John Block Reports from Washington

Hello everybody out there in farm country. This radio commentary is brought to you by the Renewable Fuels Association, Monsanto, and John Deere. They are all friends, supporters, and allies of a healthy farm economy and prosperous rural America. Thank you.

And now for today’s commentary—

President Obama, in his speech to the nation last week, seemed almost frantic. “Pass this jobs bill right now.” How many times did he say that?

I do agree that, with unemployment at more than 9%, we have a serious problem. But is the President’s jobs plan the right solution? His plan will cost almost half a trillion dollars. We don’t have it. It will just increase our total debt. A payroll tax cut means the government will have to borrow the money to make up for the cost. Extension of unemployment insurance is money going out that we don’t have. We will have to borrow the money to build more roads and bridges. He also wants to bail out the states by giving them more money that we don’t have. I know, all of this could relieve some of the public pain that we feel today.

However, doesn’t it just exacerbate our real problem – too much debt?

We have a special committee charged with the difficult task of reducing the debt. Remember the uproar and finger pointing as we struggled to raise our debt ceiling last August? The anger when S&P lowered our nation’s credit rating still rings in our ears. S&P will surely lower our credit rating again if we don’t do something about our ballooning debt.

We can’t have it both ways. We either go merrily on our way spending ourselves into oblivion, or we suck it up and do what is difficult but necessary.

The President says don’t worry, this will be “fully paid for” – details to follow. Well, we have the details now and, as we expected, the President wants the special committee to raise the money mostly through more taxes. Their reduction in spending will not be implemented until 2013. The plan is to postpone every tough action until after the election. That’s what got us into this mess in the first place – just “kick the can down the road” one more time.

I predict that part of the jobs bill will be approved by Congress, but most of it will not; nor should it.

In closing, I would encourage you to access my website which archives my radio commentaries dating back 10 years and will go back 20 years when complete. Check on what I said back then. Go to www.johnblockreports.com.

Until next week, I am John Block in Washington.