The American Jobs Act - WTF?

So last week, President Obama introduced his American Jobs Act, meant to help our failing economy and put Americans back to work.

We are on the White House’s official mailing list (do you think we’ll get a Christmas card?) and we received a synopsis of the Jobs Act and what it is meant to do. So we thought we would take this opportunity to translate it, Burnandrotinhell.com style.

White House: First, it provides a tax cut to small businesses, not big corporations, to help them hire and expand now and provides an additional tax cut to any business that increases wages.

BARIH: We know you’re not that stupid, Americans, and you realized the little guy gets shafted all the time, while bankers make out like bandits in this country. So we created an incentive for the guy who owns the pizzeria up the block, even though he is so far in the hole from this economy being crappy for years that he won’t be able to take advantage of it. Oh, well, at least we tried!

White House: Second, it puts people back to work, including teachers, first responders, and veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, and construction workers repairing crumbling bridges, roads, and more than 35,000 public schools, with projects chosen by need and impact, not earmarks and politics.

BARIH: Please ignore the fact that we will be putting a lot of bad teachers back to work for now and compensating them for being sucky! That’s a separate problem! At least they will be working! Please also ignore that what we are doing here is copying FDR’s Public Works Program from the Great Depression and passing it off as our own brilliant idea! (Hey, does this mean we are in another Great Depression…hmmmmmmm.) By the way, these bridges, roads, and schools were crumbling even in the best of times! What does that say about us?

White House: Third, it helps out-of-work Americans by extending unemployment benefits to help them support their families while looking for work and reforming the system with training programs that build real skills, connect to real jobs and help the long-term unemployed.

BARIH: Let’s forget about reforming the system so that people can’t cheat the system, like work off the books and still get unemployment and food stamps. We’ll take care of that some other time. Let’s also take taxpayer money to send the unemployed back to school to make up for the education they didn’t receive the first time around because the education system in this country bites.

White House: Fourth, it puts more money in the pockets of working and middle class Americans by cutting in half the payroll tax that comes out of every worker’s paycheck, saving families an average of $1,500 per year. And it removes the barriers that exist in the current federal refinancing program (HARP) to help more Americans refinance their mortgages at historically low rates, save money and stay in their homes.

BARIH: Ok, bitches, we saved the best for last. We know you figured out that you will probably never collect Social Security because the whole system will be bankrupt in 2037. And we don’t want a revolution because you’re all pissed. I mean, this is the United States, not France, and we swallow everything that is dished out to us. So, you’ll only be putting in a little over 3.5% of each paycheck into a soon-to-be bankrupt system, instead of over 7%. Feel better now?

The White House also wants you to know they now have office hours on Twitter, using the hashtag #WHChat. Now that’s progress.

Coming Soon: Why Spongebob Squarepants Can Be Hazardous to Your Health