Landrieu efforts low on substance, high on propaganda

While the uninformed and partisan breathlessly cooed over Pres. Barack Obama’s signing of legislation pushed by and an initiative taken by Sen. Mary Landrieu, in reality they got all worked up over propaganda exercises with no substantive benefit to the country or to Louisiana.

The ceremony involved the Small Jobs Business Act, which will end up creating jobs – but only in government. As has been reviewed in this space, the new law creates small business incentives that few of them can access and which last almost no time, in exchange for giving government greater control over lending to small business that will end up lowering lending standards and raising default rates paid for by taxpayers.

As Republicans pointed out, if Democrats Obama and Landrieu really meant to help small business, they would support preventing tax increases on almost half of all small business profit set to trigger at the end of the year. Instead, Landrieu, despite being chairwoman of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, has expressed opposition to this and with the rest of Congress plans to hightail it out of town soon without making any effort to stop the tax increase from going into effect. After all, as Democrats have choked off any meaningful economic recovery with promises of greater debts, taxation, and regulation in the future, what’s a few more casualties among small business to them generally, or to Landrieu specifically?

Perhaps Congress will convene before its end after Democrats take a beating in midterm elections with a growing probability that they will control neither chamber of the next Congress and actually deal with the looming tax hike. But time already will have run out on them concerning the budget, which by law they should have completed by Oct. 1. Instead, it looks like a punt by the Democrat leadership on this as well, fearing to reveal a budget that produces more recessionary economic performance in exchange for empowering government.

Which makes Landrieu’s refusing to allow the nomination of a new head to the Office of Management and Budget, vacant after the abrupt departure of its former head who was one of the architects of the economic slowdown, until the Obama Administration moratorium on deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is lifted nothing more than a publicity stunt. There’s no expediency required on this matter so long as Democrats dawdle on the budget as a whole.

Further, it’s an empty threat. By taking this recess instead of working on the budget and eliminating the tax hike, this invites Obama to make a recess appointment that would allow his nominee to stay on the job until the end of next year (if he even lasts that long, given the downward trajectory of the Obama Administration). Obama shows no signs of wavering from his meritless, ideologically-driven path to suppress drilling so if the matter is important to him, he’ll just bypass the Senate.

So, properly understood, Landrieu’s efforts to pass useless, if not actually harmful, legislation while ignoring the real problem of the upcoming tax hike, and in making a symbolic gesture that will change nothing in the actual production of an on-time and sensible budget or in removing job-killing moratorium, are short on substance and long on propaganda.