Robert Reich: Senate Republicans and the Stimulus: Playing Politics When the Economy Burns

[RedEarth]

Tomorrow's job report is likely to be awful. January's job losses could easily top half a million. We're deep into the most vicious of economic cycles: Consumers are slashing their spending because they're perilously in debt and worried about keeping their jobs. But as a result, businesses are facing shrinking sales of goods and services, so they're slashing payrolls, which of course makes consumers even more anxious and further reduces their spending power. Meanwhile, businesses are cutting way back on new investments in equipment, which hurts upstream suppliers, who are now slashing their payrolls. And so it goes, downward. The gap between what the economy could produce if it were running near full capacity and what it's now producing continues to widen. The shortfall is projected to be over a trillion dollars this year.

..


Yet at this very moment, Senate Republicans are seeking to strip the President's stimulus package of many of its spending provisions and substitute tax cuts. Part of this is pure pander: They know tax cuts are more popular with the public than government spending, even though spending is a far more effective way to stimulate the economy (more on this in a moment). Another part is pure partisan politics: Republicans are emboldened by Obama's willingness to court Republicans (taking three Republicans into his cabinet, bringing Republican leaders into the White House for consultations, putting all those business tax cuts into the stimulus bill in order to gain Republican favor) without getting anything at all back from the GOP. House Republicans snubbed the bill entirely. So, Senate Republicans say to themselves, what's to lose?

Plenty. Millions more jobs and a full-fledged Depression, for example.

........

Finally, those who say cutting taxes on businesses is the best way to create or preserve jobs forget about the demand side. Even with a tax cut, businesses won't hire workers unless there are customers to buy what those workers produce. A government stimulus that creates jobs is a necessary precondition.

This isn't a matter of more or less government, however much Republicans and conservatives would like to wedge it in that old ideological box. The issue is how to revive the economy. When consumers and businesses can't or won't spend enough to keep the economy going, government has to be the spender of last resort. Period.



http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/robert_reich/2009/02/senate-republicans-and-the-sti.php

[The Wielding Truth]

1. Since Republicans want no central federal government, we have

to realize that they are out to destroy what is left after * dismantled every department and nearly every law that has held our country together.

There mantra is to keep the greed and division active and agitated with petty accusations and debilitating lies. We must push back with logic and truth, and ferret out the deceptive language used by the party main line. They regurgitate any line that they are fed for they don't care if our government is strong enough to serve us.

They are bent on it's end. We must fight for it's continued guaranteed rights and the American promise.

[tblue]

2. You got it exactly right. This is their aim. They WANT the US to fail.

Why do they hate America? Never mind. I already know.

[Hydra]

3. Tax cuts don't create jobs

Too bad most Americans don't see this. They dream of being in the realm of Bill Gates and the other high rollers, so they vote against their current interests in favor of the delusion that they will someday be billionaires.