Republicans Will Kill The Jobs Bill

The other day President Obama introduced the outline of his new jobs bill -- a bill that some say would create 1,000,000 new jobs at least if passed as it is currently outlined. It's not a perfect bill, but it is a lot better than doing nothing (which is what's been going on now for more than a year). And while a million new jobs won't solve the unemployment problem, it would be a good start on that. It would spur the economy, increase demand for the goods and services of private businesses, and hopefully give the president the political courage to take even bolder action to fight unemployment.

At the time the president made his proposal, the Republicans were surprisingly quiet about the upcoming bill. They knew they wanted to oppose it, but they weren't quite sure how they would do that. They couldn't accuse the president of massive new deficit spending (a favorite tactic of theirs) because the president promised he would pay for the program without increasing the deficit. And coming out against job creation without one hell of a good reason is not a good way to keep the voters happy.

But the Republicans are starting to figure out how to attack the job creation bill. The bill contains $30 billion in spending to repair and renovate about 35,000 American schools (a modest proposal considering that 10 times that much would be needed to fix all of the country's schools). And you know what the teabagger politicians think about spending on education -- they're against it, and in their perfect world, they would abolish the whole Department of Education. They know they can sell this to their teabagger base.

Leading the charge against education spending and the jobs bill is House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Virginia). He said yesterday that he will oppose the $30 billion for school renovation. This is more than a little hypocritical since Cantor voted in favor of spending $120 billion to rebuild Afghan schools. It is even crazier when you consider the $120 billion for Afghan schools was done through deficit spending while the $30 billion for American schools was not.

Why is Cantor (and his fellow teabagger Republicans) willing to increase the deficit to help Afghan school children, but opposes the deficit-neutral help for American school children? Does he like Afghan children more than American children? Not at all. He doesn't care about the children of either nation. He's protecting corporate profits. The money sent to Afghanistan was to buy the cooperation of the Afghan government, so the war can continue unabated and American corporate profits from that war (billions of dollars) will continue to pile up.

Nothing and nobody is more important to Republican politicians than corporate profits (and the profits of rich people in general). And therein lies the second excuse the Republicans have come up with to oppose the president's jobs bill. The president wants to pay for the jobs bill by limiting the tax deductions for people making more than $200,000 ($250,000 for married couples), removing some tax breaks for the oil & gas industry, changing the rules on carried interest so it is treated as regular income, and changing how depreciation is figured for aircraft. These sensible moves will raise $467 billion dollars -- $20 billion more than the proposed spending for the jobs plan.

The Republicans are now screaming that this amounts to a tax increase. I think they hope if they scream "tax increase" long and loud enough they will fool most Americans into thinking their own taxes will be raised -- and that is just not true. While the rich and the corporations will pay more (which makes sense as their incomes are at record-breaking levels), the taxes for most Americans (payroll taxes) and the taxes for most small businesses would be reduced.

But those are just excuses the Republicans will use to kill the jobs bill, which they can do by refusing to let it pass in the House of Representatives. The real reason they want to kill the bill is political. They believe if they can keep jobs from being created and keep the economy in the dumper, they will be able to beat the president in November 2012. A senior Republican  legislative aide (who wanted to remain anonymous) admitted as much when he said, "Obama is on the ropes; why do we appear ready to hand him a win?"

This has been the Republican strategy ever since President Obama took office. They want to make sure no progress is made with the economy or unemployment, in the hopes they can convince Americans that the Democrats are as bad with the economy as they were when they had the White House. They see this as their only path to electoral victory. They may be right about that.