Senate Republicans basically admit they don't have a jobs plan, offer up gimmicks

[ProSense]

Senate Republicans Plan To Unveil A ‘Real’ American Jobs Bill

Brian Fung

In an apparent answer to the White House's jobs proposal, Senate Republicans are planning to unveil what they call the "Real American Jobs Act."

The bill lays out a distinctly conservative vision for the U.S. economy that would lower tax rates for individuals and businesses, pursue free trade, and roll back environmental regulations while expanding domestic energy production. To top it off, Republicans would seek to pass a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, Politico reports.

Leading the charge are Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH), Rand Paul (R-KY) and John McCain (R-AZ). On Wednesday, Paul sounded a confident note, saying it was "unfair" for the White House to claim the GOP lacked a jobs plan.

"There is one, and we're going to put it into legislation," Paul told Politico.

more

Obama to media: Stop pretending the GOP has a real jobs plan

Republicans agree: They don't want job creation while Obama is still president

[Tarheel_Dem]

1. K&R. Let's see if the American people let them get away with it.

The march, coming up on Saturday, is expected to be well attended (I think). It really is time to put foot to pavement, and literally "occupy" the halls of Congress. :hi:

[ProSense]

2. John McCain’s ideas will save billions and billions of jobs

Greg Sargent: John McCain’s ideas will save billions and billions of jobs

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On Fox News today, John McCain offered the perfect illustration of this. He called for the elimination of “thousands” of new regulations he claimed are costing us “billions and billions of jobs”:

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McCain said:

We have a plan and we’ll have almost all of the Republican Senators behind it. And if wants to bring up a piece of his proposed plan, we’ll bring up a piece of ours.

We’d love to see, for example, a vote in the United States Senate on a moratorium on Federal regulations, which are coming out by the thousands, costing businesses billions and billions of jobs. We’d love to see a vote on that. But it will be interesting to see if the Majority Leader will allow it.

Now, I’m assuming McCain misspoke here, because the loss of billions and billions of jobs in a country with a population of just over 300 million would leave the unemployment rate at truly untenable levels. Perhaps he meant billions and billions of dollars.

That aside, this overarching claim has already been thoroughly debunked. The Associated Press recently did a bracing fact check and concluded that Labor Department data show that under Obama, just two-tenths of 1 percent of layoffs have been due to government regulation. McClatchy recently canvassed small businesses across the country and found little evidence that it’s a factor.

And Bruce Bartlett, a top policy adviser in the administrations of Reagan and the elder Bush, recently concluded that worry about regulatory uncertainty “is a canard invented by Republicans” and “not a serious effort to deal with high unemployment.” Bartlett argued that the focus on regulation is rooted in the GOP’s lack of any real ideas to create jobs.

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