Oh, so maybe we really do have to talk about jobs
by digby
Looks like that bill that would have http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifreneged on the Unemployment extension deal in the lame duck session isn't going to make it out of committee
House Republicans yanked a bill to tweak unemployment insurance after Republican lawmakers raised concerns that the legislation was too confusing and would be dead in the Senate.
The GOP planned to vote after Memorial Day on Ways and Means Chairman Dave Camp’s (R-Mich.) JOBS Act, a bill which sought to give states flexibility in spending federal unemployment funds.
Camp came to Speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) weekly meeting with freshmen Wednesday to talk about the bill, and later briefed a broader swath of the conference where the concerns were amplified.
Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said there was an “education” issue with the bill. The House Rules Committee postponed setting the bill’s parameters for debate late Wednesday evening.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
Yeah sure.
The truth is that the Republicans have belatedly recognized that they made a huge mistake in abandoning their so-called "jobs agenda" in favor of the Ryan Trainwreck Express. Cutting unemployment probably wouldn't be the best way to show that they really, really care about unemployed Americans.
Ezra Klein took a look at the newly released GOP "Jobs Plan" (which was apparently published in comic book form) and found that lo and behold --- it is a plan to enact all the GOP wish list, including drill,baby,drill and yes, more tax cuts. (You just can't have enough of those.) Nothing new at all in fact except a couple of obscure items about visas and patent reform and none of it would affect the current downturn.
That’s okay, because the document doesn’t believe in cyclical downturns. It only believes in deviations from the Republican agenda. The first page sets out the GOP’s narrative of the country’s current unemployment crisis. See if you recognize what’s missing here: “For the past four years, Democrats in Washington have enacted policies that undermine these basic concepts which have historically placed America at the forefront of the global marketplace. As a result, most Americans know someone who has recently lost a job, and small businesses and entrepreneurs lack the confidence needed to invest in our economy. Not since the Great Depression has our nation’s unemployment rate been this high this long.”
Four years ago, of course, George W. Bush was president. And he was, as you might remember, a Republican, not a Democrat. As for Wall Street, well, Wall Street who?
But it’s not just that you could read this jobs plan without knowing the financial crisis ever happened. You could read it without knowing the past decade ever happened. As Mishel says, “if lower taxes and less regulation was such good policy, then George W. Bush’s economy would have been a lot better. But under Bush, Republicans cut taxes on business and on investors and high-income people and they didn’t add many regulations and that business cycle was the first one in the post-war period where the income for a typical working class family was lower at the end than at the beginning.”
Oh yes, let's have some more of that please!
The economy is looking a bit shaky and there is no guarantee that the Morning In America strategy for 2012 is going to work. But unless the Republicans come up with something more than their stale old bromides about tax cuts I don't think they can take advantage of it. You can only cry "tax cuts for everything" for so long before average people begin to notice that it isn't working for them.
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