A Simple Fact: Republicans Can't Manage the Economy

[marmar]

from AlterNet:


A Simple Fact: Republicans Can't Manage the Economy

By Robert Weiner and John Larmett . Posted August 20, 2007.



Contrary to the mythology the party has created, GOP presidents are terrible for business.


At last week's news conference, President Bush again said that he's reduced the deficit to $239 billion, created 8 million jobs and generated unemployment at a low 4.5%. He said the economy is strong, largely due to his tax cut policies. On the other side, Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), House Appropriations Committee chairman, has complained of our limited resources now because of Bush's "gargantuan deficits he created with that stupid war and those stupid tax cuts paid for with our money."

There is a widely held belief that Republicans are better for business than are Democrats. Let's look at the facts. The wild stock market ride of recent weeks does not compare to the two worst stock events, the crash of 1929 and the 1987 free fall, which also occurred under Republican administrations. Since 1900, Democratic presidents have produced a 12.3% annual return on the S&P 500, Republicans only 8%. Gross Domestic Product growth since 1930 is 5.4% for Democratic presidents and 1.6% for Republican presidents.

Bush inherited from President Clinton an annual federal budget surplus of $236 billion, the largest in American history. Clinton balanced the budget for the first time since 1969. Budget surpluses were expected to total $5.6 trillion between fiscal year 2002 and 2011.

Despite this, Bush transformed the surpluses into a $1.1 trillion annual deficit in just three years because of the Iraq war and his relentless push for permanent tax cuts for wealthy Americans, a new iteration of Herbert Hoover's equally catastrophic "trickle-down" theory. Bragging about a $239 billion deficit sets such a low standard that Bush can claim horrific failure as a good thing for the country. The Bush administration's annual loss of three-quarters of a trillion dollars is unprecedented. Bush presided over the loss of 2 million American jobs in his first 2 1/2 years and has net gained 5.6 million in six years, the worst since Hoover. Clinton created 23 million jobs.

It's not rocket science to figure out the difference. Clinton: tax breaks for the middle and lower incomes who actually spend the money, no Iraq war. Bush: disproportionate tax breaks for the wealthy (50% to the wealthiest 1% by 2010), $750 billion for a war monetarily benefiting only a few military contractors and a financial sieve for the country. Democratic presidents spread the wealth through spending on needed social programs and targeting tax cuts to lower- and middle-income Americans, stimulating the economy more broadly. Republicans pump into defense contractors and high-income Americans, creating a significant detriment to the whole economy with larger deficits and higher interest rates.

Economist John Maynard Keynes was right in 1936: When you "prime the pump" into people programs (like jobs or lower income tax cuts to help Americans buy what they need), you get people results. On the other hand, when you move money from the economy into tax cuts for the rich and a military vacuum, you don't prime the economic pump; you deplete it. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/60217/

[sendero]

1. It is the economy....

.... and not the war, that is going to drive the final nail in the Republican coffin.

You are seeing the beginnings right now with this "subprime" debacle. Contrary to what the rah rah media cheerleaders would have you believe, recovering from this is YEARS away.

[BOSSHOG]

2. Its part of what makes them so charming to their base

the ignorant masses who love to be told what to think. All republicans have done over the past 25 is tell them, Government does not work PUT US IN CHARGE AND WE WILL PROVE IT. Then like good little lemmings when government fucks up, the well trained blame evil liberals - "tax and spend" is as easy to say as "Hussein has WMD." Or, "Plame was not an undercover agent." Or "we will be greeted as liberators."

[cgrindley]

3. I doubt that anyone can

I don't hold Clinton responsible for the internet bubble and I don't really hold Bush responsible for the sub-prime market woes. I hold Clinton at least partially to blame for WTO and NAFTA, but what can you do... the economy is too huge and complex to be controled by anyone or anything. To pretend otherwise is dangerous.

[paulk]

15. I do think you can make the argument

that Democratic economic policies are better than Republican ones, though.

The idea that giving huge tax breaks to the rich as a way to spur the economy has pretty well been disproven. Supply side/trickle down is a myth.

You can't hold a President responsible for the micro, but you can certainly hold him responsible for the overall strategy, and Clinton's and the Democratic Party's performance, over time, has been better than the Republican's. You can't deny that.

[cgrindley]

18. True

taxing the living shit out the rich has been proven to make them more productive and giving them tax breaks more or less makes the rich become lazy, but I can't remember the source...

Overall strategy? I think both parties have done some pretty shitty things. Being a Canadian living in the US, I do support NAFTA and the WTO as it usually rules in my country's interests, but both really have caused havok here in the states. Those were really bipartisan efforts in the ends, so I don't think either party should necessarily get the blame.

I just don't think that there's much anyone in government can do to exercise any real control over the US economy. I think it'll always do pretty much what it wants to do. Economics, remember, is not a science, it's an art.

[EVDebs]

21. Keynesian economics: 'marginal propensity to consume'

In other words, give a poor guy money and he'll spend around 100% of it; give a rich guy more money and he'll piss a lot of it away and shove some offshore and just waste much of it by hiding it under a mattress.

[EVDebs]

20. Pissing away $454 billion in Iraq is no mean feat, however, taking great skill

http://www.costofwar.com

[girl gone mad]

23. Bush deserves at least some of the blame..

for encouraging people to spend, spend, spend after 9/11 and promoting the idea of an "ownership society", where everyone owns a mortgage regardless of their ability to ever pay it off. Deregulation, long a Republican mantra, should be added to the list of failed Republican ideologies. As should tax cuts for the wealthy, which helped fuel irresponsible, speculative investing by funds that cater to the beneficiaries of those cuts.

In fact, I would argue that most of the influential shifts in public policy which got us into this situation were born in a right wing think tank somewhere.

[MannyGoldstein]

4. Two Interesting Charts From My Blog

Democratic vs. Republican Presidents: Economic Prosperity

Democratic vs. Republican Presidents: Federal Debt

[izzie]

5. I frankly think we need it set up like this.

Dem. president and one part of Congress in the other party. GOP in the WH and the govt. dept. will not go by the laws on the books but the other way around and one part of Congress another party you have some one watching things. It works better for us every day people. It also holds down on the money spent by all. And we sure should take the war power away from any one in the WH and give it back to Congress and hope they have learned a lesson from Iraq and Korea and Vietnam. I have.

[whistle]

6. If shit was money, republicans would grab it all and give out buckets with their name on it...

...and they would outsource bucket boys collect all the shit they could get!

It is not about management, it is about greed and who gets the most. That is where republicans always put their focus and they always demand maximum share at the expense of others.

[Labors of Hercules]

7. So, um...

Why do people who they fuck over continually, continually vote them into office? Like a wife who keeps going back to a husband that beats the shit out of her... I just don't understand it. :banghead:

[madrchsod]

8. the republicans think business should`t be regulated

every recent downturn has resulted from lack of regulations. it does`t take a weatherman....

[rucky]

14. They love certain regulations...

that shut out competition.

they also love welfare.

[SpiralHawk]

9. "Smirk, smirk, smirk." - Commander AWOL

"The cabal of corrupt republicon Homelander cronies is making out Way Excellent. Too bad about you little people* Smirk smirk smirk."

- Commander AWOL


* Formerly known as citizens of the United States of America until the republicons created Homeland, the new totalitarian welfare state for the rich.

[dbt]

10. Au contraire. They manage it VERY well!

Every time a Republikkk sits (or, in the case of bu$h, squats) in the Whitehaus, a few people make a killing.

Literally.

[Double T]

11. rethugs can MANAGE the economy................

THEY MANAGE to ABSOLUTELY destroy it!!!!

[rucky]

12. Sing it from the rooftops! n/t

[underpants]

13. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work & then they get elected and prove it

-PJ O'Rourke


Joe Conason blows the whole myth away in "Big Lies"

[ComerPerro]

16. with Republicans, its hard to tell the difference between can't and won't

So many of their "failures" seem to be so perfect for their real base (the extremely wealthy) and their talking points that they seem to almost be by design.

For example, is it just coincidence that Republicans always bitch and moan about how slow and ineffective and incompetent Federal Government is, and governments they lead prove to be just those very things?

Sometimes it seems like they fuck things up on purpose just so they can go out and say, "see, we told you so!"

[marmar]

17. Very true.....

n/t

[spanone]

19. this president spends the 'peoples' money like a drunk sailor.

the economy is just like FEMA before Katrina.......totally fucked.

[coco77]

24. and then when he wants to give another tax cut to the rich ...

he says "remember it's your money"

[CrispyQ]

22. You build any solid structure from the bottom up, not the top down.

Trickle down economics -- I can't believe how long the masses have fallen for that line of garbage.

[and-justice-for-all]

25. yes they can manage the ecomomy!!!!!

Right into their own damn pockets!