And now for another edition of “Mitt Romney: Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire. President Obama would like to raise the top marginal corporate tax rate from 23% to 29%. He would like to end the Bush tax cuts so that the top marginal tax rate increases from 35% to 39.6%, where it was when George W. Bush took office. Both are huge increases the corporations and the rich can’t POSSIBLY absorb, right? Right?
In response to President Obama’s proposal to end the Bush tax cuts for everyone earning over $250,000 a year yet leave them in place for the middle class, Romney cited last week’s dismal jobs report, then said “This is another kick in the gut…to the job creators and small businesses…” He later modified that statement, probably under advice from his campaign braintrust, to say, “This will be another kick in the gut to the middle class.” Always know your audience, right? By the way, how do you raise taxes on small businesses, as opposed to small business owners? Are small businesses people, my friend? Hence, the rewrite.
Let’s examine the lack of logic in both versions of his statement. First, the he points out that per the government jobs report, not enough new jobs are being created. So, with the Bush tax cuts currently in effect, plenty of people are still out of work. But it is Romney’s claim that if you raise taxes on the job creators and small businesses, they won’t be able to create the jobs they’re busy not creating now. That’s like saying you should buy a Maserati before the prices go up. Why? I can’t afford to buy one now! It’s not a perfect analogy but it does link Mitt Romney’s name to unaffordable Maseratis, which was my intent all along.
Here’s the truth about job creation under President Obama:
http://thinkprogress.org/...
Since February 2010, the private sector has added 4.3 million jobs, On the other hand, public sector employment is down 600,000 jobs since January 2009. The major reason? All those Republican tea party governors, like Scott Walker, Ricks Scott and Snyder, Mitch Daniels, and John Kasich who were swept into office in 2010 have been busy busting public employee unions, and firing teachers, police officers, firefighters, and public employees in general, right and right (those governors don’t know from left). Have you gotten really upset over the long hold times on the phone to speak to a social services worker or the long response time—or lack of response from government agency workers? That’s because there’s not many of them left these days—and a lot of them are working part-time from home. And how about all those western wildfires? How many more lives and homes would have been lost had the states fired more firefighters to save money? How much will city crime rates increase as the municipalities decrease their police forces to save a few bucks?
Oh, and the same governors I mentioned? To a man they all refused FREE federal money to fund high speed rail projects in their states, projects that would have put hundreds of thousands of unemployed construction workers and engineers back to work, and would have created millions of jobs more with support services, retail centers, restaurants, and the like.
And one more thing: Romney lies by omission as well. A year and a half ago, President Obama sent a massive jobs bill to the John Boehner/Eric Cantor-controlled House of Representatives. The bill would fund infrastructure repair, so that no more interstate highway bridges collapse during rush hour traffic, and other goodies and would put at least a million unemployed people back to work. Guess what? That bill is still on Boehner’s desk, gathering dust. That would make Republicans job non-creators, wouldn’t it?
So, it seems like the only real job creator around these parts is President Obama, at least he would be if the Republicans didn’t want him to lose the election so bad. While Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority leader, does have a full-time job, his other self-confessed full time “job one” is holding Obama to one term. He said so publicly himself.
So when Mitt Romney speaks his very carefully rehearsed concern over tax increases on “the job creators and small businesses”, look at his burning trousers and recall that unemployment was below 4% with a 35% business tax rate under Bill Clinton. George W. Bush dropped that tax rate to 23% and by the end of his term in office 700,000 jobs were vanishing every month. I call it “vanishing”, Romney calls them “offshoring”. A lost job by any other name…