Matters of Church and State

A SUMMER SNOW JOB

       Creating jobs for the American workforce is one thing.  Doing a job on the American people is quite another.  Mitt Romney and the GOP like to conflate the two.

         The central theme of Governor Romney’s presidential campaign is that as a businessman he knows how to create jobs and that as President he will get the economy humming again and put America back to work.

         Really?  How’s he going to do this?  Dramatically reduce government spending, cut taxes on the so-called job creators (aka the super wealthy) and reduce the stifling regulatory burden on businesses: the same, tired troika of the GOP political arsenal that has been around for decades.  Even though experience has demonstrated over and over again that this is patent nonsense and the worst kind of political flimflam, the GOP keeps trotting it out every election cycle.  Why?  Because it works.   

             If the GOP really wanted to help put people back to work, it would have passed some form of the President’s job bill that he submitted to Congress early in the year.  It has a number of features supposedly dear to the heart of Republicans.  It includes, for example, tax credits to encourage businesses to hire unemployed veterans; preventing up to 280,000 teacher layoffs; and keeping first responders including firefighters and police officers on the job.  It also calls for modernizing at least 35,000 public schools across the country, rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure: roads, railways, and airports, all of which would be a rich source of jobs.

         But, when your number one aim is to make sure the President is not re-elected to a second term, creating jobs can wait.  Even for a President who has cut taxes seven times for small businesses, the real job creators, and one-third of whose stimulus package consisted of tax cuts, and submitted a jobs bill that includes tax credits for job creators. First things first.

         Sound too cynical? I don’t think so.

         A case in point:  There’s a transportation bill currently languishing in the House that would put millions of unemployed construction workers back on the job.  The Senate passed a bill, with Republican support, but the tea-soaked House has held the bill hostage by linking to it “three controversial non-transportation issues: expansion of offshore and artic oil exploration, approval of the Keystone pipeline and relaxation of restrictions on use of coal ash,” as reported by the June 14 Washington Post.   

Besides the jobs issue, another arrow in the GOP’s campaign quiver is the charge that President Obama has driven government spending through the roof.  That isn’t true, of course, and recent statistics bear that out.  The fact is that the Republican controlled House has rejected virtually everything the President has sent to the Hill, except the Affordable Care Act which was passed over strong GOP opposition when the Democrats led the House.  And, now that may well be overturned by the GOP-controlled Supreme Court.

            The irony is that if the GOP had cooperated even minimally with the President, his spending record might be a credible issue to run against.  But, if you cut the wings off a bird and then complain that it can’t fly, you damage your case.

This thing could get curiouser and curiouser during the summer and into the fall, so stay tuned.  Meantime, go easy on the tea – it damages the brain -- and watch out for snow.   

Gerald E. Lavey