Photo op illustrates confusion

By RICHARD RIEHL -- For the North County Times | February 26, 2010

The picture in the newspaper last week of North County's Reps. Brian Bilbray, R-Solana Beach, and Darrell Issa, R-Vista, at a Carlsbad Toyota service center was a sad reflection of their leadership styles and legislative priorities. Bilbray appears confused, Issa skeptical, at the sight of a gas pedal in need of repair. I can relate, having stared at car parts myself. With no clue of what I'm looking for, I tend to agree with whatever the mechanic recommends.

The scene reminded me of Bilbray's confused proposals for reducing unemployment and Issa's skepticism of how the Obama administration is counting the numbers of jobs created or saved by the economic stimulus program. If you're out of solutions to this country's biggest problems in an anti-incumbency election year, your safest campaign strategy is to show your concern over the safety of Toyota drivers.

Bilbray's confusion can be found on his campaign Web site, where he declares, "The best way to encourage small business owners and entrepreneurs to start hiring again is not to increase taxes on them, but to offer them tax incentives to hire more people!" Apparently nobody told him about the president's plan, announced last March, to cut taxes for small businesses and provide a tax credit of $5,000 for every new employee they hire.

In a letter to the president in November, Bilbray suggested that Immigration and Customs Enforcement should step up its worksite enforcement actions to deport illegal immigrant workers, making room for more jobs for legal workers. His letter arrived six months after an ICE crackdown on lawbreaking employers had resulted in 1,897 worksite enforcement actions, compared with 605 during the same period in 2008.

Our confused congressman appears to be neglecting his homework.

Issa mentions job creation twice on his Web site, questioning the Obama administration's method of tracking the success of the recovery act and offering his solution to unemployment: "stop the threat of policies like a national energy tax and a government health care take over that scare private sector employers away from expanding their businesses and hiring new employees." In Issa's America, the job market will bloom again if the government adopts Herbert Hoover's strategy of benign neglect.

Although the nation's unemployment rate stands at 9.7 percent, it's less than 5 percent for those with a bachelor's degree and more than 15 percent for those without a high school diploma. With budget cuts decimating our schools and colleges, and while area unemployment remains above 10 percent, it was discouraging to find our local lawmakers posing for a photo op with a broken gas pedal.