And now for a bit of a rant…
The Republicans have been saying for years that the only way to create jobs is to cut government spending. The Republicans have been trying to convince the American people that “government can’t create jobs”. Now that their “sacred cow” (the defense industry), is on the chopping block and some of their biggest campaign contributors are going to be losing money, they are saying exactly the opposite.
We’ve known for years that the Republicans make statements that are exactly opposite from the truth and reality. Their new stance on government spending proves they will say and do anything to further their political ambitions, regardless of whether their statements are factual or their positions are consistent.
Last summer when the Republicans threatened to drive this country off the economic cliff because of the failure to agree on a budget they agreed to a plan to have the cuts come out automatically if they weren’t able to reach a budget deal. There would be $600 billion in automatic cuts on the domestic spending side, food stamps, public education, etc., (all the programs that help the poor and middle class), along with $600 billion from the defense industry.
A budget deal has not been reached so far, and if one isn’t reached in the next few months, the cuts will happen automatically on Jan 1st 2013.
So now that the defense industry is facing cuts, the Republican Party has changed its tune. In the past few days they have been highlighting a study done for the Aerospace Industries Association that says the defense cuts could cost up to 2 million jobs.
What a minute here. The Republicans have been telling us for years the only way to create jobs is to give tax cuts to the greedy rich, and to cut domestic spending. If that were true, then giving tax cuts to the greedy rich and cutting defense spending would have the same effect.
The money the government spends comes from the same pot, (the taxpayers). When the government spends money, it spends money. It doesn’t matter whether the money is being spent on domestic programs or defense programs, the result is the same: More money being put into the economy that people can spend.
Is a government dollar being spent on a defense employee somehow worth more to the economy than a dollar being spent on a college student, a working single mother, or an elderly person? Absolutely not.
Cutting any kind of government spending right now is going to cost American jobs. That is just a fact. Right now our economy isn’t doing well enough to absorb those job losses. If we were at 5% or less unemployment, the American economy could very well absorb those losses without too much trouble. But we aren’t, so the spending cuts the Republicans are always touting will harm our fragile economy by costing American jobs.
What needs to be done to get America moving again is the same thing that got America out of the Great Depression. We need to ignore the deficits and the debt for right now and have the federal government ramp up spending on domestic programs like repairing our infrastructure.
In the 1950s President Eisenhower began the project to build our nation’s freeway system. This led to the biggest expansion of our economy in our history. The middle class was born. The American Dream was realized for millions of people. Anyone in this country who wanted to be successful was able to do that.
Now, instead of facing a nation with NO highway system, we are facing a nation with a broken highway system. The same type of program that built the highway system in the first place, putting millions of Americans to work in the process, needs to be put into place to fix our crumbling infrastructure putting millions of Americans to work in the process.
This type of spending won’t cure all of our economic woes, but when coupled with higher taxes on those who can afford it will put America back on the path of greatness we were on up until a couple of decades ago.
Want a strong country? Don’t vote Republican. Want a third world status America? Vote Republican. Those are the choices this November: Vote Republican and vote for the 1% to succeed at the expense of everyone else. Vote Democrat and vote for the rest of us to succeed while requiring the greedy rich to pay their fair share.