September 14, 2012
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Obstruct and Exploit
Does anyone remember the American Jobs Act? A year ago President Obama proposed boosting the economy with a combination of tax cuts and spending increases, aimed in particular at sustaining state and local government employment. Independent analysts reacted favorably. For example, the consulting firm Macroeconomic Advisers estimated that the act would add 1.3 million jobs by the end of 2012.
There were good reasons for these positive assessments. Although you’d never know it from political debate, worldwide experience since the financial crisis struck in 2008 has overwhelmingly confirmed the proposition that fiscal policy “works,” that temporary increases in spending boost employment in a depressed economy (and that spending cuts increase unemployment). The Jobs Act would have been just what the doctor ordered.
But the bill went nowhere, of course, blocked by Republicans in Congress. And now, having prevented Mr. Obama from implementing any of his policies, those same Republicans are pointing to disappointing job numbers and declaring that the president’s policies have failed.
Think of it as a two-part strategy. First, obstruct any and all efforts to strengthen the economy, then exploit the economy’s weakness for political gain. If this strategy sounds cynical, that’s because it is. Yet it’s the G.O.P.’s best chance for victory in November.
But are Republicans really playing that cynical a game?
You could argue that we’re having a genuine debate about economic policy, in which Republicans sincerely believe that the things Mr. Obama proposes would actually hurt, not help, job creation. However, even if that were true, the fact is that the economy we have right now doesn’t reflect the policies the president wanted.
Anyway, do Republicans really believe that government spending is bad for the economy? No.
Right now Mitt Romney has an advertising blitz under way in which he attacks Mr. Obama for possible cuts in defense spending — cuts, by the way, that were mandated by an agreement forced on the president by House Republicans last year. And why is Mr. Romney denouncing these cuts? Because, he says, they would cost jobs!
This is classic “weaponized Keynesianism” — the claim that government spending can’t create jobs unless the money goes to defense contractors, in which case it’s the lifeblood of the economy. And no, it doesn’t make any sense.
What about the argument, which I hear all the time, that Mr. Obama should have fixed the economy long ago? The claim goes like this: during his first two years in office Mr. Obama had a majority in Congress that would have let him do anything he wanted, so he’s had his chance.
The short answer is, you’ve got to be kidding.
As anyone who was paying attention knows, the period during which Democrats controlled both houses of Congress was marked by unprecedented obstructionism in the Senate. The filibuster, formerly a tactic reserved for rare occasions, became standard operating procedure; in practice, it became impossible to pass anything without 60 votes. And Democrats had those 60 votes for only a few months. Should they have tried to push through a major new economic program during that narrow window? In retrospect, yes — but that doesn’t change the reality that for most of Mr. Obama’s time in office U.S. fiscal policy has been defined not by the president’s plans but by Republican stonewalling.
The most important consequence of that stonewalling, I’d argue, has been the failure to extend much-needed aid to state and local governments. Lacking that aid, these governments have been forced to lay off hundreds of thousands of schoolteachers and other workers, and those layoffs are a major reason the job numbers have been disappointing. Since bottoming out a year after Mr. Obama took office, private-sector employment has risen by 4.6 million; but government employment, which normally rises more or less in line with population growth, has instead fallen by 571,000.
Put it this way: When Republicans took control of the House, they declared that their economic philosophy was “cut and grow” — cut government, and the economy will prosper. And thanks to their scorched-earth tactics, we’ve actually had the cuts they wanted. But the promised growth has failed to materialize — and they want to make that failure Mr. Obama’s fault.
Now, all of this puts the White House in a difficult bind. Making a big deal of Republican obstructionism could all too easily come across as whining. Yet this obstructionism is real, and arguably is the biggest single reason for our ongoing economic weakness.
And what happens if the strategy of obstruct-and-exploit succeeds? Is this the shape of politics to come? If so, America will have gone a long way toward becoming an ungovernable banana republic.
I’m kinda in love with Paul Krugman.
Comments (21)
I was listening to Uncle Tom Elder and he went on and on about how the Dems keep calling Repubs Nazis and reference Goebbels and “if you repeat a big lie enough times it become real” and how despicable it is the Dems are saying such a thing.
He then went into his second day straight claiming Obama’s first response to the Libya attacks was to apologize. (Hannity earlier had repeated the same lie his whole show)
Fucking Surreal. It is all because of Sam Basile.
I’d like to know when we are going to quit being amazed and shocked at outright lies that don’t even have the pretense of being anything but lies. The contempt the GOP shows the American public is obvious. Aside from their robotic base of scared to death Christians caught between an angry hurricane throwing god and their 1% masters, the few brains they have are, or should be, running for cover. They won’t be running into Obama’s arms though, they can hide a vote from the GOP, but god spies on you all the time.
It’s simple math really; you can tell just about any lie and expect that in a worst case scenario it will be remembered about 12 hours by most and then begins to fade off with the average person believing whatever the last sound-bite they heard was. The Romney campaign is acting like a school of fish under attack, losing small percentages along the way to the big score, which remains undefined. And that is what plagues the Romney campaign, lack of any apparent direction from policy to how to handle everyday shit and perhaps not put your goddamn foot in your mouth, however this must be done without making it appear that he’s actually thinking before he speaks since Obama called him on that one.
good post and spot on.
in 2009 republican minority leader at the time Mitch McConnell stated publicly the number one goal of the republican party is to make Barack Obama a one-term President. he said this when we were in the throes of the most frightening economic situation since the Great Depression. their number one goal should have been economic recovery.
only recently was it exposed that Mitch McConnell’s declaration grew out of a secretive meeting he and other republicans including Paul Ryan had the very night of President Obama’s inauguration. the meeting took place in a D.C. restaurant and it’s been reported they were licking their wounds. by the end of the meeting however they left the restaurant in a gleeful mood because they had agreed to oppose everything the new President proposed. they agreed to even oppose their own ideas if the President proposed them. we’ve seen this play out over 3 1/2 years. the republican party has been dubbed “the party of no” and the Congressional approval rating has remained at its lowest point in history. i believe it’s under 10% at the moment but again only recently has the story about that meeting come out.
Rupert Mudoch’s Wall Street Journal is not that friendly to democrats but a couple of days ago a Wall Street Journal analyst explained that if the Obama jobs proposal you mentioned passed the unemployment rate would be at about 7.1% and would have hit that mark back in April. VP candidate Paul Ryan was one of the deciding votes that kept the proposal from even coming to a vote on the floor.
Paul Ryan calls himself a deficit hawk but nothing could be further from the truth. During the Bush years Ryan voted in favor of every Bush bill collectively leaving us with an $11.9 trillion deficit at the end of the Bush term. add to that the over $800 billion surplus Clinton left us with and Bush, Ryan and the rest spent nearly $13 trillion over 8 years.
in my personal opinion what the republican party agreed among themselves to do and acted upon which is to let Americans suffer economically as their plan to win back the White House is tantamount to treason.
on the bright side what the Obama administration has managed to do in the face of obstructionism not before seen was to pull the economy out of the ditch and the economy is improving. the stock market hit a 5 year high today. this is important for 2 reasons. 1) recovery in the stock market historically precedes improvement in unemployment. employment always lags behind growth in the stock market but is pulled along as if tethered to a rope. 2) people with 401k retirement plans are understandably ecstatic over the tremendous growth in the stock market since Bush left it at 6,000 and falling. the housing market is also rebounding and just today it was reported Ben Bernanke is giving the economy another shot in the arm. the Romney camp is up in arms over it because of course a boost in the economy is good for American business but bad for Romney. Wall Street however responded to the news with a 200+ gain.
though there are endless points i could bring to the table here i’ll just add two. in public Paul Ryan has said the stimulus did not add any jobs…just one of his cascade of lies…but he quietly requested and received stimulus money for his district and in the email said the money would save jobs and create jobs in large numbers.
the second point is Bin Laden is dead and GM is alive because of President Obama’s determination. Romney wrote an op ed in the NY Times in November 2008 titled, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” and about Bin Laden said it is not worth turning over heaven and earth to find one man. if anyone is unaware of how important to our economy the GM and Chrysler rescue was, the rescue did not only save those corporations. The Ford Motor Company feared it would too go out of business if GM and Chrysler were allowed to because they all share suppliers and parts manufacturers. ever heard of Champion Spark Plugs? that is one of many manufacturing companies that would have gone under with GM and Chrysler. GM and Chrysler have paid back the government loans including the 19+% interest ahead of schedule which is good for the treasury and subsequently taxpayers.
anyone who believes anything coming out of FOX news should stop doing so. consider this. FOX recently won an appeals case in Florida. the Florida appeals court decided in favor of FOX’s right under freedom of speech to lie to Floridians. that’s right. FOX argued and won the right to lie to Americans. i lived in NYC for 35 years. Rupert Murdoch bought the New York Post and the newspaper which was failing when he bought it is now considered a stone’s throw from the National Enquirer. while respected newspapers in NYC sell for $1 and $2 an edition The Post desperate for readership sells their paper for 25 cents as of 3 years ago when i was last in NYC.
But, you’re using facts, logic, common sense, and hard data here.
It will all fly over the heads of far Right Repubs, they’ll ignore it. I commend your efforts, though.
The president had a solid opportunity in 2009 but burnt it up on the health care bill. I understand the thinking, though. It is more important to be healthy than to be employed. In hindsight, if he had gone for jobs first, he could have pinned the obstructionism on the conservatives over the health care issue. I am glad he prioritized.
Gotta ask, is that tea bags they’re wearing in their hats ?
@FringeChristian@revelife - there are some things worth understanding:
1) the U.S. auto industry rescue not only saved jobs and kept plants open. these jobs included auto related industries. think Champion Spark Plugs for example. new jobs have and continue to grow out of that direly needed rescue.
2) the stimulus did create and save jobs in spite of what Congressional republicans claim…that it didn’t. Paul Ryan continues to say publicly the stimulus didn’t create jobs yet he submitted a request for stimulus money. in the request was written how many jobs the money would create in his State and jobs were created.
3) there was an article in the Wall Street Journal earlier this week written by a WSJ analyst. he wrote that if not for republicans keeping the President’s jobs and infrastructure bill from coming to a vote and if the bill was passed unemployment would be at 7.1% as of April. another analyst believes the unemployment rate would be even lower because more people employed means more money spent which in turn raises demand for products which in turn opens the need for more hiring.
4) as it stood before healthcare reform our healthcare system posed the biggest threat to our teetering economy. insurance costs for businesses that supply healthcare insurance for their employees were rising 16% annually. a growing number of people were foreclosing on their homes and/or filing for bankruptcy because of health issues. today premiums have stopped jumping up every year and in some cases have gone down for small businesses and nobody can get kicked off their policies or refused insurance as was the case prior to healthcare reform.
my point is President Obama was very focused on jobs and the economy and more so in a very comprehensive way.
It’s what I tell people when they say that Obama have not created jobs and failed as a president. He’s not the only person who runs things. You have the Senate and the House. The problem is that these two are now split and has been difficult to get anything through without it being voted down. It only seems that the Republican want to get Obama out of the White House at the cost of the United States and it citizens. As long as a Democrat is in the Oval Office, Republicans do not want to contribute. They made obstructing and finger-pointing their only job.
@TheSutraDude – If I remember correctly, the stimulus bill came in under Bush in 2008. Are we thinking of the same one? As far as health care costs to businesses, I think the outfit I work for would have been thrilled with only a 16% increase this year instead of the 40% increase they told us they saw. Do you have a source for these stats?
@FringeChristian@revelife - there were 2 stimulus bills. one was TARP which came under the Bush administration. the second stimulus came under the Obama administration.
if your company saw a 40% increase they’d be wise to look into the matter. one of the stipulations in healthcare reform is insurance companies are now required to keep their administrative/bureaucracy costs down and put a larger percentage of policyholder payments toward actual healthcare. thousands (could be tens of thousands) of policy holders have been sent checks after being overcharged based on this requirement.
i don’t have time today to go searching for sources but i’ve seen small business owners talk about lower costs since part of the healthcare bill kicked in. here is one link, FOX Business News of all places, claiming 56% of small business owners wanted the healthcare reform bill kept. i’m guessing this poll was taken as the bill was about to be challenged in the Supreme Court. there is also a tax credit offered to many small businesses to help supply employees health insurance. it is mentioned in this link. do you have a source for the 40& increase you mentioned?
LINK
There you go again. Applying truth ad logic will disqualify you form ever becoming a FAUX NEWS anchor.
The problem with our becoming a Banana Republic is that we don’t have many banana trees and there really aren’t enough bridges for all 300 million of us to sleep under. Oh, the humanity!
Hey! Maybe we should vote the obstructionists out of congress. The entire House and 1/3 of the senate are up for election/re-election.
@TheSutraDude – Thanks for the detail and the link. I can’t provide a link to the 40% increase. This is based on a comparison of my open enrollment forms over the passed two years. Whether it is a result of the healthcare legislation or not, that is how it is being spun by my employer and the insurance company. I would love to be able to bring some hard numbers to them and ask what gives.
Krugman and Clinton have both effectively obliterated the notion that Obama’s economic policies have “failed,” as well as the notion that the general public isn’t “better off” now than they were 4 years ago. An economy that has stably grown for over 2 years >> Bush’s economy, defined by a crumbling economic infrastructure (e.g., insolvent banks, a dead automotive industry, a stock market crash, a mortgage crisis, etc.).
Republicans make my blood boil but you’ve got to give it to them, they are going to the mat for their constituency (anti-abortionists and the 1%). They may be running the country into the ground but they are sticking to their principles.
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