"Jobs, jobs, jobs!" What has the GOP done to deliver on their 2012 campaign slogan?

2012? That was their slogan for the 2010 campaign, also. It helped them get a lot of politicians elected at the state level. As soon as they got elected, they started treating jobs as a four letter word, and immediately began ramping up legislation to eliminate social programs, and reduce taxes on the wealthy.

I haven’t seen the GOP do a single thing to improve the job environment for working people since Obama was elected. Bastards.

“It helped them get a lot of politicians elected at the state level.” Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!
Mission accomplished.

The overall situation hasn’t changed. The only jobs I have seen created are at the top levels, which require a lot of experience and education.

As always, jobs for the inexperienced with little education are disappearing or turning into part time only.

@bossob, @Espiritus_Corvus & @YARNLADY Maybe the jobs they were talking about were political jobs for those campaigning for office and the staff they would hire. Once that was in pocket, the familiar old, “I already got mine, f### you.” kicked in.

For some reason, the tea party republicans don’t see the correlation be jobs and improvement in the “free market” economy. They seem to think that giving tax breaks to multinational corporations and the top 10% rich people as a way to stimulate the economy.

I think raising the minimum wage, handing out food stamp, and contracting for infrastructure repairs and improvements is a much better stimulus than bailing out banks and catering the the military/private prison/and austerity crowd is a total waste of money and resources.

It’s really quite simple, the Democratic Senate has tabled every jobs bill the house has passed. The GOP only has the house, as long as the Senate refuses to do anything, nothing will pass. If welfare and food stamps were the answer, we’d be in fat city. They are at all time highs.

I might also mention that taxes have gone up, not down. Infrastructure spending was done with little improvement. How many other hair brained schemes can the democrats come up with that have no chance for success?

Businesses are going to trend toward dropping full time employees in favor of part time. This move would benefit them better to adjust for Obamacare. Nobody wants to hire until they find out how this will shake out.

@Ron_C Agreed.

@Jaxk What jobs bills did the House pass. I’m trying to compile a short list, but I only think of 1, the “Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act” passed right after the losses of the 2012 election. Lots of bills that would have meant more layoffs, but the kind of “Jobs” bills we thought they meant with the slogan were ones that would create jobs, not kill them. At least that one law passed the Democrat (sic) controlled Senate and was signed into law by the President.

@ETpro

Rather than arguing with you over what is and what isn’t a jobs bill, I refer you to Politifact on the 15 bills that were stuck in the Senate in 2011. The problem is with the definition of a jobs bill. Republicans believe that if you are spending and increasing the deficit it will cost jobs, ergo not a jobs bill. Democrats believe that unless you are spending and increasing the deficit, it’s not a jobs bill. Whereas I don’t totally agree with Politifact’s assessment on this, it is close enough for them to not rate the validity of the claim either true or false.

What is clear is that those 15 bills passed the house with bi-partisan support. Whether the democrats that supported them considered them jobs bills or not. The Senate then tabled them so they would not even get an up or down vote, insuring that we would never know if they would have created jobs or not. This is the state of affairs at this point in time.

Republicans have passed what they promised in the way of jobs bills. Democrats disagree and have stopped those bills. Sop the answer to your question is that the jobs bills promised by Republicans are tabled in the Senate.

@Jaxk If similar policies in the past achieved either no results or bad results, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see why bills that continue or expand on those policies may not be well-received except by those who have terrible memory. And I think history (and the Bureau of Labor Statistics) has shown that job creation isn’t exactly a strong point of Republicans. When you say that we will never know if they would have created jobs or not, I think anybody who isn’t either senile or ideologically myopic can guess the answer to that one.

Of course, the hyper-partisanship in Congress is appalling anyways, and there seems to be a lot of obstructionism all around, so it’s not surprising that they got tabled regardless of merit. It seems like spiting the other party matters more than the good of the nation and it’s citizens.

@jerv

Your myopic view of history is almost laughable. You guys take the job creation number and base all your arguments on it, simply because it is the only number that is even slightly positive. But does it mean anything, no. It doesn’t tell you if anyone is getting jobs nor whether the job market is expanding. You ignore things that would actually indicate an improvement in the job picture.

You want labor staistics, how about workforce paticipation rate, which is dropping like a rock. Hell, the only reason the unemployment rate is not still above 10% is because people are dropping out of the workforce in droves. Democrats know how to take a thriving economy and drive it into the ground but have no clue how to recover from a recession. Actually the last Democrat that brought us back from recession was FDR and it took 12 years and a world war to do so. Of course that doesn’t sway you guys as you hold FDR as a resounding success.

You tried Stimulus, it didn’t work. you’ve tried raising atxes, it didn’t work. So what’s the plan now, more stimulus and more taxes. If the democrats knew anything about history or economics, they’d be republicans. But of course that can’t happen with you hands covering your eyes.

@Jaxk Since you have a different idea of “thriving economy” that ignores pretty much every metric usually used except corporate tax rates and numbers of regulations, I don’t think arguing the point would be productive.

You tried dropping taxes and that didn’t work. You tried “Horse and sparrow” and that really didn’t work; it got us where we are now.

Also, you perpetually mistake me for a Democrat just because I disagree with the GOP. If the GOP knew anything about history or economics, they’d be Republicans, but we haven’t had many in the lastfew decades.

I wasn’t going to respond to this lunasy but I can’t stop myself. You seem to think there is some imaginary number that would support you case but never are able to come up with it. You guys brag about the jobs created number (pathetic though they are) then complain that no one is getting a job. Which is it, we’re creating jobs or we’re not. The workforce participation rate would indicate we’re not. The unemployment rate would indicate we’re not.

And of course you guys like to shout about how well the stock market is doing. Of course it’s doing well the interest rates are near zero and the Fed is pumping $trillions into it. At the same time you’re complaining that the rich are getting richer. Of course they are, what do you think happens when you stimuluate the stock market like that.

The idiot Democrats are doing all the wrongs things and then trying to blame the Republicans for not stopping them. If they had even half a brain, they would at least try to understand the cause and effect. But they don’t because the only thing they’re good at is blaming others for their own ignorance.

@Jaxk I award you a GA for “The idiot Democrats are doing all the wrongs things and then trying to blame the Republicans for not stopping them.” Great line!

@Jaxk The laws of supply and demand are why getting a job is difficult. Look at all of the workers that got displaced and compare that to the number of jobs created, while simultaneously factoring in population growth (kids entering the workforce after their education is complete) and you will see that we need healthy job growth just to maintain status quo, and more than that to recover from W’s second term. (He was in power when the shit hit the fan; not blaming him, just saying that bad things happened pre-Obama.)

The statistic you listed is the only one I’ve seen that legitimately supports your argument even tangentially, but given that the U4, U5, and U6 numbers include those who have given up, and those numbers are declining so it’s one of those things where you’ll read what you want to read from. BLS figures.

The complaints about the rich getting richer are due to Supply Side Economics not doing what Republicans claimed it would, plain and simple. It’s not the distribution of new wealth so much as the lies surrounding it that earns the derision. You’ve said many times that CEOs are worth what they get because of the value they add to the company, so why not reward those who add value to a company by implementing those ideas? The whole reason for giving investors more to invest was job creation (which doesn’t happen) and other forms of trickle-down (which also doesn’t happen), so people are angry because Republicans lied.

Now, we cannot allow the Democrats to reign unfettered, but they have no viable opposition any more. The Republicans are opposite of what you grew up with, so it’s either Democrats or raving lunatics with a horrendous track record. Get more Republicans like Scott Brown, Olympia Snowe, and Colin Powell and you might have a chance but supporting those who call themselves Republicans just because you dislike the policies of Democrats won’t do anybody any favors.

@jerv

Just so I understand you correctly. You think that because the U6 number has gone from 14.1% to 13.9% over the last year, that Obama and the Democrats have done a good job. And if you think that what’s the problem, we’ll be back to full employement within a few decades.

I know you guys like to use your bumper sticker slogans and dilude yourselves that there is a point in there but there’s not. You want to blame supply side economics but if you look at the data the jump in CEO salaries didn’t happen in the 80s under Reagan, it happened in the 90s under Clinton. It had nothing to do with supply side but rather a result of the Internet boom.

There are a few other things that have taken place as well which should be considered when making wild assumptions. During the 80s and 90s we had a robust IPO (Initial Public Offering) market. Generating about 310 IPOs per year. Since 2000 that number has dropped dramtically to about 100. Small companies are no longer going public but rather selling out to larger competitors. This change hurts the job market and reduces competition. Why did this happen? Sarbanes-Oxley is one reason. The cost to go public increased dramtically with the new accounting rules (regulation, again) making it more profitable to sell out rather than compete. Fewer companies, fewer jobs as a result of asinine regulation. Instead of trying to fix that problem we are engaged in a tsunami of new regulations that all have the same effect. Dodd-Frank, Obamacare, etc. are all making it more difficult to grow a business and more lucrative to sell out. Nothing to do with supply side economics.

No one in their right mind, not even your beloved Krugman (not that I would include him in people with a mind) would try to say that raising taxes would create jobs. Yet that is what we’ve done. Not only have we raised them but we are under a continuing threat of raising them even more. The added cost of Obamacare, higher taxes, increased regulation and you can’t figure out why companies are not hiring. You are your own worst enemy.

We’ve already seen what happens when we let Democrats rule unfettered. We can’t afford another disaster like that one. You can take your Olympia Snows and shove them where the sun don’t shine. Frankly, I’m not ineterested. A democrat by any other name is still an imbecile.

@Jaxk * sigh *

So let me see if I understand you correctly; you think the nation would be better off if we vered so far to the right that Michelle Bachman looked like a Liberal? I merely want balance; a way to let a rising tide lift all boats while at the same time giving an extra slice of the pie to those that worked their ass off for it. Since you disagree with me, then either you have been misreading me for years, or you actually want all of the money in the world in the hands of an elite few. The only reason I even bother with you sometimes is the vanishing hope that it’s miscommunication.

Now, think about why such regulation was put into place, and then look me in the eye and tell me that people didn’t bring that upon themselves. Really, are people that short-sighted? Or is it just an utter inability to accept accountability?

If Obamacare makes it more difficult to grow a business then the increase in energy prices would’ve killed off small business years ago. Yes, it’s an added expense, but the alternative is a vastly expanded Medicaid system. And who would pay for that? Those businesses that pay taxes, and those that earn enough to pay taxes but not enough to avoid them, that’s who! But I think you and I agree that private insurance is better (and more efficient) than a government program, and it’s already been proven that the costs are nowhere near the apocalyptic figure that opponents predicted. Besides, it was a good idea when Republicans did it, so opposition must stem solely from partisanship.

But we’ll do it your way. Zero taxation, zero regulation, let the inmates run the asylum, pay only management for the work done by their underlings, and let a few million people starve, get sick and die. The fact that you perpetually disagree with me tells me that that is what you want.

The chart you linked also shows pretty decent rises under Reagan, so citing just one factor is fallacious thinking at best. However, looking at the sum of many failures of Supply Side economics, the best that can be said is that proponents of it are idealistic bullshit artists. Maybe it was because we’ve been doing it wrong, maybe it’s that Republicans oversold and underdelivered, but if you don’t trust liars and fools then how can you support Republicans? Any support I offer Democrats is of a “lesser of two evils” sort, but you seem to actually embrace the faux-Republican ideology to the point where you refute that Republicans were ever vastly different than they are today. That is why I ask.

@jerv

I’m not misreading you at all. You want to call yourself independent, I can only assume because you’re ashamed of being a Democrat. Can’t blame you for that. Yet you support every hair brained scheme the democrats come up with. When they don’t work you you claim they do. My positions are pretty clear. I don’t need to use vague assertions or ‘all or nothing’ arguments like you do. It almost laughable when you say the alternative to Obamacare is a vastly expanded Medicaid. Hell, that’s exactly what Obamacare is. The latest estimate of Obamacare is now $1.8 Trillion, double the original estimate and it just keeps getting bigger. And just for the record, gas prices have been killing off small business as well as everyone else. Where have you been? You say let the inmates run the asylum, they are running the asylum. Again where have you been?

I will agree one one point. Not that Republicans are vastly different today but that they have veered left over the past few years. The effort now is to move back to where they were which is smaller government, lower taxes, and adherence to the constitution. Hell, if i supported liars and fools, I’d be supporting the Democrats like you do.

We are a very prosperous nation. We have immense resources and an industrious population. Recovery from this recession doesn’t need to be so painful. You’ve tried your kenesian policies and they don’t work. Stop being so afraid of trying the policies that have worked in the past. We don’t need another decade plus of recession like we had with FDR. If you want that route you’ve got the right guy in office. Obama said he wanted to stop the up and down swings of the economy and he did it. Unfortunately he picked the bottom of a recession to do it and now we’re stuck there. I’ll give him credit for that. If you want balance don’t grab the most leftwing loon you can find and try to emulate them.

@Jaxk If you think the Republicans have veered left then we are in different realities. the rest of your words are meaningless. Good day.

You guys are hilarious. I enjoyed that. And you were both gentlemen throughout. Bravo.

@Espiritus_Corvus

I take personal offense to that gentleman comment. :-)