(Reuters/Larry Downing)
In the wake of today's
weak jobs numbers, House Republicans are
on the attack:
House Republicans pinned the blame for Friday’s disappointing jobs report squarely on the White House, saying the Obama administration’s “over-taxing, over-regulating and over-spending” has stifled economic growth.
“One look at the jobs report should be enough to show the White House its time to get serious about cutting spending and dealing with our ailing economy,” Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said.
The weak jobs report is proof that now is the time to get serious about cutting spending? Uh, didn't we just cut spending, at least according to John Boehner? And isn't this—anemic job growth—the first tangible result?
Remember, in April, John Boehner agreed to a funding bill that he said represented "an historic amount of cuts" in order to "create a better environment for job creators in our country."
Then, the very next month after passing Boehner's spending cut plan, job creation dropped from 232,000 to 54,000, its lowest level in nearly a year.
And he thinks that is evidence we need even more spending cuts? Is he crazy?
The lesson here isn't that Republican spending cuts and voodoo economics worked: it's that we need even more of the stuff that helped start the recovery to begin with. Yes, I mean the stimulus bill. Now, I know it's not going to happen now that the GOP has rebranded Keynesian economics as Marxism, but the Obama administration needs to repeatedly and loudly make the case for investing in America, lest they end up getting blamed for the GOP's foolish budget austerity.