CONGRESSMAN ROSKAM JOB CREATION: AN ENIGMA WRAPPED IN A RIDDLE

My poor brain struggles to decipher how my Congressman Peter Roskam (IL - 6th) is working to create jobs. His first term spanned the economic meltdown under President George W. Bush, caused in part, from loosened financial regulation and trillion dollar tax cuts for the rich. Millions of jobs were lost, yet Congressman Roskam has spent the entire three and a half years of the Obama Administration championing those same twin anchors to our economy.


Maybe his support of the Republican Senate filibuster of the American Jobs Act will help create jobs. But that doesn't make sense since this new stimulus would have pumped $447 billion into the economy adding around two million jobs and will be a net deficit reducer over ten years.

Could his role as a House leader in the utterly phony GOP debt ceiling crisis last summer have been a job creator? Not likely, since that foolhardy stunt spooked financial markets which further damaged job creation.
How about the cuts in discretionary spending Roskam championed in last year's budget deal? Well, according to the Economic Policy Institute, the $30.5 billion in discretionary spending cuts in 2012 cost the economy 0.3% in growth and over 300,000 jobs, so it couldn't be that.

I've got it! It must be those 33 votes Roskam cast in the House to repeal Obamacare. Yes sir, by repealing Obamacare, the health insurance industry will be free once again to hire thousands of additional workers to scour medical claims for reasons to deny benefits, and re-institute finding technicalities such as pre-existing conditions deny coverage outright to new enrollees.

I'm so happy I found the secret to Congressman Roskam's job creating genius. For a moment I thought Congressman Roskam wasn't doing a single thing to create jobs.

Also published in the Glen Ellyn Patch, July 16, 2012