The Onus Is On The GOP Now To Fix The U.S. Economy

For the last eight years, the congressional Republicans have blocked everything President Obama has tried to do to fix the U.S. economy. While corporations and the rich have recovered fully from the Bush recession, most other Americans have not -- and the Republicans used that to their advantage.

They told Americans that they tried to fix the economy, but couldn't do it because of President Obama -- just the opposite of what really happened. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans are either badly misinformed or not very bright, because they believed the GOP lie that Obama was to blame for the faltering economy.

That pathetic excuse is now gone. Starting in January, the Republicans will be in charge of both houses of Congress and the presidency. If the economy doesn't return to a robust status, then they have no one to blame but themselves -- and in 2018 or 2020 they will have no lie to hide behind.

Can they fix the economy? Can they create millions of jobs and increase the incomes of middle and working class workers? I don't believe they can, because they still cling to their failed "trickle-down" economic policy -- the same policy that has shrunk the middle class, stagnated worker wages, and caused the most serious recession since the Great Depression.

They still want us to believe that giving more to the rich and the corporations will benefit everyone, because the rich and corporations will then share that new wealth with everyone else. The policy is ludicrous. For the last four decades, they have tried that -- and all it did was make the rich and the corporations much richer. And the rest of America is still waiting for any of that wealth to triple down.

They will double down on that failed policy now, hoping that this time it will magically work. It won't. It will just increase the income and wealth gap between the rich and the rest of us, and put us further down the road to banana republic status (a nation of "haves" and "have-nots" that is ruled by the "haves"). And it will propel us toward another, and probably much worse, recession.

Four years down the road, Americans will be asking themselves if they are better off since the Republicans assumed full power. I think their answer will be NO. And there will be no one for the Republicans to blame except themselves.