Tweet
NEW IMMIGRATION BILL HAS TAXPAYER SUBSIDIZED OBAMACARS FOR YOUTHS
Yes, you read that headline correctly. Parents of teenagers everywhere, rest easy. Your unemployable brat of a kid will not be wrecking your car this summer. Marco Rubio and Barack Obama have created a new program, “Clunkers-for-Slackers.” As early as this fall, your teen could be driving in style to show up hours late for his subsidized, make-work minimum-wage job picking up trash in a school parking lot.
This is Breitbart’s smart take (and by that I mean very much the opposite) on the immigration bill’s $1.5 billion youth jobs program, created by the Corker-Hoeven substitute amendment that achieved cloture yesterday.
In case you’re wondering, yes, I find this a bit far-fetched. But here’s the argument — it begins with the following legislative language for money used in this jobs program:
The funds made available under this section shall be used— (A) to provide summer employment opportunities for low-income youth, with direct linkages to academic and occupational learning, and may be used to provide supportive services, such as transportation or child care, that is necessary to enable the participation of such youth in the opportunities;
See the word “transportation” there? That proves it.
But before you start making room in your garage, note that this language is really just a cut-and-paste from previous misguided liberal jobs bills — not just the recent American Jobs Act, but also a program that President Clinton actually signed into law in 1994. That old program, at $300 million in its first year, wasn’t as well-funded as this one (is that what spared us the Bubba-mobile?), but it’s basically the same thing.
To be sure, this program deserves as much mockery as the headline above. It’s the kind of program liberals love because they can’t see more than one step ahead. This is really just a waste of $1.5 billion on unproductive, make-work jobs that are intended to compensate for government-inflated college education costs and the lousy youth job market that’s par for the course when the minimum wage is too high and the federal government is busy destroying trillions in wealth with malinvestments and attaching new, expensive strings to private-sector hiring. (Come to think of it, the purchase of cars and scooters might actually be a better use of the money.)
That alone should be more than enough for conservatives to recognize the folly of the program. But the added supposition that “Barackmobiles” are just around the corner — well, now you’re just making it easy for people to laugh at you and ignore a valid underlying point.
The line of reasoning is based on what looks like a prank by a Senate staffer, who was granted anonymity on the grounds that he’d be fired if his name were attached to such a howler:
A GOP senate aide told Breitbart News that for the country to be able to spend $1.5 billion on such a program so fast, it would need to buy, lease or rent motor vehicles for beneficiaries of the new government handout. The provision that outlines how the money can be legally used for providing “supportive services” like “transportation,” the aide said, could easily be interpreted to mean the money could be spent buying or leasing or renting vehicles for the beneficiaries. “This appears to give states authority to buy, lease or rent motorcycles, cars and scooters or anything kids want to buy to get to and from a job,” the GOP aide said.
Far be it from me to put limits on the creativity of bureaucrats in wasting money, but this is just a bit much to accept on the word of some anonymous staffer. Even California doesn’t spend its money this stupidly. (After all, most people under 24 don’t even vote.)
If there do exist federal and state regulations about how such grant money can be used, you wouldn’t know it by reading this. Maybe we need a little more evidence before bracing for all the additional car-wrecks that are coming in the age of the Obamobile.
Yes, you read that headline correctly. Parents of teenagers everywhere, rest easy. Your unemployable brat of a kid will not be wrecking your car this summer. Marco Rubio and Barack Obama have created a new program, “Clunkers-for-Slackers.” As early as this fall, your teen could be driving in style to show up hours late for his subsidized, make-work minimum-wage job picking up trash in a school parking lot.
This is Breitbart’s smart take (and by that I mean very much the opposite) on the immigration bill’s $1.5 billion youth jobs program, created by the Corker-Hoeven substitute amendment that achieved cloture yesterday.
In case you’re wondering, yes, I find this a bit far-fetched. But here’s the argument — it begins with the following legislative language for money used in this jobs program:
The funds made available under this section shall be used— (A) to provide summer employment opportunities for low-income youth, with direct linkages to academic and occupational learning, and may be used to provide supportive services, such as transportation or child care, that is necessary to enable the participation of such youth in the opportunities;
See the word “transportation” there? That proves it.
But before you start making room in your garage, note that this language is really just a cut-and-paste from previous misguided liberal jobs bills — not just the recent American Jobs Act, but also a program that President Clinton actually signed into law in 1994. That old program, at $300 million in its first year, wasn’t as well-funded as this one (is that what spared us the Bubba-mobile?), but it’s basically the same thing.
To be sure, this program deserves as much mockery as the headline above. It’s the kind of program liberals love because they can’t see more than one step ahead. This is really just a waste of $1.5 billion on unproductive, make-work jobs that are intended to compensate for government-inflated college education costs and the lousy youth job market that’s par for the course when the minimum wage is too high and the federal government is busy destroying trillions in wealth with malinvestments and attaching new, expensive strings to private-sector hiring. (Come to think of it, the purchase of cars and scooters might actually be a better use of the money.)
That alone should be more than enough for conservatives to recognize the folly of the program. But the added supposition that “Barackmobiles” are just around the corner — well, now you’re just making it easy for people to laugh at you and ignore a valid underlying point.
The line of reasoning is based on what looks like a prank by a Senate staffer, who was granted anonymity on the grounds that he’d be fired if his name were attached to such a howler:
A GOP senate aide told Breitbart News that for the country to be able to spend $1.5 billion on such a program so fast, it would need to buy, lease or rent motor vehicles for beneficiaries of the new government handout. The provision that outlines how the money can be legally used for providing “supportive services” like “transportation,” the aide said, could easily be interpreted to mean the money could be spent buying or leasing or renting vehicles for the beneficiaries. “This appears to give states authority to buy, lease or rent motorcycles, cars and scooters or anything kids want to buy to get to and from a job,” the GOP aide said.
Far be it from me to put limits on the creativity of bureaucrats in wasting money, but this is just a bit much to accept on the word of some anonymous staffer. Even California doesn’t spend its money this stupidly. (After all, most people under 24 don’t even vote.)
If there do exist federal and state regulations about how such grant money can be used, you wouldn’t know it by reading this. Maybe we need a little more evidence before bracing for all the additional car-wrecks that are coming in the age of the Obamobile.
Comment