American Jobs in a Global Market

I've just finished watching our President present to congress "The American Jobs Act" and it was certainly interesting. Towards the end I got the sense that President Obama was an exasperated father trying to tell his kids to stop fighting. Which is true, he is in a way Congress's dad. Overall, I thought it was really well structured as an appeal to the American in all of us and, as always, President Obama is an excellent speaker.

Anyway, out of his many messages (the one I think most often iterated being that congress should pass this bill now) the one I picked up on was his repeated stressing of the fact that this bill should be an amalgamation of programs supported by both Democrats and Republicans. But not, and this is in my words, by the crazy ones. The President supported cuts to superfluous spending, but not as the only way to solve our problems. He pitched his program as a balanced combination of spending cuts and tax reforms. What pains me is that he can't say outright that we need to raise taxes. Currently, our tax code is ridiculously favorable to the top tiers of citizens and corporations and that has to change. Jon Stewart does the math in this clip of the Daily Show and it really hits home for me. It genuinely angers me that any suggestion of raising taxes on the top 2% is perceived as class warfare, even if that suggestion comes from the top of the top 2%. But to return to the speech, I think the President handled the children of Congress very well. Even though he has to deal with some ridiculous partisanship, I think he clearly delivered his message without sounding too desperate (although his repetition of his plea to congress to "pass it now" seemed a bit sad). To the people that believe that we should just cut everything and give everyone their money back, he says "That's not the story of America" and he's right. It's not. And it shouldn't become the story either.

Another point he stressed was remaining competitive in the global market. It is the President's opinion (and mine) that we should remain competitive by making it easier for companies to hire Americans, by improving our infrastructure, by making our students more competitive in the global job market, and by making American goods more competitive as exports. If we drive Korean cars, why can't Koreans drive American cars? Of course the President says it better, but the point remains the same. He wants to see the three magic words "Made in America" on more goods in more countries. And we need to create jobs to do that. And to create jobs we need to get companies to start and stay in America. And to do that we can't become the new China. Obama spoke of aiming for the top not the bottom; we can't make ourselves competitive by reducing our environmental standards to nothing and our working conditions to those of the Gilded Age of Robber Barons. In my words, we can't become the new China.

Now I know for a fact that I can be a bit inflammatory when I start talking about politics, but I would welcome a debate in the comments. Get to it!