Despite promising to fight for jobs, the Republicans did not even allow a vote on Obama’s jobs bill. Even more telling is their alternative “Jobs Through Growth Act” bill. It doesn’t contain a single item in Obama’s jobs bill (even though Republicans supported many of Obama’s proposals before Obama proposed them), but it does contain a repeal of health care reform, repeal of the recent financial overhaul measure, a disgusting provision that will allow multinational corporations to bring home $1.4 billion in profits without paying any tax on them, and a moratorium on any new regulations (including any on Wall Street). In other words, a total giveaway to banks, health insurance companies and other large corporations that doesn’t create any jobs at all. Haven’t we figured out yet that trickle down economics didn’t work?
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While I personally didn’t think Obama’s jobs bill would have created as many jobs as it could have for the price tag (e.g. payroll tax cuts are somewhat helpful for addressing underemployment, which is admittedly a problem right now, but it won’t create any jobs) I was willing to give Obama some credit for offering the Republicans almost exactly the jobs plan that they claimed we needed. Of course, that is partly because a poor plan that the Republicans might have voted for (and therefore might have passed) would still have been better than a good plan that would never pass. But mainly because anybody who has been paying attention should have seen this coming.
What really disappoints me is that for all the times we’ve seen the Republicans pull this move, nobody seems to be doing an effective job of calling them out on it. We’ve seen it with campaign finance, pay as you go, the dream act, the house jobs plan, and even to some extent the debt ceiling. Yet somehow the prevailing narrative is that both sides are firmly entrenched and refuse to cooperate with the other.
Who is going to call them out? The corporate-owned media? It is up to us!
First of all, the GOP does not accept anything that occurred before three years ago, so the premise of the discussion is faulty. Second, the GOP appears to be of the opinion that tax cuts they propose are really tax cuts, while tax cuts Obama proposes are not. Third, the GOP appears to be of the opinion that tax hikes they propose are not tax hikes, while tax hikes Obama proposes are. Finally. the GOP appears to of the opinion that their own hypocrisy is really just their commitment to a more and more conservative point of view; therefore, it is not hypocrisy but a refining of their position. From that perspective, they have always supported their current positions, and there has never been any question about that.
For more information on this type of mindset, read 1984. Doublethink is alive and well, and it’s called the GOP.
The Ministry of Truth is alive and prospering in Texas where the scientists are revolting
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/14/rick-perry-texas-censorship-environment-report?CMP=twt_gu
Embarrassing to have to read a British newspaper to hear about it
There is a lot of talk about “job creation” all over the bloggosphere. It usually devolves to epithets and name calling between conservatives and “Supply Side” economics, and liberals and “Keynesian” government stimulus economics.
I won’t debate that fight – supply side is a discredited theory that doesn’t work, and Keynesian theory works although usually not very well – but I want to point to the issue that both sides seem to forget: Economic growth is based on consumer demand, plain and simple. Everything else is temporary at best and useless at worst.
Consumer demand for new and existing products and services delivered through the market. The greatest growth periods in US history have been driven by the creation of NEW demand. Automobiles, washing machines, computers and the Internet to name a few. The temporary and fake bubble during the Bush years was caused by housing inflation, which didn’t actually create wealth – it just mimicked it and for a while the Ponzi game of rising house prices injected more money into the economy, all of which crashed when the market collapsed.
To truly get the US economy back to raging growth, we need two things:
1) New products and services that consumers here and around the world demand
2) That can be best created or delivered here by work in the US.
Get over it – the US will never be competitive with countries like China for baseline manufacturing. They will always be less costly no matter what we do. So that means either we need products where a higher cost of manufacture is not a problem, or where the products simply can NOT be offshored effectively.
So we need to focus on how to create those new products and services. Where they will come from is an open debate – green technology, mobile technology, nanotech, biotech, mass customization of existing products, space industrialization – who knows. But one thing is clear – neither the conservative “supply side”, nor the liberal “Keynesian” approach is going to work for the long term. Obama’s focus on tax breaks for R&D and streamlining the patent process are both, to a point, ideas headed in the right direction.
So let’s talk about what CAN work, and not just debate what doesn’t work – or will only be temporary.
IK,
Agreed regarding the media. But I was thinking less about the media than our elected officials themselves. It’s the recurring complaint that the Democrats never seem to be able to control their own message, and don’t seem to stand behind their successes. Why isn’t Obama standing up with the House’s own proposal that they put out right after the 2010 election pointing out how much of that is in the plan that they now refuse to even bring to a vote? Or, if everyone insists on calling this “Stimulus 2”, why aren’t they pointing out that over a third of “Stimulus 1” was the tax breaks that they say we need?
Admittedly the media does get in the way of their ability to deliver the message effectively, but it seems like they aren’t even trying. I remember Bill Clinton was on the Daily Show a before the 2010 election, and he gave a far more compelling defense of the original stimulus plan than anyone remotely officially associated with the Obama administration, or anyone actually running for reelection (at least, anyone running close enough to where I live for me to follow their campaigns).
Right on Arthanyel, exactly right. There’s alot we can similarly, but no one is talking about it. One quick thing to create or at least sustain American jobs is for our TAX dollars that can only be used to buy American products. I find it unbelievable, infuriating and hypocritical that our tax money is used to buy foreign made products from US flags and Presidential tour buses to American landmarks like the SanFran-Oakland bridge. Disgusting and it doesn’t help inspire confidence in US workers either.