Party of No.
[In 2011] The American electorate was clamoring for action on jobs; the Obama White House crafted a credible plan that would be helping enormously right now; and congressional Republicans reflexively killed the Americans Jobs Act for partisan and ideological reasons.
With this recent history in mind, how are we to assign responsibility for high unemployment? Should we condemn the person who threw the job market a life preserver, or those who pushed it away? Or put another way, are we better off now as a result of Republican obstructionism and intransigence, or would we have been better off if the popular and effective job-creation measures had been approved?
From The American Jobs Act – One Year Later. Yes, it’s liberal icon and MSNBC show host Rachel Maddow, but she’s not wrong on any points in the piece.
Seriously, the GOP’s entire existence since they took over the House in 2010 has been to ensure Obama is does not get a second term. It’s true: They said so, out loud and into a microphone. What better way to do that than to sabotage the economy, repetitively and with vehemence by saying “NO” at every possible fix the Administration presents, then lay the blame squarely at the President’s feet when none of it passes?
Yeah, they did that. The Party of No. Their consistent obstructionism has done NOTHING to help anyone suffering through a loss of employment. Plus, their utter lack of presenting any job-creating bills of their own – really, who has time to think about the unemployed when women are gaining better access to contraception? – leads this voter to believe their plan has always been to kill the economy for the 2012 election.
It’s not just Maddow who sees that, but economist Paul Krugman, too.
Look, we may have been better off with the American Jobs Act or maybe not. Just because “Independent analysis projected [it] … could create as many as 2 million jobs in 2012″ doesn’t mean it would have.
But thanks to Republicans and their single-minded task of rejecting Obama, we’ll certainly never know.
If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention.