Consider this scenario: You work hard 5 days a week for a company that produces widgets. You pay your taxes. Then, the government decides it disapproves of the widgets your company and you work to produce. The government decides to use your tax dollars to put your company out of business. It works and you lose your job.  

Under this scenario, you unwittingly financed your own unemployment.  

Seems unlikely, right? Wrong!

Illinois Rep. Aaron Schock has a must-read oped in Politico this morning explaining the dirty trick being played on Americans and how their tax dollars are being used to put some companies under:  

Following the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, more commonly known as the stimulus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was allocated taxpayer dollars to award grants for wellness efforts — on its face, a worthy effort. However, these taxpayer funds are being used to run ads attacking and singling out legal American products and industries; attacks that will slow job growth and cost our communities jobs. When the stimulus well runs dry, this practice could continue through various streams of funding identified in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

…

When a company like Hostess — which employed hundreds of employees in my congressional district — dedicates millions of dollars to market its products, it shouldn’t have to worry about the company’s tax dollars being used against it to dissuade the public from buying its products. In fact, the brand damage that occurs from these government-funded attack ads results in businesses having to dedicate even more resources toward marketing — money that could otherwise be used to give pay raises to their employees or reinvest and grow their business

The CDC's actions perfectly illustrates this Administration's inability (or is it unwillingness) to recognized the state of our economy and the record-high and stagnant unemployment numbers. It's time the Obama administration stopped hurting the American economy by deciding which companies it deems worthy enough to survive.

Read Rep. Schock's entire piece here.