NBC can do whatever it wants

[Bill USA]

67. ohhhh, let's see, GOP Trickle Down Deregulation disaster, then GOP tactic of obstruction..

Natural Born Job Killers - GOP obstructed over 4.2 million jobs
(emphases my own)

Most human beings appreciate a person who sets a long-term goal and achieves success through careful planning, dedication, and single-minded determination to see their final objective reach fruition. There are, of course, some goals that should never be made, much less achieved, and world history is replete with examples of dastardly leaders whose goals were not in the best interest of humankind and caused immeasurable damage to a great number of people. On Inauguration night in 2009, Republican leaders gathered to plot the absolute obstruction of President Obama’s economic agenda and thus far, they have been successful much to the disappointment of millions of Americans who continue to suffer the effects Republican’s goal of retarding economic recovery and job creation. The GOP makes matters worse by decrying the President’s handling of the economy when the truth is that if they had not blocked, obstructed, and stonewalled every one of the President’s plans to improve the jobs and economic picture, the economy would be much closer to achieving a robust recovery.

The only failure in Republican attempts to totally destroy the economy was their inability to obstruct the President’s stimulus the Congressional Budget Office and several independent agencies claim created over 3 million jobs. However, they have made up for that success by refusing to consider President Obama’s American Jobs Act proposed over a year-and-a-half ago, and coupled with severe austerity measures at the state and local level, they have been successful maintaining unemployment at over 8% instead of less-than 6% if they were not intent on obstruction and economic devastation.

There is no doubt the Republicans know what works to improve hiring and economic growth because every Republican administration has invested in hiring more public employees during a recession, and they always depended on federal funding to increase the workforce at the federal and state level, and not giving more tax breaks to their imaginary “job creators” they claim leads to full employment.




.... The GOP austerity measures were not limited to blocking federal money to help states hire and retain employees, because states with Republican governors and legislatures made drastic cuts in the public sector workforce and many turned down federal aid to demonstrate their contempt for their residents, and the federal government. In California, for example, a Republican in Congress, Jeff Denham, is attempting to block implementation of a much needed high-speed rail project that will create over a million jobs as the largest earth-moving project in the state’s history, and sustain hundreds-of-thousands more jobs for maintenance and operation in cities up and down the state. His argument is that the government cannot afford the cost and the money is better spent creating jobs…with more tax cuts for “job creators.”

The austerity measures Republicans are implementing have never worked during a recession and despite the abject failure of every European country that enacted austerity, they are hell-bent on following the countries that have no growth and soaring unemployment. Even the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, Willard Romney, admitted that austerity during a recession is disastrous, and yet Republicans have killed over 600,000 public sector jobs that prevented 2.3 million downstream jobs from being created. Coupled with Republican obstruction of the President’s job plan in January 2011, they have effectively prevented 4.2 million Americans from finding good, living wage jobs, or enough to bring the unemployment rate down to 5.5% in a little over a year. Instead of cutting 600,000 teaching, police, firefighter and other public jobs, if states had increased those lost jobs by one-half, the unemployment rate would be under 5% and tax revenue would be up, the deficit would be reduced, and the economy would be humming along.

But the economy was showing signs of being sick ... before the GOP delivered the Trickle Down Deregulation disaster (TDDD). In fact, these symptoms of economic malaise were the factors that helped create the TDDD..

Aughts were a lost decade for U.S. economy, workers - WaPo Jan, 2010
(all emphases my own)

For most of the past 70 years, the U.S. economy has grown at a steady clip, generating perpetually higher incomes and wealth for American households. But since 2000, the story is starkly different.


The past decade was the worst for the U.S. economy in modern times, a sharp reversal from a long period of prosperity that is leading economists and policymakers to fundamentally rethink the underpinnings of the nation's growth.

~~
~~

[font color="red"]There has been zero net job creation since December 1999. No previous decade going back to the 1940s had job growth of less than 20 percent. Economic output rose at its slowest rate of any decade since the 1930s as well.

Middle-income households made less in 2008, when adjusted for inflation, than they did in 1999 -- and the number is sure to have declined further during a difficult 2009. The Aughts were the first decade of falling median incomes since figures were first compiled in the 1960s.[/font]

And the net worth of American households -- the value of their houses, retirement funds and other assets minus debts -- has also declined when adjusted for inflation, compared with sharp gains in every previous decade since data were initially collected in the 1950s.

...let's not forget that the "lost decade" was due to about 30 years of conservative Republican policies which shifted more and more of the tax burden off the very highest income brackets and more onto the middle income brackets. With the greatest part of the populaton having less money to spend, the economy started to show slower job growth and slower wage growth (not helped by Republican animosity toward wage increases - e.g. increases to minimum wage). It also meant it was harder for businesses to make healthy profits and with sagging consumer spending businesses had less reason to add employees - thus lackluster job creation. Most of the productivity growth from 1980 to today has gone to capital and much less to wages for work. THe result is less consumer spending and less robust job creation and economic growth.

... you see, if most of the population had not been experiencing declining real incomes it likely would not have been necessary to boost consumer spending by staying with expansionist monetary policies (low interest rates) at the FED which did much to help create the housing bubble. But it was the establishing as legal the trade in Credit Default Swaps (cf. Commodities Futures Modernization act - inserted by Phil Gramm in the veto proof Omnibus Funding bill - 2000) and the total lack of regulation of these financial instruments of economic destruction (as Warren Buffet referred to them as) that created the fatal unsupportable boom in housing based on reckless lending by predatory lenders (because Wall Street banksters didn't care about the quality of the mortgages they were selling in Collateralized Debt Obligations. they didn't care about the quality because they could sell them to big investors by selling the investors a CDS that would insure the investor against loss if the mortgages went into default (that was the theory anyway).) What nobody figured out (well, except for Brooksley Born) was that sooner or later somebody would have to pay off on those defaulted mortgages and if there were too many of them - it would be beyond the combined capacity of all the big financial players to handle the losses.

And let's not forget that when 50 (yes five zero) states Attorneys-General tried to rein in predatory lenders - the Bush administration went to court and stopped them (Predatory Lenders Partner in Crime - Spitzer)



Re the GOP decision to fight Obama on everything he tried to do to rebuild the economy from the Great Trickle Down Deregulation disaster see:

Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan & Kevin McCarthy: Plot To Sabotage US Economy with Frank Luntz

On January 20, 2009 Republican Leaders in Congress literally plotted to sabotage and undermine U.S. Economy during President Obama's Inauguration.

In Robert Draper's book, "Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives" Draper wrote that during a four hour, "invitation only" meeting with GOP Hate-Propaganda Minister, Frank Luntz, the below listed Senior GOP Law Writers literally plotted to sabotage, undermine and destroy America's Economy.

The Guest List:

Frank Luntz - GOP Minister of Propaganda
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)
Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA)
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA),
Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX),
Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX),
Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI)
Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA),
Sen. Jim DeMint (SC-R),
Sen. Jon Kyl (AZ-R),
Sen. Tom Coburn (OK-R),
Sen. John Ensign (NV-R) and
Sen. Bob Corker (TN-R).
Non-lawmakers present Newt Gingrich

During the four hour meeting:

The senior GOP members plotted to bring Congress to a standstill regardless how much it would hurt the American Economy by pledging to obstruct and block President Obama on all legislation.
(more)

...and: The Party of "NO": New Details on the GOP Plot to Obstruct Obama


Yes, after creating the greatest economic disaster this country has seen since the (first) Great Depression, the GOP plotted to obstruct everything the Democrats and President Obama tried to do to rebuild our tattered economy so they could campaign saying: "Look the Democrats screwed up our economy!"