In 2001, unemployment stood at four percent. Less than thirteen percent of Americans lived below the poverty line. Only one-half of one percent of homeowners faced foreclosure. Seventeen million Americans relied on food stamps. The treasury saw its first budgetary surplus in decades.
Yet President Bush declared: “A warning light is flashing on the dashboard of our economy, and we just can’t drive on and hope for the best. We need tax relief now.” Congressional Republicans echoed this alarmist rhetoric in passing a $1.3 trillion tax cut bill.
That ‘bill’ is now due. Today, we enjoy nearly double the unemployment rate of 2001; seventeen percent of us live under the poverty line; foreclosure rates have almost tripled; and the number of Americans on food stamps has doubled. Our treasury faces a trillion-dollar deficit.
Yet Congressional Republicans now balk at a stimulus package costing $400 billion dollars less than the Bush tax cuts, even though almost half of the stimulus package is tax cuts. And in an Orwellian turn, the nattering nabobs of negativism accuse the president of fearmongering – as if the economic forecast was all flowers and candy.
Economists say we will experience a deep recession lasting until at least 2011. Hearing Republicans complain that spending won’t be fast enough, but will peak in two years, is like someone saying you only need to prepare for four weeks of winter, and never mind that it’s early November.
Republicans have no credibility to talk about the economy, taxation, or fiscal stimulus. None.
Their ‘facts’ are completely inverted. The Congressional Budget Office says government spending has a minimum return of one dollar in economic activity for every dollar spent, while the best tax cuts can return is fifty cents. This is the same office Republicans misquoted all last weekend on cable talks shows; but facts have a well-known liberal bias, so they continue chanting their tax-cut mantra.
Senate Republicans are doing their best to make us all drink the Kool-Aid. They’ve already removed the most critical spending: aid to cash-strapped states like Alabama. When police, teachers, and firefighters are laid off, they will cut back on private spending and nullify much of what any stimulus achieves. The GOP is counting on this, for their answer to last November’s trouncing at the polls is to double-down on obstructionism and hope they can make Obama fail.
Republicans have rallied around Rush Limbaugh. They have placed party before country. Hopefully Obama has learned a critical lesson, and will forgo any more efforts at bipartisanship.
From now on, he should use his majority to ram his agenda right down their lying throats.
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