There's a question that Democrats have been asking amongst themselves lately. Are Republicans trying to filibuster the economy into a double-dip recession just to prevent a second term for Barack Obama? Or do they really believe Greek-style austerity is the way to fix the economy?
The real answer is, of course, "all of the above." The modern Republican Party wants nothing more than to defeat Barack Obama, and you don't even need to take my word for it. Said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-19th century): "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." Even with McConnell's bald-faced admission of obstruction at all costs, surely only hardcore Democrats, Bill Maher and Occupy Wall Street campers believe Republicans were capable of such perfidy, right?
Wrong. According to a recent Democratic poll paid for by a labor union and a liberal blog, 49% of all registered voters believe the Republican Party is "intentionally stalling efforts to jumpstart the economy," down a tick from when they asked the same question in November.
This doesn't preclude the possibility that Republicans sincerely believe in austerity, the belief that the way out of a famine is to plant fewer seeds. It's possible that Senate Republicans -- who are effectively controlling our economy by abusing the filibuster -- believe that government spending is impeding our recovery from a recession caused by the private sector. As dumb as it sounds, Republicans might really think that the way to fix a jobs crisis is to eliminate government jobs.
If that were true, then Mitt Romney would have said it, which of course he did. Speaking about Obama's evil Keynesian intentions, Romney said, "He says we need more fireman, more policeman, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It's time for us to cut back on government and help the American people." And you know that he meant it because Romney later went on Fox to deny he meant what he said. In fact, he claimed that to interpret his words literally was "completely absurd." Romney might have a point about judging him by what he says. The man opens his mouth, and Mitt happens.
Instead, we could judge Romney by what he did in Massachusetts. As governor, Romney tried to strip firefighters of their collective bargaining rights, putting him to the right of Scott Walker, the union-bashing governor of Wisconsin.
Or we could listen to Romney's surrogates. Former Hew Hampshire Gov. John Sununu defended the Republican nominee by saying, "The taxpayers really do want to hear there will be fewer teachers." And former Republican frontrunner Newt Gingrich summed up the sacrifices required by Romney's education policies with this comforting ditty: "Does that mean there will be fewer teachers? The honest answer is yes," he told CNN's John King. So maybe it's not "completely absurd" to take Romney literally.
And then there's R. Glenn Hubbard, a Columbia Business School professor and Romney advisor, who didn't let a little thing like the water's edge stop him from attacking the president's call for stimulus spending on jobs. Hubbard wrote in a German newspaper that Romney preferred to focus on "long-term confidence in solid government financing" at the expense of "short-term business promotion" -- in other words, more real pain now for the ephemeral gain of confidence later.
The funny thing about Republicans calling for austerity is that their obstruction has, in effect, given us austerity. Already 600,000 public sector jobs have evaporated, including thousands of teachers, firefighters and police officers, as well as garbage collectors, park rangers and other Socialist bureaucrats. As a result, federal spending under Obama is rising at a slower rate than at any point in the last 60 years. We've slashed government jobs by the hundreds of thousands. Spending has ground to a halt. And still the economy is threatening to stall.
The GOP has a gun to our heads, demanding changes that have already taken place but aren't working, making it likelier Romney will win and further implement what already isn't working. God bless Amercia. Republicans might think that protecting tax cuts for the rich and that cutting spending for the rest of us will both help the economy in the long term and hurt Obama in the short term, but Americans are the collateral damage in their game of austerity roulette.
Follow Jason Stanford on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JasStanford
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 |
|
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
Majority of Americans are not against govt spending. They want govt to reduce its waste and spend the minimum to achieve long-term growth. This applies to military spending and domestic programs.
Take another example the unemployment rate of 8.2 percent. Both sides are exploiting the statistic.
Yet, this may sound crazy and by historical practice in the US, a big shift.
From a science perspective the unemployment rate should be the rate of unemployment among those qualified to work (people that are employable).
With 50% of children failing to graduate from high school, and half the births being to single mothers, it is difficult to understand how / why one would expect all such (and similar) individuals employable.
And further the banks, private corporations, govt (tax payers) and Federal Reserve be responsible for their unemployment situation and adopt major changes in economic policy to rectify a social problem rather than an economic problem.
It has been reported that the unemployment rate among college graduates is 4%. And currently there are 2 million vacancies for those with the appropriate technical skills.
as amusing as that would be, I'd rather see democrats win big, and take both houses plus the white one...
I like your style
Political dogma has to end and pragmatism must now rule. It means both sides need to make painful but necessary choices in order to pay down the debt and avert a deeper a longer-lasting financial meltdown.
Proves power is more important than the people to Mitch and his rabid pack of vultures.
peace
How about we reduce our debt and stop spending 500 billion a year on interest payments? How many government programs could be paid for with the money we are spending to carry over 15 trillion in debt?
How about the government learn to manage the money it has before it asks for more money from it's biggest contributors?
Liberals seem to be clueless about the consequences of the national debt. They seem to think it's okay for the government to take more money from someone else, as long as it isn't them. Eventually the inflation from printing trillions of new dollars is going to show up and everybody's spending power is going to be less. I suppose the liberals will just try to blame that on conservatives too.
Government spending is just taking money from one hand and giving it to the other; it doesn't produce more economic activity, it just redirects it somewhere else (minus a cut for the bureaucracy of course).
You are right, sometimes you do need to pull out of famine by planting fewer seeds. President Obama is choking out the little fertile soil we have left.
We need to put Americans back to work and the best and fastest way to do that is for the Federal government to use insanely cheap debt to do that. Direct spending by the Federal government (not tax cuts or austerity) is the best means of getting the economy going again.
The problem for Greece isn't their debt, its the cost of their debt. They are not able to borrow at the low rates we do. If I remember right, they borrow at close to 9% interest whereas the US borrows at close to 0% interest. To bad the US government doesn't make a cheap loan to Greece so as they can pay off their expensive loans. Kind of like individuals do with their credit cards.
Re "the best and fastest" way to put Americans back to work" - that isn't an automatic given. It is wholly dependent on what the government spends all that borrowed money on. Very little that the gov. spends the borrowed money on actually produces jobs in the private sector. Most current govt. spending (the TSA for example) only produces govt. jobs, most of which add nothing to GDP. Infrastructure makes jobs, but there doesn't seem to be much interest on the part of the govt.
Not quite true about Greece. The cost of their debt is indeed a problem, but to say the volume is not a problem implies that it never comes due. I presume that their existing debt was incurred at normal rates, but it is now due and they have defaulted. It's no wonder that rational lenders aren't willing to lend at traditional rates. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the U.S. did pay off their loans just to keep the whole house of cards from collapsing, but if it did so, Greece would inevitably default.
The problem with living beyond your means (consuming more than you produce), is that at some point (when the loans come due), you have to go through a period of consuming LESS than you produce, which turns out to be unrealistic, so you default.