government for their sustenance rather than self-sufficiency is viewed as a good thing for our nation’s economic well-being.
This underlying philosophical framework explains how the Obama appointees at the U.S. Department of Agriculture justified spending taxpayer dollars to convince working Americans to enroll in the food stamp program. After all if McDonalds can tout billions and billions served, why can’t the Obama Administration celebrate having sixteen million more people enrolled in the Food Stamp program than when he took office?
It is equally easy to understand how all the President’s men could ignore their own State Department in continuing to delay approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. After all, thousands of good paying jobs threaten to take an equal number of people off of the government dependency drip line, and that cannot be tolerated. So they must be stalled, stopped and delayed at all costs. If the Keystone supporters really wanted to get this President’s attention, perhaps they should promise to pay their workers less money to ensure they still “needed” government support. The new slogan could be Keystone, we provide jobs and dependency, the perfect combination for America.
And the Environmental Protection Agency’s continuing fight to create coal ghost towns throughout Appalachia is understandable when one realizes that Obama simply doesn’t like those jobs and really wishes everyone would just shelter in place replacing an earned paycheck with a government check.
In fact in light of Team Obama’s embrace of how Obamacare will cause workers to work fewer hours in fear of making too much money and suffering a loss of health care subsidies, we now know exactly how to get this Administration to move. Tie every action that helps the free market to a reliance on government cheese for the workers.
All of which finally explains the economic rationale behind the immigration issue.
Once again, now that Team Obama has revealed that dependency is the desired end, every lobbyist in D.C. will be scrambling to show how their company helps make workers reliant on government services.
Not exactly the traditional American ethos, but as long as enough fools continue to work, build and aspire to greater personal wealth, slackers are desired votes. And when the balance tilts and the economy falters, Team Obama and their acolytes can just spend another trillion of other people’s money “stimulating” things up.
And it all works until Atlas finally Shrugs. If only there were a Gorge in the Rocky Mountains to hide out during the aftermath.
Rick Manning (@rmanning957) is vice president of public policy & communications for Americans for Limited Government
