This Thursday, President Obama is scheduled to give a speech before a joint session of Congress laying out a new jobs plan to help get the American economy back on track. It’s nice to hear the word “jobs” in the news when it’s not in reference to a former Apple CEO; where the media used to constantly remind us of the exorbitant number of jobless persons in this country, now it seems many are accepting a 9–plus percent unemployment rate as status quo.

But even when Washington manages to take action that most of us could consider positive something still goes entirely wrong. The president had originally hoped to deliver the speech on Wednesday evening at 8:00 p.m. Eastern.

Whether one of the president’s aides lacked foresight or the president was in a particularly spiteful mood I suppose we’ll never know, because that hour turned out to be the exact time when a Republican primary debate was scheduled.

House Speaker John Boehner asked the president if he could consider giving the speech the next night instead.

Naturally this whole exchange sparked another congressional food fight, something we’ve become quite familiar with since President Obama took office.

The president ended up capitulating to the congressional Republicans’ demands and decided to deliver his speech the following day, but even this move was not without controversy. Probably hoping to avoid angering America’s avid TV viewers (see: the scheduling fiasco over the State of the Union that took place earlier this year when many thought Obama’s speech would overlap with a new episode of Lost), Obama is delivering this speech earlier in the evening to ensure that it doesn’t coincide with the beginning of football season. Because if there’s one thing that could guarantee that Obama doesn’t win reelection, it would be getting between Americans and their football.

This is one of those stories where I have to ask myself, “Why is this even news?” That this is what we’ve come to call “controversy” really tells me a lot about the football game that politics in this nation has become. Politicians decry the rampant polarization in our congress, but most of the time it appears they’re creating it themselves.

Moreover, this whole debacle is a disservice to the millions of unemployed in this country. While Democrats and Republicans continue to trade jabs on TV and in the papers alike, 9.1 percent of this country’s labor force remains jobless, and an even higher number are underemployed. And these people aren’t simply jobless out of lack of motivation.

Most people don’t want to have to worry about being unable to pay for their home loans, their education, or even basic food and other amenities. However, many of the jobs simply aren’t there.

We’re certainly not lacking in potential solutions to the unemployment problem. If I were more conservative, I’d probably want to lower taxes on small businesses to incentivize hiring, and if I were more left-leaning I’d probably push for more stimulus spending to put more money in the economy. But this year our government has done neither of those things, choosing instead to sit on the sidelines while potentially productive members of our society get pushed to the wayside.

I look forward to the president’s speech on Thursday, but I also hope that his words won’t fall as flat as Congress’s actions thus far toward putting America back to work.

Brandon Bub is a sophomore majoring in English and edits The Daily Campus opinion column. He can be reached for comment at [email protected]