GOP Jobs Program
by digby
Following up on the post below, this result from the new Bloomberg poll doesn't bode well at all:
As the public grasps for solutions, the Republican Party is breaking through in the message war on the budget and economy. A majority of Americans say job growth would best be revived with prescriptions favored by the party: cuts in government spending and taxes, the Bloomberg Poll shows. Even 40 percent of Democrats share that view...
Though Americans rate unemployment and the economy as a greater concern than the deficit and government spending, the issues are now closely connected. Sixty-five percent of respondents say they believe the size of the federal deficit is “a major reason” the jobless rate hasn’t dropped significantly.
“In this day and age we all have to spend less, and that includes the government itself,” says poll respondent Carolyn Beller, 66, a retired financial-services worker and independent voter in Hull, Massachusetts. “We all have to put a stop to this nonsense of spending.”...
Republican criticism of the federal budget growth has gained traction with the public. Fifty-five percent of poll respondents say cuts in spending and taxes would be more likely to bring down unemployment than would maintaining or increasing government spending, as Obama did in his 2009 stimulus package.
That may just be the best case of Orwellian up-is-downism since the run up to the Iraq war.
It's fairly clear that the administration long ago bought into the deficit trope and threw in its lot with the confidence fairy to create growth. They have made an extremely weak effort to explain the Keynesian approach and have put very little power behind it. And truthfully, it wouldn't be that hard to just say that this level of unemplpyment is way too high and that the government is going to put people to work if nobody else will so that they can feed their families. You don't have to give a seminar in macroeconomics.
But it looks as though the deficit yammering has finally begun to pay off so that the Republicans can now run in 2012 as the deficit slaying job creators and Obama can have a great excuse to join that race to austerity. After all, it's what the people want, right?
And perversely, having a big shot investor like Bill Gross come out in favor of infrastructure stimulus at this late date probably convinces people that it's the wrong thing to do.
What a mess.