Obama's plan is total nonsense

The federal government is running annual deficits around $1 trillion and President Obama proposes to increase our debt even further to create more jobs for local fire departments?

USA Today is reporting that Obama wants to pour $1 billion that we don't have into jobs for firefighters:

In an effort to cut the unemployment rate among veterans, President Obama ... will seek more grant money for programs that allow local communities to hire more police officers and firefighters.

"Let's get more cops on the beat, let's get more rangers in the parks, let's get more firefighters on call, and in the process, we're going to put more veterans back to work," Obama said Friday at a fire station in Arlington, Va. ...

Communities that hire veterans to work as police and firefighters will be given preference in the grants competition. ... He will propose an additional $1 billion for the firefighter grants.

This nonsense is all about President Obama paying off public employee unions in the hope that they will work hard to get him re-elected. It has little or nothing to do with helping new veterans. (If some of them cannot find work, they should be trained for productive employment in the private sector.)

Mr. Obama's plan has nothing to do with fighting fires. Local communities all over America have millions of firefighters sitting around with no fires to fight.

It has nothing to do with helping local governments. Once they take the federal money to hire a veteran as a firefighter, the local taxpayers will be stuck with the new union member's massive package of lifetime medical benefits and an unaffordable amount to cover his pension. The only cities which will take on these unsustainable burdens will be those where their firefighter unions are running the cities and don't care what long-term damage the added costs will bring.

The Obama hire-a-firefighter program has nothing to do with relieving national unemployment. Net job creation in our country is the result of creating efficiencies. Hiring more firefighters we don't need won't do that. Rather, it will divert money from productive uses--that is, the higher taxes needed to pay this plan off will come from money which could have gone into investment in research & development or new plant & equipment--into an unproductive use. Ultimately, this will cause our country to be less efficient and have fewer jobs created.