[T]he numbers, the facts don’t lie. And I think it’s useful, given that there seems to be an alternative reality out there from some of the political folks that America is down in the dumps. It’s not. America is pretty darn great right now, and making strides right now. And small businesses and large businesses alike are hiring right now, and investing right now, and building this country brick by brick, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, all across the country.
And I don’t expect that these facts and this evidence will convince some of the politicians out there to change their doomsday rhetoric, talking about how terrible America is.
President Barack Obama, March 4, 2016
Of all the fictions peddled by the Republican Party and its candidates in this election cycle, the most ridiculous is the trope that the Obama Administration has “failed” the American people economically. This is a lie which apparently has been poll-tested with Republican focus groups as it has popped up again and again in the GOP debates, expressed almost ritualistically by Trump, Cruz and Rubio alike. Listening to the Republicans tell it, one could actually start to believe that the 4.9% unemployment rate the country currently enjoys (for the second straight month) is somehow beside the point—that hidden beneath this robust reflection on the country’s powerful economic resurgence since the Bush disaster lies some terrible undercurrent of “failure” on the part of this Democratic Administration.
This isn’t entirely unexpected. After all the prattling about Donald Trump’s penis size is long forgotten, the one indicator voters historically look to in deciding whether their government is actually serving their interests is the state of the nation’s economy. And the brutal truth is that the Republican Party has—mostly unsuccessfully, thank God— tried its damnedest to tank the American economy in a concerted effort to repudiate the President’s legitimacy by sucking up to their tiny donor base of oil, gas, and financial industry billionaires. Fortunately for all of us, they haven’t succeeded, but that hasn’t stopped them from trying.
This article by Teresa Tritch, writing for the New York Times, shreds the illusion the GOP tries to spin for its rabid and ignorant voter base, the phony narrative they try to pawn off in every one of their “debates”—that this Democratic Administration (despite all evidence to the contrary) has failed ordinary Americans. It’s telling that the “failures" are never actually spelled out, and the state of the economy itself (which has drastically improved in nearly all indicators since Obama took office) is curiously never mentioned. That’s because in point of fact, it is the Republican Party that has failed Americans, and failed them dismally, not just because of their bankrupt ideology, but through deliberate sabotage:
For example, the economic expansion of the George W. Bush years was the weakest in contemporary times; the Great Recession, which started at the end of 2007, and the financial crisis of 2008 — also both on Mr. Bush’s watch — further devastated any hope for good jobs and good pay.
Since then, Republican resistance to fiscal stimulus has only made economic recovery more difficult. Even in the depths of recession in early 2009, no House Republicans and only three Senate Republicans voted to pass the stimulus bill put forward by the Obama administration. After that, Republicans used strong-arm tactics — like threatening to default on the nation’s debt — to impose federal budget cuts, even though the recession-damaged economy required more spending, not less. They have also blocked, obstructed or watered down other proposed spending measures that could have boosted the economy.
There is no escaping the conclusion that their aim all along has been to foil the Obama presidency, even though it means prolonging economic pain for ordinary Americans.
No other conclusion is possible. The GOP tried to destroy the economy in order to de-legitimize this President. As one former Senator was recently quoted: “If he was for it we had to be against it.” The Republicans are on record as plotting to sabotage the President’s Economic Recovery Plan from day one. Since attaining power in the Congress they have failed to pass a single real jobs bill. Their entire modus operandi has been to oppose and obstruct, halting projects for such things as highways, infrastructure, high-speed rail, all of the projects that generate good paying jobs and would make this country a better place to live.
The Republican excuse for these “policies” has always been that spending cuts (always for domestic spending) and tax cuts (always for the uberwealthy) will magically prompt corporate CEOs to open their grotesquely fattened wallets and spoon out big dollops of largesse to their employees and the society at large; presumably after tiring of basking in their multimillions, they will somehow become inspired by a spirit of generosity.
The truth, crystal clear to every American who is not a multimillionaire—is that this is not, and has never been, the reality. The reality is that when corporate behemoths and their officers and directors are given tax breaks or offered unlimited loopholes to evade paying any taxes at all, the money they “save” goes straight into their own pockets. It’s not used to “create jobs.” It’s money they use to build something they call “generational wealth,” money that they intend to pass on to their own children and heirs, to ensure that their families and future offspring will always be safe and secure members of a permanent aristocracy. Along the way, some tax deductible donations and noble-sounding “charitable’ projects are given a passing nod for public relations purposes. But as it turns out, the rank and file people that work for them—being fungible and replaceable—are the last in line for their consideration, and their pay scales and salaries are often a race to the bottom by design.
That is the world we live in now. The Republican Party wants us to pretend it doesn’t exist.
Of course there are problems with the way the Obama economy has shaken out. As Ms Fitch’s article points out, many of the new jobs that have been created even in the face of the Republicans desire to destroy the economy and ruin this President’s legacy have fallen short of what people need to live what was once sold to us as the ”American Dream:”
One problem is that some two-thirds of the new jobs in February were in low paying fields of retail, restaurants and health care. Another is that average weekly hours fell by two-tenths of an hour. As a result, average hourly earnings fell last month, as did average weekly earnings. Last month’s declines were not enough to wipe out earlier gains, but progress has been slow.
Tritch points out this does not mean America is “failing,” as Republicans (who have just recently discovered economic populism) suggest. It means people are working but they’re not necessarily getting ahead. But the reasons for slow wage growth can be connected directly to policies implemented by the Republican Party at the state level. Slow wage growth means corporations pay as little as they feel they can get away with. One day corporate CEOs woke up, realized they could pay themselves pretty much whatever obscene amounts they wanted without any pushback from the public or their shareholders, and that has been their ethic and driving motivation ever since. The more they paid themselves the less they could pay their workers, assuming the workers would tolerate it.
So to keep their workers quiet they enlisted the Republican Party and state legislatures and governors to destroy the power of unions through “right to work” laws and measures eliminating collective bargaining. That’s all Scott Walker is—a tool of corporate America to keep wages as low as possible. On the other hand, The Obama Administration (and the Democratic Party) strongly supports unions. Likewise, the decline in hours reflects the collective corporate consensus that paying someone part-time is far more profitable than paying them a wage that requires health benefits. To combat this stellar example of corporate greed, the Administration passed the Affordable Care Act, which every single Republican opposed.
It’s true that one reason some jobs—in the manufacturing sector especially—have all but disappeared is the result of NAFTA and “free trade” policies (which Democrats like Bill Clinton along with nearly all of the Republican Party, touted in the 1990’s). These trade policies are the natural result of a worldwide Capitalist economic system that favors corporations over individual human beings by design, on the assumption that corporate success equals economic prosperity for all. It’s become increasingly clear that this assumption is wrong. The major difference between the parties on trade, however, is that Democrats give a voice to the “human beings’ side of the equation, and the Republicans simply do not.
That’s reality. No matter how many times Republicans repeat their lie, the American economy under this Administration has done remarkably well against all efforts of the Republican Party. Indeed this Administration never received the credit it deserved for lifting us out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, a calamity occurring entirely on the watch of this President’s now-reviled Republican predecessor. As Tritch puts it (very simply):
Policy failures of the last nearly eight years have mainly been failures on the part of Republican lawmakers to act in the public interest.
If the Republican Party wants to talk about “failure,” it needs only to look in the mirror.