Facts, Polls Be Damned, Republicans Fight to Keep Ruinous Bush Tax Policy – Their Goal Is Not ‘Jobs, Jobs, Jobs,’ It’s to Make Obama ‘Fail, Fail, Fail’
The Republicans have now boiled down their debate points for extending tax breaks to the uber wealthy to this:
INTERVIEWER: But, Your Excellency, the Bush tax cuts have been in place for 10 years and they have not produced jobs. They are also directly responsible for the deficit. So why should we extend them?
REPUBLICAN: We cannot raise taxes in a recession!
Of course, if the economy were in great shape, the GOP answer would be:
REPUBLICAN: We cannot raise taxes when the economy is booming!!
And I’m just kidding about the interviewer’s question. The news-show hosts rarely if ever confront Republicans about the simple, empirically knowable, no-two-sides-to-it fact that these wealthy Americans, whom Republicans euphemistically refer to as “small business owners” — the Paris Hiltons, Koch brothers, Meg Whitmans, Donald Trumps and, strangely enough, George Soroses of the world — having enjoyed the luxury of the Bush tax cuts for 10 years, did not create jobs with their “extra” money.
It is an equally knowable, non-debatable fact available to straight-down-the-line, fair-to-both-sides journalists that during the Bush era the rich got much richer: