Comparing Jobs Plans

This article will be published in the November 9 Dawson News and Advertiser.  As the Republicans continue to vote down every part of President Obama's jobs plan, our country continues to struggle, especially the middle and lower income people.  Yet the Republican jobs plan cuts taxes for the wealthy, does away with Wall Street and Bank regulations, and would practically eliminate the Environment Protection agency.  And the CBO says it wouldn't create any jobs in the short-term!

Comparing Plans to Create Jobs

President Obama has presented the American Jobs Act to the public and to Congress.  According to polls, the majority of the public is in favor of the provisions in it.  The Act includes things like giving grants to states to hire teachers, firefighters, and police, putting construction workers back to work and rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure.  It also includes support of green industry—an industry where we must get a foothold or the rest of the world will pass us by.  This all would be financed by a small increase in taxes on millionaires and billionaires.  But the Republicans don’t like it and even if they did and thought it would get our economy going again, they wouldn’t vote for it.  Remember Republican Sen. McConnell and Rep. Boehner both said their main goal was to make sure President Obama wasn’t re-elected, so they can’t let the economy get better even if it hurts the middle and lower income Americans!

The Republicans have come up with their own plan.  They claim that the Obama Administration has had enough time (2 ½ years) to straighten out the economy.  This economy was on the brink of total destruction when President Obama was inaugurated because of the policies of Republican Administrations since 1981.  But the Republican’s plan is to go back to the very policies that brought us to the current economic state such as:

1. Tax reform which would include a flat tax of 25% for those who make over $100,000 and 10% for those who make less than $100,000.  This would have higher income people paying more taxes if all deductions, exemptions and loopholes were eliminated.  However, it would leave almost all middle income and low income people paying more taxes also.  So the people who have already suffered the most during this recession would get hit with higher taxes. (In fact under Perry’s and Cain’s proposed tax plans, people like Warren Buffett would pay almost no tax.)  In a recent speech Eric Cantor said The Republican Party would help “a single working mom…a small business owner…and make sure the people at the top stay there”.  The problem is that taxing a single working Mom at 10% will not help her, especially since she is already paying 26% in payroll taxes, sales tax, state tax, and indirect property tax.  But the people at the top will be just fine!  "Republicans favor tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, but these had no stimulative effect during the George W. Bush administration, and there is no reason to believe that more of them will have any today," writes Bruce Bartlett, former Reagan Economic advisor.
2. Do away with regulations on banks and Wall Street.  By deregulating these two industries we will allow them to create money at will.  But wait a minute!  Isn’t that what got us into this recession?  Sub-prime mortgages, derivatives and hedge funds got us where we are today, but let’s do it again!  As for the idea that cutting regulations will lead to significant job growth, Bruce Bartlett said in an interview, "It's just nonsense. It's just made up."
3. Do away with the regulations imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency and open up all federal lands to drilling.  Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and Senate Republicans have put weakened environmental protection at the core of their plans based on a study done by the American Petroleum Institute claiming that doing away with regulations will be favorable for employment.  Republicans are claiming that if we create 1 job by drilling more, it will create 2.5 jobs elsewhere.  Of course when this claim was made with Obama’s jobs plan to put teachers, firefighters, police and construction workers back to work they said it wouldn’t create more jobs elsewhere.  Go Figure??  Damages to our world by doing away the environmental regulations would cost more than the sum of the wages and profits that would be made by cutting these regulations. Even global warming skeptic Robert Muller now agrees that there is global warming, probably caused by fossil fuels and that we should start cutting back on the use of fossil fuels to curb the over abundance of carbon dioxide.  This revelation came after a study, actually funded by the Koch Brothers Foundation (one of the biggest global warming naysayers) found the data on global warming to be correct!
4. Shrink government and cut the deficit.  More budget cuts will cost the economy around 700,000 jobs this year and next.  In addition to increasing unemployment, a tax decrease will further increase the deficit.  And their plans to decrease Medicare and Medicaid will shift the burden of this recession even further to the low and middle income American.

As Robert Reich (Economics Professor at Berkley and former Clinton Labor secretary) said, “Demagogues through history have known that big lies, repeated often enough, start being believed—unless they are refuted.”  These . . . economic whoppers are just plain wrong.  Make sure you know the truth—and spread it!”