Monday, February 22, 2010

Apparently It's Cold in Hell Too!

So the weather around here, as well as many parts of the country, is -- delightfully -- frigid, but apparently Hell is suffering the same Arctic air mass. That's right, according to the New York Times, Democrats and Republicans have finally come together to work on solving some of this nation's problems! Or have they?

More below


Oh wait, no, Republicans did not actually finally agree to work with the Democratic majority; they agreed to talk to them. Well I suppose that's a start.

My icy heart skipped a beat when I saw the headline that the Grand Olde Party had crossed party lines to pass a $15 Billion job creation bill, only to read that all they really happened was a "Cloture Motion [was] Agreed to" according to senate.gov.

Cloture basically means they agreed to vote on the bill. Awesome. We united to vote on whether or not we should vote on a bill, and we agreed...mostly(the noble civil servants from my great state voted Nay and Not Present, go get 'em boys!) The Senate is really moving at breakneck speed to get this slowly recovering economy back on track.

Enough of my cynicism, the bill is really pretty, well, cool. It basically says that any company that hires unemployed workers does not have to file payroll tax on those workers for the rest of the year. Really, I can't see much of an objection to that. I am a fan of taxes paying for useful things like the wonderful interstate highway system (which proudly employees me over the summer) and this great, practically free public college education I get. How is it that I am a fan of this big tax hole? Well the government is not collecting taxes from these workers as is, so it's not a net loss for the government, really its a break even that could jump start things back into motion and hopefully next year when the taxes would have to be collected on these workers the economy will be strong enough from the new employment to keep all these men and women employed. Here's hoping, both that the bill works and that maybe Republicans will finally work with the Democrats on a regular basis to get something done.

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