GOP Continues To Torpedo Economy & Job Creation

The Labor Department's monthly job report came out a couple of days ago. The report shows that there were 54,000 new jobs created in this country last month. I'm sure the administration will try to pass this off as good news -- that it's another month of positive job growth. But while that may be true (it is positive job growth), anyone who thinks this is good news just doesn't understand the job market.

The truth is that the economy must create about 200,000 jobs each month just to keep up with the amount of new people entering the job market -- that's the amount of new jobs it would take to keep the number of unemployed from increasing (but would not reduce the number of unemployed people). What the 54,000 figure for new jobs really shows is that the country added another 150,000 unemployed people to the number seeking but can't find jobs. It also shows the economy is slowing down (since this is the smallest job creation number in several months).

So why did the unemployment number remain virtually (about 9.1%) the same if the number of the unemployed grew last month? The answer to that lies in how the government counts (or rather mis-counts) the number of unemployed people. It only counts the number of unemployed who could be verified to have actively seeked employment in the last few weeks. Those who have exhausted all their possibilities or have just given up trying to find a job are not counted -- and the number of those people climbed last month, offsetting the new unemployed created by the weak job growth. The real unemployment rate is well into the double-digits, and when the underemployed are added in the jobless number is at least 18%.

While the Democrats could (and should) have been more robust in their job-creation efforts in the last Congress, the current economic and unemployment mess can be laid directly at the feet of the Republicans. Even though it was their own "trickle-down" economic policies that caused the recession resulting in the loss of millions of jobs, they are now intentionally following policies guaranteed to keep the economy in recession and stunt job growth.

They are doing this by blocking (or watering down) new regulations for corporations and the financial sector, by protecting the outsourcing of American jobs, by protecting unneeded corporate subsidies, by trying to force deep cuts in government spending (but only in programs helping the poor, the working class, or the middle class -- corporate welfare is protected), by blocking new job creation stimulus funds, and by blocking any attempt to rebuild the nation's infrastructure.

Why would they intentionally block all attempts to fix the problems they created? Because they believe the current economic mess plays in their favor, and they can use it to get some things they want (some of them things they've wanted for a long time). These things are:

1. The Republicans think they can blame the economy and poor job creation on the Obama administration and retake both houses of Congress (and maybe even the White House).

2. The Republicans favor corporate and business interests over the interests of ordinary Americans, and the current high unemployment situation is loved by the corporate and business interests. It allows them to depress wages and offer fewer benefits (which will be accepted by workers desperate to find any kind of job -- even a bad one).

3. The Republicans use the current mess to claim deficit spending must be reduced (even though that is the worst thing to do in a recession) and then cut programs they never liked (such as food stamps, unemployment insurance, family planning, medical aid for poor and working class families, education, environmental protection, Medicare, and Social Security).

Here is how the excellent blogger over at Winning Progressive puts it:

On the political side, the conservatives focus on imaginary bond vigilantes and overblown “concern” about the deficits they created is working to limit the political popularity of President Obama.  In 2008, Republicans faced a new popular President, large Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate, and an economic crisis that Republicans had created.  They could have worked with the new Democratic majority to pull our economy out of the ditch, but the Republicans realized that would just benefit the Obama Administration politically.  So, Republicans in Congress decided to fight economic recovery efforts every step of the way by engaging in historically unprecedented Senate obstructionism of every job creating proposal the Democrats made.

The Republicans’ theory was that doing so would keep unemployment high and economic growth low long enough to hurt the Democrats’ re-election chances in 2010, and they were right.  And now Republicans are hoping the same approach will keep unemployment high and economic growth low enough to hurt President Obama’s re-election chances in 2012.  Mitch McConnell has stated numerous times that defeating President Obama in 2012 is the Republicans’ number one priority, and their effort to make sure that jobs are not created is a deliberate part of that strategy.

The Republicans’ anti-jobs strategy also serves their ideological purposes. The Bush Recession (along with irresponsible spending under the Bush Administration) led to a significant increase in the deficit due to a decline in revenue and an increase in need.  Rather than try to increase revenue through promoting economic growth, cutting military spending and corporate subsidies, and asking the wealthy to pay their fair share again, the Republicans have decided to seize on the deficits that they created to try to achieve their ideological goals of destroying Medicare, Social Security, the social safety net, and investments in education and infrastructure.  Today’s Republican Party does not believe in government helping the middle class, working class, or poor, and they are trying to seize on the deficits they created in order to put such beliefs in practice.

By preventing our country from focusing on creating jobs and economic growth, Republicans have also furthered their ideological goals by making people feel that government cannot work for them.  An adequate stimulus and other government efforts could have brought us economic recovery in 2009 and 2010, but that would have helped people realize, just as they did with the New Deal, that government can and does help improve the lives of every day people.  Such result would run counter to Republicans’ ideological interests, so they made sure that result did not occur.

Now, the Democrats are not blameless in this.  They managed to get enough stimulus and other policies through to prevent a complete economic collapse, but they could have and still should be fighting harder on the jobs front.  Rather than engaging in debate over Republican scaremongering over imaginary bond vigilantes and inflation, Democrats should be fighting for progressive policies like a WPA style work program, a new stimulus package, infrastructure investments, aid to state and local governments, and cramdown legislation to help stop the foreclosure crisis.  But let’s keep in mind that none of those policies will pass so long as we continue to allow anti-job Republicans to have enough power in Congress to prevent the economic recovery our country needs but that Republicans do not want.