Today's unemployment numbers are just the latest in a series of reports indicating that President Obama's continuation of Bush economics was a mistake.
It is time for Obama to offer a real alternative to trickle down economics and get America working again.
For some comparing Presidents Bush and Obama is surprising but that is probably from a lack of understanding how similar their actual policies are. For example, did you know/remember that Bush signed a stimulus package? It's true! And like the stimulus Obama signed it was mostly made up of tax cuts. The theory in both cases being that tax cuts stimulate growth and create jobs - which isn't true.
In fact, despite tax cuts and a stimulus package the Bush Administration's job record, according to the Wall Street Journal, was the Worst Track Record On Record:
The Bush administration created about three million jobs (net) over its eight years, a fraction of the 23 million jobs created under President Bill Clinton‘s administration and only slightly better than President George H.W. Bush did in his four years in office.
OK, so one of the worst job creation records in Presidential history despite a stimulus and
multiple tax cuts. And what is Obama's plan for creating jobs?
Here are the six major points from Obama's program to create manufacturing jobs:
1. Removing tax deductions for shipping jobs overseas and providing new incentives for bringing them back home
2. Targeting the domestic production incentive on manufacturers who create jobs here at home and doubling the deduction for advanced manufacturing
3. Introducing a new Manufacturing Communities Tax Credit to encourage investments in communities affected by job loss
4. Providing temporary tax credits to drive nearly $20 billion in domestic clean energy manufacturing
5. Reauthorizing 100% expensing of investment in plants and equipment
6. Closing a loophole that allows companies to shift profits overseas
Two modest changes on removing incentives to offshore jobs and dodge taxes while the rest of the program involves tax cuts. No repudiation of
race to the bottom trade policies that support worker exploitation and environmental degradation - the actual cause of the loss of manufacturing jobs. Multinational Corporations are outsourcing jobs to cut costs that come from labor standards and environmental regulations but that incentive or
outsourcing stimulus is untouched.
The Bush tax cuts are still in effect and with the financial institutions that created the 2008 financial crisis are bigger than ever. Not to mention the incentives to recklessly speculate despite being under taxpayer protection as JP Morgan just proved.
The policies on trade, taxes, finance, and Corporate Power in general have remained constant under both administrations.
In substance, President Obama is continuing the policies of President Bush with some tweaks on the margins.
And that's the issue, because people did not vote for a third term for Bush in really any area of government policy let alone Bush's economic agenda. They voted for change because the voters properly understood that the economic system as fundamentally broken. But Obama did not change that system, in fact he protected it and is now working to perpetuate it. That is unacceptable.
Is this critique too harsh? Is Obama just powerless to get legislation through a tough Congress (at one point in his administration controlled by Democrats in both houses with 60 votes in the Senate)? Consider this: in the midst of another corporate crime wave President Bush signed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002. The act was a clear indication if not admission that without regulation corporate officers would commit fraud - a resounding refutation of the conservative principle of "self-regulation." Cut to 2012 and the ridiculously titled JOBS Act which according to Professor William Black, a major regulator during the Savings and Loan Crisis, is a recipe for fraud as it rolls back the Bush era regulation on corporate accounting and governance. More conservative than Bush?
If President Obama wants to be taken seriously as a change agent on economic issues he is going to have to move past his substantive embrace of Bush economics. In truth, Obama is not even rhetorically past Bush economics with a constant focus on the magic of tax cuts and trickle down economics. Obama must provide a bolder vision for the future and then fight for it, not dodge tough fights (see Wisconsin) and expect to inspire loyalty. It's time to lead.
Not being Mitt Romney is not good enough.