Repubs kill jobs bill

Yesteday, Senate Republicans used the 60 vote, faux-filibuster tactic to prevent moving Obama's jobs bill to the floor for debate and vote. Predictable, but nevertheless reprehensible.

Today, the New York Times lead editorial called it

"a breathtaking act of economic vandalism."

It continued:

There are 14 million people out of work, wages are falling, poverty is rising, and a second recession may be blowing in, but not a single Republican would even allow debate on a sound plan to cut middle-class taxes and increase public-works spending. . . . independent economists say [the plan] would have a significant and swift effect on the current stagnation. . . .

Republicans released their own "plan" today. It consists of nothing but their tired old mantra: cut regulations, repeal Obama's health care reform, more tax cuts, and a balanced budget amendment.

It won't work.

Manufacturers are not holding back on hiring because of those things; they're not hiring because people are not buying; people are not buying because they don't have jobs, they've lost their jobs, and they're afraid of further hard times. What don't the Repubs get about that?

The Times editorial continues:

Their lack of serious ideas was on full display in both the Senate and the presidential debate on Tuesday night in New Hampshire. The debate was ostensibly about the economy, but when the freshest and most-talked-about idea is Herman Cain’s ridiculous “9-9-9” tax plan, it is clear that the economy they were debating is not the one Americans are forced to live in. . . . [Cain's 9-9-9] is a formula designed to cut taxes for the rich and increase them for the poor, raising the deficit and doing nothing for growth. . .

The other candidates were no less vacuous. . . . Republican candidates fear the Tea Party too much to acknowledge that economists are solidly behind government intervention to awaken growth. . . . But at least the record is increasingly clear who is advocating real ideas and who is selling an empty vessel.

Obama is working hard now to get people to listen to these facts.
The question is: has he waited so long that Republican lies have been repeated so many times that too many people now have them imprinted in their brains as the truth?

Ralph