Last week, the economy showed more evidence that the administration's economic stimulus programs, rescue of the auto industry, investments in clean energy, extension of unemployment compensation, past aid to the states and other measures are beginning to lead to job growth. In March, the economy added 219,000 new jobs -- bringing total private sector job growth to 1.8 million in the last 13 months.
This rate of job growth is far short of what is needed to return us to full employment -- or even the more modest levels of unemployment that preceded Bush's Great Recession. But Obama's 1.8 million new jobs is 1.8 million more than the zero net private sector jobs created in the eight years of the Bush administration using the Republican program of tax cuts for the rich.
The first decade of this century was also the first decade in our economic history that experienced no private sector job growth whatsoever. You'd think that this great experiment in trickle down economics would be enough to convince anyone with more than five brain cells to string together that trickle down economics doesn't work -- but apparently not.
Republicans in Congress are still demanding that $61 billion be cut from this years' budget -- halfway through the fiscal year. If they are successful, Moody's economic forecasting firm -- and their economist Marc Zandi, who was an advisor to Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain -- predicts that it would result in the elimination of 700,000 jobs in the United States.
And now House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan has proposed a 2012 budget that would do even more to slam the middle class. He proposes eliminating Medicare and Medicaid and replacing them with programs that reduce health care coverage for seniors at the same time they provide a windfall for the big insurance companies.
Why do Republicans persist in demanding that we eliminate 700,000 jobs? It has to do with the influence of four major groups:
1). The CEO/Wall Street Class. Much of America's economic royalty -- which is the major base of the Republican Party -- is focused exclusively on what you could call short-term greed. They want their taxes to fall as far as possible. They want government to stop trying to regulate their reckless behavior: producing unsafe products, fouling our air and water, out of control speculation.
Many of this gang believe that if they can make enough money -- for them anyway -- the future will simply take care of itself. Whether or not jobs of ordinary Americans will disappear is of relatively little interest to them. They want government to be as small a factor in our lives as possible -- except of course to the extent that government contracts or privatization of government services can feed their bottom lines.
And their loyalty to America is not so great anyway. They run international corporations with offices and assets all over the world.
Climate change, uneducated kids, children who die young, people unable to get health insurance -- these may be unfortunate consequences of the policies needed to allow them to get richer and richer -- but, they would insist -- the future belongs to the strong anyway.
The hard core of this group is not populated with what you'd call the upper-middle-class -- although a lot of upper-middle-class people aspire to join this exclusive club. This crowd is made up of economic royalty -- people making a million plus -- sometime multi-billion (with a "B") dollar annual incomes.
2). The second influential group pushing for policies that would eliminate 700,000 jobs are the intellectuals and academics who work for the first group. And I do mean "work for." Guys like the billion-dollar right wing Koch brothers literally pay "think tanks" and "foundations" all over America to churn out reports and studies that basically argue that up is down and black is white. They create the intellectual structure to dress up the economic self-interest of the wealthiest Americans in respectable academic clothing. They tell us there is no "scientific consensus" about climate change. They create economic theories to support their contention that Keynesian economic policies don't work and that we need to turn instead to austerity policies and low taxes to give business the "incentive" to produce and invest.
Of course what business really needs to begin investing the two trillion dollars of cash on its balance sheets are customers with money in their pockets who want to buy their products. They need economic "demand." But there's no real room in right wing economic theory for such bottom-up economic concepts -- and the right wing intellectual team is ready and willing to be paid to tell you so.
3). Many in the third group actually understand the budget-slashing proposals being made by Republicans in the house would cut massive numbers of jobs. This group is the Republican political class -- and they would be happy as pigs in slop to eliminate those jobs. The last thing they want is for the economy to improve. If the economy fell into a second recession, they think that would be the best thing that could happen since bottled beer. As Rush Limbaugh put it, they want Obama to fail.
4). Of course the final -- and most visible -- group clamoring for draconian cuts that would cost 700,000 American their jobs is the Tea Party, and the many far-right members of the Republican caucus that they helped elect last year. Many of these extremist Members of Congress actually believe that the voters sent them to Washington to "shrink government." Of course the Tea Party -- and its corporate sponsors -- did exactly that. But the vast majority of swing voters that helped elect them were simply furious that their own personal economic situations seemed to be getting worse and worse. The real reason for this problem is that all of the economic growth of the last two decades has gone to the top 2% of the population. Middle class incomes have not kept up with the increased productivity of the economy, and everyday people are falling further and further behind as a result.
Anyway, these extremist Republicans believe their own spin. And they are willing to administer the harsh medicine of austerity and job losses to give "shock treatment" to the country and shrink the size of government no matter who it hurts. As House Speaker John Boehner said when he was asked about job losses that would result from his program of budget cuts -- "So be it."
But this gang has a real problem.
When you were a kid at a Fourth of July celebration, remember how fascinated you were by sparklers? They erupt in a bright flash of sparkles and light up everything around -- for about 3 minutes. Then, as they begin to burn down, they fizzle out and then suddenly, everything is dark.
In your hand where once was a bright shiny sparkler, you are holding a dark, blackened, slightly-twisted six-inch strand of wire.
Well, that's what's happening to the Tea Party. To put it bluntly: the Party's over.
Last week, a pathetically small crowd of 200 came to the Mall to hear Congressman Mike Pence repeat over and over that he is willing to shut down the government if they don't get the cuts that -- as Republican economist Mark Zandi says -- would cost 700,000 American jobs.
Compare that 200 to the hundred-thousand-strong crowds that have gathered to protest the attacks on collective bargaining by extremist Republican Scott Walker in Wisconsin.
Now, as my wife Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky says, Democrats in Congress have to have the "courage to follow."
Democrats have to follow the newly-mobilized union members in Wisconsin -- the 81% of Americans who say that the way to solve the federal budget shortfall is by taxing millionaires -- the big majorities who oppose cutting funding for education, Head Start, nutrition programs, health care, Medicare, Social Security and police and fire protection -- so that the Republicans can keep giving subsidies to big oil companies or tax breaks for the rich.
Democrats need to once again get out of a defensive crouch on budget issues --follow everyday Americans and oppose budget cuts that would cost 700,000 American their jobs.
At the end of the day, because the Republicans won control of the House, we will have to live with some compromise that inflicts some level of damage on America's middle class in order to keep the government functioning. But we don't have to make it easy and we sure should not try to pretend that we agree that "bloated government spending should be cut." We can't afford to pander to that right wing notion, or to allow the debate to stay in their frame.
Right now, in particular, as the fragile economic recovery begins to take hold, we need more government spending not less. And we need to make clear that the choices are not between controlling the long term deficit and economic catastrophe. The numbers are clear. Bill Clinton gave the country surpluses as far as the eye could see by raising taxes on the wealthy.
We could balance the budget over the long haul without cutting programs that benefit the middle class by raising rates on the wealthy to levels below the highest rate under Ronald Reagan, treat "capital gains" as "ordinary income", cut modest amounts of military spending, require Medicare to negotiate with drug companies for cheaper prices, control health care costs with a Public Option, and eliminate "tax expenditures" like subsidies to big oil.
We need to make it clear that the budget debate is about choices -- moral choices about what is important, who should pay and who should sacrifice. The question is simple: Do Americans want to cut education and all the rest in order to give tax breaks to the wealthy and big corporations? America's answer to that question in poll after poll is a resounding no. Americans want to invest in their future, not cater to the short-term greed of our home-grown class of economic royals whose answer to the pain of middle class people is the modern-day equivalent of "let them eat cake."
The Republicans thought that the budget debate would give them the high political ground. That's why they were willing to go so far out on an extremist precipice. Now the political ground is beginning to crumble - and it's a long way down.
Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com. Follow him on Twitter @rbcreamer.
Follow Robert Creamer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rbcreamer
"But Obama's 1.8 million new jobs is 1.8 million more than the zero net private sector jobs created in the eight years of the Bush administration using the Republican program of tax cuts for the rich."
You know... they could get FAR more savings if they would only attack the fraud in medicare. It's the second biggest industry in FL. And how about those existing program duplications?!?
Still I hold out hope that people will see that the direction conservatives have taken, will do this country great harm - fight against it we must, there can be NO giving up.
>focused exclusively on... short-term greed... want zero taxes
Yes, in essense, that's what capitalism is.
>They want government to stop trying regulatinf their reckless behavior
Yes and no. In 2006, the newly minted Treasury Sec, H.Paulson, met with WallStreet CEOs who were basically asking him to regulate their reckless behavior. Problem was, this behavior was very profitable. Paulson asked them why they didn't reign themselves in (rhetorical because he knew the answer). One of them replied "When the music's playing, you've got to get up and dance". IOW, you'd lose invertors/customers if you didn't "dance" the risky WallStreet dance. Also, everyone, including the right, was bashing the govt regulators for not doing their job. This right after 3 decades of neoconservitive promotion of deregulation and Greenspans' laissez-faire freemarket policies. I don't think conservatives know what they want on this one.
> And their loyalty to America...
I agree. Not only shipping jobs abroad, but they're investing more of those tax cut dollars that were meant to "trickle-down" to us, in emerging markets. Plus, where were these "patriotic" wealthy investors when we needed them most in 08/09? They took their $$ and ran !
> Climate change, uneducated kids...
I think on some level, they care. But actually doing something about these matters conflicts too much with their core ideologies. Just look at their pitiful proposal for healthcare and WallStreet reform.
"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic."
But it adds to the nonsense of Republicans wasting valuable time trying to defund Planned Parenthood.
"Tue Apr 5, 5:33 pm ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The teen pregnancy rate in 2009, the latest year for which data are available, hit its lowest since tracking began 70 years ago, the Center for Disease Control said on Tuesday.
However, more than 400,000 teen girls still give birth a year according to the CDC's Vital Signs report.
"Though we have made progress in reducing teen pregnancy over the past 20 years, still far too many teens are having babies," said CDC director Thomas Frieden in a statement.
"Preventing teen pregnancy can protect the health and quality of life of teenagers, their children, and their families throughout the United States," he said.
The teen birth rate has decreased 37 percent over the last two decades. About four percent of all teenage girls give birth each year, representing about 10 percent of total births, the CDC said.
However, the report says, the current U.S. rate is still as much as nine times higher as that in similar countries.
Forty-six percent of teens have had sexual intercourse, the report said. Out of that number, 14 percent of girls and 10 percent of boys say that they do not use any type of birth control.
The report says teen childbirth is highest among Hispanics and non-Hispanic blacks. Blacks and Hispanic teen girls are two to three times more likely to give birth than white teens."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_GOVERNMENT_SHUTDOWN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-04-06-11-51-27
The shut down is going to happen, and that is what the Dems are counting on. Reid and most of his ilk in the Senate have nothing to lose, they are not up for re-election until well past 2012. Obama is now on his pedestal demanding that a deal be done, so he is insulated somewhat from the shenanigans of the Dems in the Senate. The spending cuts the Dems are offering are a joke(heck, the ones the GOP are also, $100 billion will do NOTHING to arrest the spiraling debt! Again, those who do not have a vetsed interest as far as THEIR paychecks are ensuring that many sufer for no reason at all.
Take a bow, Dems, and all your apologists and abettors as sell!
Good post, but you need to understand what a balanced budget means. Whether or not the budget is balanced is irrelevant. The budget is an outcome of trade balance, saving, taxes and government spending. Savings=trade balance + government deficit.
Follow up by understanding MMT
Faved on your post, Ocean.
Just as the Confederacy was led down a path of foolish opposition to the gradual elimination of slavery, these Tea Party types foolishly oppose health care reform, taxing the rich (corporate and individual), and anything Obama does, just as the South got into such a mess by opposing a superior President, Lincoln.
The present Republican party is remarkably fearless with the state of the union, and they seem willing to abandon the middle class on down as long as they keep getting their marching orders and big checks. If they succeed in their "starving the beast" ideology, so many people will be out of work that the beast (we, the people?) will be in the streets, or more likely, biting them in the ass at the ballot box.
Robert Creamer, the writer here, and his wife,
Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, are two Americans who see things very clearly and know what is going on and how to fix things. Don't let them be the only two!
Taxing the rich as they should be taxed will not hurt the rich, but it will fix the problems. It is a win win situation. Why is that so hard to understand?
The party is over for the Tea Party that does not have a clue about how they are their own worst enemy. They are victims of greed.
Compare that 200 to the hundred-thousand-strong crowds that have gathered to protest the attacks on collective bargaining by extremist Republican Scott Walker in Wisconsin.
Now, as my wife Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky says, Democrats in Congress have to have the "courage to follow."
We have a Government that panders to the rich who pay untold millions to campaigns to ensure that the issues of the rich are in the forefront.
Yes the people need to wake up no matter what party they belong to and see what is really going on here.
This is so similar to what these Koch Brothers have ginned up. They want to starve the beast, but the beast is us. We the people are not beasts, but simply citizens who deserve better leadership than what we've gotten from the terribly flawed legislative system that has legalized pay for play and other forms of graft as election donations.
The 2012 election will need to see a lot of people leading, and then the Democratic Congress settling issues that are long overdue being fixed. One Supreme Court justice who isn't a right-wing hack would make a lot of difference, but at the very least we need to begin closing all loopholes for big corporations and other interests and get them to pay their fair share to improve our infrastructure and health care system so we our businesses can be more competitive in the world.
As it is, we have a system of corporate welfare and it's killing us. Keep up the good work you two.