What do you call a jobs bill that professes to create jobs when in fact it wouldn’t have much of a real-world effect? It’s naive to think that small business would take advantage of a one-time $4,000 tax credit to hire an employee at a salary of, say, $30,000 a year, not including training or benefits, said Bill Rys, tax counsel for the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents small and independent businesses. What’s more, businesses would assume the risk up front and receive the benefit (the tax credit) a year later. Like many of the tax incentives enacted over the past few years, those proposed in the jobs bill are set on such short time frames as to negate their effect.

The president proposed spending $80 billion to put tens of thousands of residential construction workers, casualties of the housing bust, back to work rebuilding crumbling roads, bridges and schools. The skill sets aren’t well matched; government programs generally require union workers, so most small construction firms won’t qualify; and home builders don’t have the equipment for roads and bridges.

Obama wants to protect the unemployed from discrimination in the workplace. A noble goal, to be sure, but his bill would have the opposite effect by making it illegal to use a candidate’s employment status as a qualification for work.
How would the crafters of the jobs bill expect a reasonable businessman to behave when confronted with the prospect of a discrimination suit for failing to hire an unemployed applicant? He wouldn’t even grant that candidate an interview.This provision is certain to provide enough billable hours for law firms to justify hiring new lawyers.