With the economy still reeling from unemployment at 10.2% , Democrats and progressives are battling a barrage of GOP-driven misinformation about the first $787 billion stimulus plan as they look to create a new, targeted, fast-acting jobs program, possibly before Christmas.
Aiming to cash in -- literally -- on growing public anger over joblessness, Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich separately returned last week to the Republican nostrums of wide-ranging tax cuts, mostly for the rich, as the answer to every problem under the sun -- in this case, unemployment.
Yet as economist Lawrence Mishel, the director of the progressive Economic Policy Institute, observed, "These are tried and failed policies. We already lowered the capital gains tax, lowered corporate tax rates, lowered inheritance taxes under George W. and it's absurd to believe that somehow this would stimulate jobs. They're not even related to jobs."
The full story of this new right-wing jobs propaganda campaign is told at truthout.org.
In making the case for tax cuts, GOP leaders are also promoting the new GOP mantra that the first Obama stimulus package was a waste of money. But that comes against a growing consensus among centrist economists and analysts that the $787 billion package has had a positive effect, saving or creating about a million jobs. That's been the impact although it was not large enough to satisfy progressives, with only a third of it going to direct job creation. On Saturday, The New York Times reported: New Consensus Sees Stimulus Package as Worthy Step.
The article points out, "The legislation, a variety of economists say, is helping an economy in free fall a year ago to grow again and shed fewer jobs than it otherwise would. Mr. Obama's promise to "save or create" about 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2010 is roughly on track, though far more jobs are being saved than created, especially among states and cities using their money to avoid cutting teachers, police officers and other workers."
Yet all that hasn't stopped Newt Gingrich's front group for billionaires, American Solutions for Winning the Future, from issuing a dramatic appeal for donations in an email alert enclosing his bold new jobs plan. Offering his would-be donors the illusion of being inside policy-makers, Gingrich's sweeping cure for what ails us was billed as an "internal jobs memo":
To: American Solutions Staff
From: Newt Gingrich
Date: 11/17/09
Subject: The Way Ahead
In the email alert accompanying this memo, Gingrich's true goals --- raising money and keeping himself in the public spotlight -- are also revealed. The email offers not only links to download his tax cuts uber alles memo, they are all connected to opportunities to donate as well: "Please help us kick-off our campaign to implement a REAL jobs plan by donation today. You can find out more about our efforts by reading the memo from Newt Gingrich to American Solutions staff by clicking here" -- or even just writing a check, possibly because, for some of his followers, making online donations is too scary because they're worried that Obama's Web-savvy storm-troopers or those menacing black helicopters may come after them.
The jobs crisis is real, but, to progressive critics of right-wing "voodoo economics," as George H.W. Bush put it, it's not at all clear that Gingrich's solutions are meant to be taken seriously:
I am sharing a memo I recently sent to our staff at American Solutions outlining the policies we need to create jobs and prosperity, and the ways that we can work together to enact these reforms...We can pass meaningful job creation measures like an immediate payroll tax cut, incentives for small business, the elimination of taxes on capital gains, a reduction in the corporate tax rate, the abolition of the death tax, and steps to balance the federal budget.
Sarah Palin added her voice to the rising GOP chorus by telling Rush Limbaugh that we should return to the good old days of tax-cutting under Ronald Reagan. "We need to cut taxes, on-the-job creators," she said. "This is the only solution that will be successful."
Most of Gingrich's solutions are viewed as so preposterous by economists that Mishel could barely contain his outrage. When asked about Gingrich's proposal, for instance, to end the already lowered "death tax" -- or inheritance tax -- leveled on the top 2% of millionaire inheritances, Mishel burst out, "How the fuck does that create jobs?"
So, ultimately, what would be the real-world impact if the Gingrich-Palin-GOP tax-cuts and drastic spending cuts actually became law?
"It would cost us at least two million jobs in the first year," Mishel says. "They want to take us backwards to what's already failed."
For the full story on the Gingrich and GOP magic jobs plan, and economists' outraged reactions, check out truthout.org.
From a staggering debt (120% of GDP) resulting from WW2 in the late 40's the United States Government managed to take in more then they spent, and dropped the debt load (to about 38% of GDP in 1982). That continued until the Reagan/Bush administrations where deficit spending skyrocketed. (http://zfacts.com/p/318.html) exceeded only by the last year of the George W. Bush administration.
In the meantime the middle class that America depends on to pay the bills has been decimated, and wealth has been concentrated to the top 1% as never before in American history. The only tax cuts that would create jobs are tax cuts to small businessmen. Bush/Cheney tax cuts were touted as small business cuts, but only 3.8% of small business owners actually made enough money to benefit from them. It was big business that profited, not small.