August 31, 2011 08:32 PM UTC

Gardner: "Job Creation" Means...Whatever I Want It To Mean

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• by: Colorado Pols

In Rep. Cory Gardner’s regular periodic email to constituents last week, we took note of something that might help people understand the enormous divide between the respective “job creation” proposals from President Barack Obama vs. Republicans in Congress.

According to a news report in The Washington Post last week, President Obama intends to press Congress for a new round of stimulus spending as part of a job creation and debt reduction plan he will introduce after Labor Day. The problem with this plan is that under the Democrats’ last “stimulus” spending binge, we ended up with 1.3 million fewer jobs and sky-high unemployment.

More stimulus spending, with money we do not have, is not the answer.

Republicans are working to implement a plan targeted at America’s job creators – entrepreneurs and small businesses looking to get government out of the way. The House has already passed over a dozen bills that would promote job creation and reduce burdensome regulations, and these bills are awaiting action in the Senate…

So, what’s a “jobs bill” to you? If you’re Rep. Gardner, it appears that all kinds of things you wouldn’t expect at first glance can be counted as a “jobs bill.” For example,

H.R. 2018, the Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act

Introduced by Rep. John Mica (FL) on May 26, 2011

Passed the House by a vote of 239 to 184 on July 13, 2011

Senate has taken no action to date

H.J.Res. 37, a Resolution of disapproval regarding the FCC’s regulation of the Internet and broadband industry practices

Introduced by Rep. Greg Walden (OR) on February 16, 2011

Passed the House by a vote of 240 to 179 on April 8, 2011

Senate has taken no action to date

Got that? A “jobs bill” is a bill to gut the Clean Water Act. A “jobs bill” is a resolution to kill “net neutrality” rules from the FCC. How about another bill on Gardner’s list, HR-1249, the dubiously-named “America Invents Act”–which would dramatically alter U.S. patent law to allow whoever has the fastest lawyers to swoop in and patent technology invented by someone else?

Seriously, folks, add the above to a long list of pro-oil industry bills sponsored or supported by Gardner…and that’s it. That’s Gardner’s entire “jobs plan.” At best it’s the epitome of so-called ‘trickle-down’ economics, and at worst it’s a colossal insult to millions of unemployed Americans to call this grab-bag of special interest giveaways “jobs bills.”

The thing to understand here, as we said at the beginning, is that this cognitive breach between the traditional understanding of the government’s role in “job creation,” and the apparent view of congressional Republicans like Rep. Gardner, reflects the fundamental breakdown of rational decisionmaking seen in the current majority in Congress. This is the same thinking that eagerly drove the nation to the brink of default during the debt-ceiling crisis. It’s what is driving so many Republicans in Congress to question aid for victims of Hurricane Irene, in numbers you would have never seen previously on an issue like disaster relief–all in the midst of the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression. It is different. It is worse now than it was.

“To create jobs, I built that bridge.”

“To create jobs, I polluted the water under that bridge.”

We can no longer discount the ability of Democrats to hopelessly confound a winning argument, but as we’ve said before, we know which of these we’d rather be selling the voters in 2012.