Title: While Pushing Corporate Tax Cuts, Bachmann Rejects Extending Jobless Benefits: ‘We Don’t Have The Money’ Source:
THINKPROGRESS URL Source:http://thinkprogress.org/economy/20 ... ecause-we-dont-have-the-money/ Published:Aug 15, 2011 Author:Tanya Somanader Post Date:2011-08-15 11:36:00 by Brian S Keywords:None Views:4557 Comments:5
Right now, 14 million unemployed Americans are struggling to make ends meet. 44.4 percent of these Americans have been struggling without a job for six months or more. While Republican lawmakers continually put off their “jobs” agenda, many of these Americans receive much needed financial support from the federal unemployment benefits program. These benefits, unfortunately, will expire at the end of 2011.
GOP presidential frontrunner Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has been touting a “jobs” candidacy and emphatically insists that she could spur some economic recovery within the first three months of her presidency, if “not the whole turnaround.” Her powerhouse plan? Fire Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, repeal “Obamacare,” and cut taxes for the wealthy. Indeed, today on NBC’s Meet The Press, Bachmann reiterated that, to ensure “job creation,” Congress needs to cut the coporate tax rate from 34 percent to “something that is far more competitive.” But when asked whether extending the much-needed jobless benefits is part of her jobs agenda, Bachmann flatly rejected the idea. “Frankly we don’t have the money,” she said:
BACHMANN: I think we need to focus on more than anything is, what will lead to job creation. And what will lead to job creation is taking the United States down from about the top corporate tax rate in the world at 34 percent down to something that is far more competitive.
GREGORY: What about extending jobless benefits for people who are out of work. Do you think that’s a necessary step?
BACHMANN: I think it would be very difficult for us to do because we frankly don’t have the money. That’s the bottom line in the United States. We are now, according to Mark Stein, he wrote a book called “After America,” and in his book he says we are the brokest [SIC] nation history. He said we have gone from the biggest creditor nation to the biggest debtor nation in a very short period of time.
GREGORY: So no on extending jobless benefits.
BACHMANN: Right now I don’t think we can afford it.
Watch it:
Bachmann’s focus on the corporate tax rate to create jobs and spur the economy is, at best, ironic. Right now, corporations are sitting pretty on trillions in cash reserves. Corporate profits are at record highs. Still, Bachmann advocates for cutting the corporate tax rate down to nine percent, a policy that would cost the U.S. more than $2 trillion over ten years. According to the Tax Policy Center, a ten point reduction would cost $915 billion. Such a significant blow to the deficit may be justifiable if it resulted in job creation. However, as the non-partisan CBO noted, it doesn’t.
By contrast, an extension of jobless benefits for six months would cost $34 billion and will actually generate two dollars of economic growth for every dollar spent — not to mention the peace of mind it would provide to millions of jobless Americans. A fact, it seems, that Bachmann frankly does not seem to care about.
A few days ago Eric Cantor was on Jim Cramer's show on CNBC. Cantor blamed Obama for the lack of jobs of course. Cramer then asked Cantor about extending unemployment benefits to which Cantor responded with something along the lines of "well you can't prop up unemployed forever, at some point they have to get a job"
So GOP logic is that it's the unemployed's fault that they don't have jobs that Obama isn't creating.
So GOP logic is that it's the unemployed's fault that they don't have jobs that Obama isn't creating.
Yeah, I don't get the logic.
"...all of the equations in neoclassical economics are rubbish. The differential equations describe nothing. Economics is not about mathematics, it is about the human being." Sandeep Jaitly
A few days ago Eric Cantor was on Jim Cramer's show on CNBC. Cantor blamed Obama for the lack of jobs of course. Cramer then asked Cantor about extending unemployment benefits to which Cantor responded with something along the lines of "well you can't prop up unemployed forever, at some point they have to get a job"
So GOP logic is that it's the unemployed's fault that they don't have jobs that Obama isn't creating.
I have posted this many time over and over. The object of the GOP is to lower American wages.
They want people off of unemployment so they can become desperate enough to accept lower wages in a buyer's market. Competition for the few jobs paying well will mean a fight to the lowest wage level.
That is what they want. McCain himself stated that Americans don't do some jobs because they pay too little.
With the economy still in the dumper -- maybe permanently? -- and full-time jobs becoming as scarce as rain during a drought, huge percentages of Americans have had their (misplaced) faith in the American dream shaken, the upper-middle-class consumerist lifestyle is exposed as a mirage for anybody who plays by the rules. Capitalism and the America that embraced it as a way of life is now and forever more a failure. It does me good to know that the generation that voted in Reagan and his ideology will see their America die from that ideology before their very own eyes and knowing they had a hand in its destruction.
They want people off of unemployment so they can become desperate enough to accept lower wages in a buyer's market. Competition for the few jobs paying well will mean a fight to the lowest wage level.
From Why "business needs certainty" is destructive
So this haranguing about certainty simply reveals how warped big commerce has become in the US. Top management of supposedly capitalist enterprises want a high degree of certainty in their own profits and pay. Rather than earn their returns the old fashioned way, by serving customers well, by innovating, by expanding into new markets, their 'certainty' amounts to being paid handsomely for doing things that carry no risk. But since risk and uncertainty are inherent to the human condition, what they instead have engaged in is a massive scheme of risk transfer, of increasing rewards to themselves to the long term detriment of their enterprises and ultimately society as a whole.
"...all of the equations in neoclassical economics are rubbish. The differential equations describe nothing. Economics is not about mathematics, it is about the human being." Sandeep Jaitly
