The Republican National Committee has
delivered its take on
today's blow-out jobs report. Courtesy of Reince Priebus. And it's hilarious. You can tell by the historical chart above just how serious the GOP is in the matter:
“The months of incremental job gains we’ve witnessed are not enough. Creating 300,000 jobs in one month shouldn’t be a new high; it should be the minimum we expect. Today’s jobs report shouldn’t be an aberration; it should be the norm. Sadly, it’s not. The Obama-Clinton Democrats have prioritized other things like ObamaCare regulations, energy regulations, and small business regulations. Translation: they pushed job-killing policies when we needed job-creating policies.
“Thankfully, the American people spoke out last month and sent a Republican majority to the Senate, so next year we can begin passing the pro-growth, pro-jobs legislation that has gone nowhere in the Democrat Senate. That includes the Keystone Pipeline. Soon, it will be up to President Obama to decide if he wants to stand with American workers or continue siding with liberal special interests.”
Sure, Reince. If Mitt McCain were president and today's job numbers—and the ones for the rest of the year—were announced, y'all would be demanding Congress allocate funds for bronze sculptures of the guy placed in every state capital, with offsets to pay for them from the Head Start program.
The good news underlying today's report is that we are gradually seeing an end of the acute economic crisis that took away people's savings and homes along with their jobs. And that means there is space to deal with the chronic economic problems that pre-date the Great Recession.
We are still not where we need to be seven years after the recession wrecked the hopes and dreams and tenuous financial well-being of so many Americans. We don't have policies in place to ensure it doesn't happen again. The duration of long-term unemployment is still 50 percent higher than the pre-recession peak. Unemployment among African Americans is still outrageously high. The unemployment rate, however you calculate it, is still way beyond anything that could be considered full employment. The majority of new jobs pay less and provide fewer benefits than the ones that were lost. And while there appears to be positive movement on the wages front, Americans are for now barely keeping up with the official inflation rate.
These—and other related issues—need to be dealt with. There are, to be sure, many elected Democrats who ought to be retired because they are not up to dealing with them. But listening to Republicans say they are the ones to fix things given their abominable record adds new meaning to stand-up comedy.
They've stood in the way of every job-creating initiative the Obama administration has put forth. They've fought against measures designed to improve workers' lives, such as increases in the minimum wage. So hard have they fought against reforms that proposals like the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have made it easier for people interested in unionizing to do so, never even managed to emerge from congressional committee.
Saying things would be better if Republicans were in charge conveniently ignores history and the fact that today, as usual, they have no agenda for making things better for the 99 percent, only for the 1 percent. And they prove it every time they get hold of the reins.
