“In the last two years, under President Obama, the federal government has added 200,000 new federal jobs,” Boehner said. “If some of those jobs are lost so be it. We’re broke.”
Okay! Forget the fact that Boehner is lying about the job figure. Independent researchers have come up with drastically smaller figures, somewhere around 20,000. But let’s say for argument sake that Boehner is correct. Should “so be it” be the appropriate response to putting 200,000 American families out of work and possibly out on the street?
John Boehner and his Republican comrades won the House of Representatives and gained seats in the Senate in November mainly because of a promise to “create jobs.” He traveled from state to state, district to district campaigning on the platform of “Where’s the jobs?” and accusing the Obama administration of being mis-guided with their domestic policies.
After the mid-term elections, it was Boehner who was heard in an interview with ABC news saying;
“I think the American people want us to focus on their message during the election: stop the spending, get rid of the uncertainty. Let’s get around to creating jobs again and staying focused on what the American people want us to focus on is my number one priority.”
What happened to his “number one priority?” Well, it came to a head-on collision with the reality of actually governing. John Boehner is slowly beginning to realize that actually “creating jobs” like he and his allies had promised is easier said than done. He’s seeing that being responsible for one branch of the federal government means people are going to look to you to actually get things done. No longer is just saying “no” to all the president’s policies acceptable.
So what’s a Boehner to do?
Create a distraction. He’s not going to come out and say to the American people, “Listen, I can’t create jobs because I am totally in over my head and this governing thing is a lot harder than I thought it would be.” No, that will be suicide for the Republican party to renig on one of its major campaign platform promises. And his incompetence as Speaker of the House will not be forgotten in 2012.
So the distraction would be to pivot. Take the focus off of ‘creating” jobs and make it about the so-called 200,000 unnecessary federal jobs created by the Obama administration. Now Boehner knew this number was inflated, but he had to go big, big enough so that the Teaparty would be impressed with his ability to cut unnecessary spending. After all, that too was another promise he made, “cut unnecessary spending.”
However, in his haste to create the illusion of being on the job and uncovering massive savings by eliminating 200,000 unnecessary federal jobs, Boehner unintentionally created another headline asking where are his tears for the 200,000 families he would single-handedly place on the unemployment line?
