President Obama made a speech the other night in which he discussed the economy, and actions that will have to be taken to help fix it. In this speech, he mentioned “tackling entitlements”. This sounds like an interesting idea to me. We all know that there is an NFL lockout, and that these pro-football players have nothing to do in the coming months. So I guess this really would help the economy and help create some new jobs for the unemployed football players as well, effectively killing two birds with one stone.
So I like the sound of it, but what would it actually mean to “tackle” entitlements? Does that mean that the football players will chase down and tackle people delivering entitlement services, or perhaps smear mailmen into the pavement before they can deliver the welfare and social security checks? Or do they simply wait outside the Washington offices of these entitlement programs, and tackle the government workers as they arrive for work and try to get into the office building, effectively preventing them from being able to spend money and dole it out on entitlements?
It sounds fun, but would this really end up helping the economy in the long run? It seems to me that if professional football players are going to just tackle everyday, ordinary clerical workers or mailmen who aren’t wearing any padding, these people may end up getting hurt. And then they may have to go to the hospital, piling up more debt for the taxpayer. And some of them might even be spoiled-sports about it and sue the football players or the government over this, thus putting an even greater financial burden upon the taxpayers’ shoulders through costly litigation. I mean, I understand that mail delivery people are probably in fairly good physical shape from having to run away from hostile dogs, etc., so they may not be hurt; but an executive for Medicare or someone like that: aren’t they going to be badly injured?
And aren’t the football players going to require/demand super-high salaries and benefits, costing as much as the entitlements they are intended to stop or hinder? I mean, I understand that they’re unionized, so President Obama will want to use them rather than college football players (College players aren’t in a union yet, and would thus cost a lot less to use; but the president always favors unions since they donate so much money to the Democrats. Um, I mean, because they treat workers fairly and fight for a high wage and good benefits for their members.), but won’t the cost of the players’ services simply add to our budget deficit and national debt, and in the end be counter-productive? (Oh, but maybe they could be sponsored by Budweiser or Mountain Dew or some other corporate commercial interest: then it would pay for itself! Oh, but then again, it’s supposed to be a government program, and it would be looked-at as bribery or corruption, with corporations being directly involved in government operations. So nix that, I guess.)
And will this plan even help the President? Sure, it might help the economy temporarily to stop entitlement payments from going out or reaching their intended recipients, but wouldn’t that just prevent them from being able to purchase goods or services, and thus hurt the economy in the long run? And when he’s providing jobs for already rich and pampered athletes rather than for the common man, won’t people accuse him of only helping the rich like the Republicans do? And then won’t that make the Republicans mad that he’s trying to steal their main platform plank of only doing stuff to help rich people? Then they might get mad and attack the president about stuff on the news.
I don’t know; the more I think about this thing, the worse it seems. I mean, sure: it sounds good at first to have football players going out and tackling people in the real world, but will it actually help the economy? In the end, I don’t think so. But it would be fun to watch it play out on the news night after night. So there’s that.
