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The tea party had a big success in early August when it fomented a fake debt ceiling crisis and then used that crisis to take the U.S. economy hostage. By threatening to force the United States into default and trigger a worldwide economic depression, they were able to force the president to accept budget that he and everyone else knows will further stall the recovery.
There is little doubt now what the extreme right is up to. They want the economy to fail for the sole purpose of weakening the Obama presidency in order to help elect Mitt Romney next year. Then, they seem to be suggesting, Republicans will “fix” the economy presumably by cutting the corporate tax rate to zero and privatizing the federal government. That way they can finish the job Republicans started during the George Bush presidency of turning the United States’ assets and resources over to their masters, corporate oligarch like the Koch brothers et al.
The best way to fix the economy is to create jobs. There are 14 million Americans who are unemployed right now — that we know of. By putting them back to work, consumer spending will rise, demand for new goods and services will increase and the tax coffers will be replenished and we can start to pay down the national debt.
But the tea party and its poodles in the Republican congressional leadership have made it clear they will do everything in their power to stop job creation.
This is a nasty situation, and it has caused a lot of regular Americans to feel hopeless about the government’s ability to kickstart the economy. (And talk about the tail wagging the dog. While the 62 members of the Tea Party caucus represent 14 percent of the House, just 4 percent of Americans say they are active members of the tea party, according a new CBS/New York Times poll.)
However, in just the past few days, two new political solutions for spurring job growth have been proposed by members of the fourth estate. The ideas are similar in that they are both designed to force tea party Republicans to vote against infrascture projects in their own districts. In one case, the idea would be to force tea partyists like Michele Bachmann to vote against public works projects she herself has requested.
Yesterday, we published details of MSNBC’s Chris Matthews’ job plan. He proposed cataloging the thousands of bridges nationwide that are currently crumbling and in unsafe condition then creating demand to repair the bridges by running ads in the local communities showing school buses and family cars using the dangerous bridges in their daily commutes. The bridge repair projects would then be put up for a vote in the House, forcing each representative to vote yes or no on greenlighting construction funds in her or his district.
Last night, Matthews’ MSNBC colleague presented another plan, this one proposed by Steve Benen, a columnist at the Washington Monthly, that would also force pro-failure, anti-job tea bagger Republicans to vote against their own interests. The nuance in this plan, however, is that it identifies infrastructure spending that tea baggers like Rep. Michele Bachmann and the rest have already requested.
Maddow interviewed Brenen last night (see video above) to discuss his idea which he’d written about in a column titled, How about a Bachmann-inspired stimulus?, which he summarized here today:
In public, Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann spends much of her time railing against government spending. In private, Bachmann spends quite a bit of time requesting government spending.
Yesterday, we talked about a new approach to public investment, intended to generate at least some support from congressional Republicans. The pitch is pretty straightforward: have the White House take the several hundred letters GOP lawmakers have sent to the executive branch since 2009, asking for public investments, followed by President Obama announcing he’ll gladly fund all of the Republicans’ requests that have not yet been filled.
The point, of course, is to bring together the GOP demand for funding job-creating projects (in their states and districts) and the Democratic demand to give the economy an immediate boost. Republicans submitted the requests for public investments; all officials have to do now is approve them.
The biggest obstacle against enacting either of these innovative, politically aggressive ideas that they are probably a little too bold and politically in-your-face for Pres. Obama’s tastes.
However, maybe other Democratic leaders, those whose priorities are aligned more with putting Americans back to work than with courting independent voters for the 2012 elections, will take charge.
Madame Speaker, are you listening?
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I don’t think the Dem’s want to create any new jobs that might be union and above minimum wage….these bastards haven’t decided if they want to fix the infrastructure or privatize it…We need to throw out all corporate parties!!!!!!!!!