Obama Is The Solution, Republicans Are The Problem

Totally absent from Bob Hebert's August 13, 2010 op-ed cataloging the problems our country faces - especially on the jobs front -  and lamenting Obama's alleged failure to take bold action to correct them is the recognition of where the blame should lay.  While  I agree that Obama has been timid and has failed to use the bully pulpit nearly as effectively as he could, what Hebert fails to mention is that the Party of No has effectively blocked - or watered down all of Obama's attempts to jump start the economy and spend the money on education and infrastructure this country needs if it is to avoid becoming, in the space of less of a generation, a second class economic power.

You have to hand it to the R's. Their clear willingness to put their desire for power ahead of the needs of the country (in the process putting a lie to and making a joke of John McCain's 2008 campaign slogan, "Country First") has been a brilliant political strategy to which Obama, whether out of political timidity, or a lack of faith in his own policies, has failed to effectively counter. 

Republican obstructionism, ably aided and abetted by Obama's misguided effort at bipartisanship, so watered down the stimulus bill that it was doomed to failure before the ink was even dry on his signature. The original bill was about 200 million dollars bigger (most economists, we need to remember, said $1 trillion was needed to really stimulate the economy), and included hundreds of millions more for infrastructure repair and green energy and more aid to states to keep police on the streets, fireman on their jobs and teachers in their classrooms. In the end Obama weighted the stimulus towards tax cuts in the vain hope that he could achieve the kind of bipartisanship which the Republicans had made it very clear they were prepared to deny him in order to maximize the chances that the economy would NOT rebound and hand them the mid-terms on a silver platter. 

Economists agree tax cuts are among the least stimulative and least job-producing of all the kinds of measures that government can take. With the economy in shambles, with the banks not lending money to small businesses, with corporations hoarding cash, and with the Republicans strategy of seeing the country fail largely succeeding, the Republicans see blood in the water and are going in for the kill, broadening their attacks to now include voting against anything that might help relieve the economic suffering in our nation, such as help for the 99'ers and credit for small businesses, in the hopes of finishing Obama off.

Jettisoning the bipartisan support that the extension of unemployment insurance benefits had historically enjoyed in the Congress, Republicans now attack unemployment insurance compensation as a welfare program (it isn't) and villify the long-term unemployed as "lazy" (they aren't).  They argue against emergency aid to states to prevent the layoff of hundreds of thousands of teachers as a payoff to the country's public school teachers, who they now characterize, pejoratively, as a "special interest" group.

They argue, against all economic evidence, that expiration of the Bush tax cuts for the richest 1 or 2 percent of the country will somehow not only be a "job killer" that will hurt small businesses, but, at the same time, won't add to the very deficit they decry, and which, all available evidence has shown, were exacerbated by those same tax cuts.  They know that they are lying and are playing a shell game (Exhibit A: John  "I got my tan by spending 500+ hours on expensive golf courses" Boehner doing a masterful job on last week's MTP not answering David Gregory's question as to whether he agreed that keeping those tax cuts would add to the deficit). Talk about magical thinking!

The fact is that unemployment benefits - not for people who are too lazy to work but for people who have fallen victim to corporations who continue to outsource jobs to Mexico and China, and who are hoarding cash rather than investing it in hiring new workers - along with food stamps (which the Republicans were successful in cutting) are the best at stimulating the economy and tax cuts are the worst.

So, the long of the short of it is, that, yes, Obama has not pushed back hard enough, consistently enough, and clearly not effectively enough, and not creatively enough, to get the economy back on track, but for Hebert to suggest that it is all his fault? That I cannot and will not buy.