Sunday, November 06, 2011

Republicans Pass a Jobs Bill


Republicans said they wanted to pass H.R. 1904 because it was a jobs bill for Arizona. The Republicans stated the bill would create 500 jobs and up to 3,000 jobs later. The crux of the bill is that Arizona sells some federal  Indian land in exchange for a larger plot of non-federal land. The rights to the sold Indian land would go to two foreign countries, Britain and Australia and they would get the rights to the largest amount of copper known in the northern hemisphere. The issues about where the copper will be processed and whether the US had workers for this mine were poorly addressed. The large foreign mine operations will be digging over 7,000 feet below the surface. There was no mention as to how far down they could go (I assume to the center of the earth) and there was also no mention as to how far they could tunnel.
As a jobs bill, this seems pretty poor for the US, since I doubt we have 3,000 copper miners to fill these jobs. I assume foreign workers will come and get the jobs created. In addition, these foreign countries have the technology to use robots and exclude workers. There were no provisions in the bill that humans had to be employed. There was also no mention in the bill that the US got any of the copper profits over the many years to come. The Republicans did state the US has no facilities to process the copper, so all of the processing jobs will be abroad.
Oh, and the Indians who live on the land will not be consulted until after Congress gave the OK to go ahead with the project.
If we imagine that all was well with this bill and 3,000 jobs would be created, the jobs would not appear for years. we need jobs now. In one to three years, we should be in a recovery and all of this loss of our precious mineral resource will be too late to fit the alleged plan.
The Republican bill passed and now sits in the Senate.
Clearly, this was a payola scam on the American people.

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