Pelosi does the right thing

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi deserves a lot of credit today for calling the House back from vacation, to vote on a bill that would restore some Federal aid to the states. Much of the money would go towards medical assistance and schools. Will this federal aid allow states to help more uninsured folks receive medical care? Will school districts be able to repair facilities, buy new equipment, or rehire laid-off teachers? Sadly, the answer is no. In most states this federal aid will only partly cover the gaps created by drastic cuts in state budgets. Wages and benefits have already been cut. Teachers and firefighters have already lost their jobs. People who need medical assistance have already been turned away. All that this aid would accomplish would be to give states a chance to pause in this latest round of cuts, before further erosion in their revenues forces still more cuts in the near future.

Within hours of Pelosi’s call to action, Republicans started to whine. How dare she demand that Congress make an effort to prevent even worse devastation in an already ravaged country? The measure that will go the House is fully paid for, it will not add to the deficit. Indeed the Senate Republican filibuster was only broken after Democrats were forced to make cuts in the SNAP (Food Stamps) program. Yet Republicans still complained that the increased taxes in the law would be bad for business and hurt job creation. But what are these job killing tax hikes? Nothing that would remotely influence a business to refrain from creating U.S. jobs. Rather, the measure calls for closing a loophole that allowed companies to evade U.S. taxes through manipulating foreign tax credits. Companies that behave in such an unpatriotic fashion have already busted unions, cut wages and benefits, and outsourced as many jobs as possible to low-wage countries. They had no plans to create any good new jobs in the U.S. Losing this tax dodge will only spur them to dream up more shady ways to jack up their profits.

Let's hope this little step in the right direction signals a more active Congress in the future!