President Obama wants his American Jobs Act passed immediately. You know this already—he made sure he delivered that message in his speech: “Pass this jobs plan right away” was his refrain. President Obama has definitely not read the Federalist Papers in a while. If he had, he would not be encouraging Congress to pass half-a-trillion dollars of new spending at a moment’s notice.
Congress is not a quick-strike team, and the Senate especially is not designed to be a rapidly responsive body. James Madison explained in Federalist #62 that it is to be slow and deliberative, because “mutable government” is ineffective and dangerous.
What indeed are all the repealing, explaining, and amending laws, which fill and disgrace our voluminous codes [under the Articles of Confederation], but so many monuments of deficient wisdom; so many impeachments exhibited by each succeeding against each preceding session; so many admonitions to the people, of the value of those aids which may be expected from a well-constituted senate?…
To trace the mischievous effects of a mutable government would fill a volume…. It poisons the blessing of liberty.
The president’s urgency is understandable—he wants desperately to help the economy, and it could use help. It was announced today that the poverty rate is higher than it has been in 28 years, that the median household income has fallen, and that the number of people with health insurance has fallen. In his jobs speech, the president asked Congress to put political games aside, saying,
The next election is 14 months away. And the people who sent us here—the people who hired us to work for them—they don’t have the luxury of waiting 14 months. Some of them are living week to week, paycheck to paycheck, even day to day. They need help, and they need it now.
The irony may be painful, but President Obama was begging assistance from a body designed to fail him. And if Congress does pass something, the rich will be much more able to take advantage of the unintended consequences of the bill—as Madison put it:
Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising, and the moneyed few over the industrious and uniformed mass of the people.
Nobody actually expects relief for the poor from the Jobs Act, because economic growth isn’t generated by money taken out of the hands of productive businesses and entrepreneurs. (Google “cost of stimulus jobs” for a dark laugh.) It takes time to build up a business that contributes to the economy—Americans don’t really believe that 20th century progressives discovered the secret of warp speed, government-catalyzed growth.
In the mean time, who takes care of those who live “week to week” and “day to day?” Private institutions, of course (see Acton’s Principles for Budget Reform): churches and local charities and other groups that are equipped to provide assistance in less than 14 months. As Bruce Walker explained in an Acton Commentary last Christmas,
If one relies on government programs to help the poor, how can one be blamed for asserting “I gave at the office” rather than ponying up at the Salvation Army drum or the church collection basket, or buying a Christmas goose for the laid-off father of the family at the end of the block?
It’s getting too easy to pick on this administration.
