Think that just because you are a hard-working, tax-paying American Citizen who's just down on your luck, and needs a job, and if only Obama's Stimulus package would get signed into law, you could once again be gainfully employed, and be able to put bread on the table for you and your family?
Think again.
There’s been a lot of discussion from everywhere (me included) about all of the pork being stuffed into President Barack Obama's $838 Bn spending bill, it's what is being cut out that's receiving too little attention. And once a majority of ‘We The People’ realize it, ‘We’ won’t be happy. Hopefully ‘We’ will be pissed off enough to tell our ‘Representative Government’ exactly what ‘We’ think of this bill. Hopefully, it won’t be too late at that point.
What's been removed is a requirement for any businesses receiving federal stimulus cash to use an easy computer program called E-Verify to make sure that the jobs they generate go to American citizens or documented foreign workers, not illegal immigrants. Democrats in the House voted for the E-Verify component. But when the bill reached the Senate, Democrats there dropped it.
E-Verify, offered free to all employers since 2004 as a way to combat illegal Immigration, allows employers to determine the legal work status of potential employees by searching their names and Social Security numbers along with other databases.
It's cheap to operate, and more than 96 percent of job applicants are cleared by the program within minutes. This makes it almost impossible for employers to skirt the system and hire cheap, illegal labor.
Of all the garbage in the bill, there's been little if any discussion about E-Verify.
Being politicians, they can't help but accuse the other side of not caring about the American worker.
But the American Worker is who the E-Verify provision was supposed to protect. Not the construction boss or the slaughterhouse manager who wants to pay as little as possible for labor.
"It's another example of why people distrust Congress," said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who had pushed for an amendment to the stimulus package mandating that E-Verify be used to certify job applicants.
John Kass spoke with Senator Sessions over the phone Tuesday minutes after the Senate narrowly passed its version of the stimulus package, 61-37. He asked Sessions how Americans will react, once they figure it out.
"I think the American people will be furious when they find out about this. The Congress tells them one thing, and then in the dead of night, the Senate maneuvers around and does another," Sessions said. "Those who know are already not happy about it. They see this as one more duplicitous act."
"They get to tell their constituents, 'See, I voted for it.' But they never really wanted it in the first place," Sessions said.
"It [E-Verify] should be the law of the land. The reason it's not tells you more about American politics—and the Democrats' courtship of Latino voters—than any speech about hope.
This isn't about denying legal immigrants work, no matter where they come from. It's about ensuring that the federal system is legit, not full of holes ripe for corruption and big-city political patronage.
Sessions said he'll keep pushing to include the E-Verify provision in the final bill that is sent to the president. And other politicians will no doubt fight for what they deem important in the bill, whether it's that $400 million to prevent sexually transmitted diseases or that $246 million tax break for Hollywood producers.
Whether safe sex and Hollywood help stimulate the economy is something I'll leave to politicians.
But what about American workers and American taxpayers?
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Meanwhile, Obama campaigns for the bill, warning that without his stimulus package, we'll suffer economic catastrophe. Whatever happened to choosing hope over fear?
"I can tell you that failure to act, doing nothing, is not an option. You didn't send me to Washington to do nothing. So, we had a good debate. That's part of what democracy is about. But the time for talk is over," the president told a highly stimulated crowd Tuesday in Ft. Myers, Fla.
Translation: Debate? What debate? Let's spend it now, and we'll worry about the details later.
With credit to John Kass, as he said it better than I could.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-kass-11-feb11,0,657719.column
Munge-munge cinta
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Nak membongkar kisah hati...aku kenal Mr. Dupits masa aku mula kerja di
salah sebuah Hotel. Dia pun keja kat situ jugak. Masa interview aku x
nampak pun ma...
12 years ago