The Republicans' Jobs and Growth Scam

"Alright, quiet please. Let's be sure everyone has this cock-and-bull story down pat. You there, Fox News and Redstate? Are you cool? Boehner, Cantor, McConnell? Got it? Hey! Out on the campaign trail, listen-up.

"It's 'jobs-killing-regulations' and 'jobs-creating-tax-cuts.' I don't want anyone going off the reservation on this. You hear me Bachman. 'Jobs' a verb and a noun. That's all you need to know."

The Republican's ostensible jobs plan is just more of the discredited supply side snake oil we've been living with since Ronald Reagan. Give millionaires more tax breaks, repeal workplace and consumer protections and dilute environmental or safety regulations on power plant construction, drug testing, shale fracking, et al. and the economy will magically flower. Balderdash!

If Republicans are right, where were the jobs during the Bush administration which had the lowest taxes - the same ones they insist on extending now - and the worst job performance in 70 years?

Here's what's really happened under 30 years of the supply side follies. Average middleclass income flatlined; one-third of those born middleclass have dropped below their parents' status; workers' salaries as a share of GDP is the lowest since 1955; corporations have offshored three to four million good-paying jobs. Meanwhile the average income for the top quintile has doubled and corporate profits are skyrocketing.

Is the working class simply lollygagging? Or could this be the result of dubious tax and trade policies procured in behalf of so-called jobs creators in return for political vigorish?

Take a guess.

Look, economies run on demand, 70 percent of which in the U.S. is the result of personal consumption. When people have enough money they buy stuff. When they buy stuff, businesses expand and hire more people. This is not rocket science.

It's crazy to think corporations are going to damage their bottom lines by expanding without concomitant demand, regardless of lower taxes and fewer rules. Why should they? Profits, productivity and excess production capacity are at record highs. Wealth is again being earmarked for financial wheeling and dealing or invested in booming, high demand economies like China's and Brazil's.

Demand changes everything. Take the Big Three. In the face of those "jobs-killing" fuel economy standards recently announced, they've hired nearly 100,000 new workers…because people are buying more cars!

Yet here we are in the middle of a three-year recession, the worst since the 1930s, with Republicans sprinkling more of their Reaganomics fairy dust that got us into this mess and stymying President Obama's American Jobs Act which, according to Moody's, will put nearly two million people back to work and grow the economy 2 percent.

It is truly loathsome for Republicans to con Americans that cutting taxes and regulations will create American jobs when all they will do is further line the pockets of their wealthy patrons.