It’s official: the Republican party is actively seeking to hurt the economy and raise unemployment to satisfy the tiny percentage of the American people who think the deficit is more important than jobs. We had an inkling of this sort of thing when Speaker Boehner uttered his famous “so be it” remarks and now we have definitive proof. Of course, we already had the Goldman-Sachs report but the new independent analysis from Moody’s is just reinforcing the premise. Don’t be fooled by the Wall St. Journal, kids; the GOP is going to slash the budget and American jobs be damned.
The truth is that we’ve been in a similar situation before. As a caller, roger, on the Diane Rehm show put it this morning:
And the last time we were, we got out of it by engaging in massive deficit spending and a absolute mandatory jobs program that was called WWII and the draft. And it actually led to the greatest prosperity we’ve ever seen.
And as a corollary, before the ramp up to a war footing got the economy into overdrive, a massive federal jobs program put the country back to work with the extra benefit of rebuilding the national infrastructure. Of course, there’s no way such a thing could happen today. Republicans simply won’t accept reality and Democrats are too cowardly to do what’s right. The history of the country, the facts on the ground today and simple common sense tell us that the plan to gut federal spending is a disaster waiting to happen. And the Republicans are apparently not ashamed in the slightest about it. In fact, they seem to relishing the possibility of a meltdown.
So, really, the only question left is the one Steve Benen is asking: why the hell is this not considered front page news?
Rottenart 