At what point
do Republicans, particularly those in the House, start "co-owning" the economy? Every time the jobs report come out and it's weaker than expected, the Republicans slam President Obama up and down about it and blame his policies for not creating jobs and the pundits get busy debating about whether or not the jobs report is "good" for President Obama or "bad" for President Obama but nobody seems to ever question the increasingly pervasive premise that the President is basically expected to "create jobs" with his bare hands and that if the private/public sector doesn't consistently deliver "good" numbers, it's his fault alone. There are probably a few things POTUS might be able to unilaterally tweak at the executive level to help the economy but, basically, his ability to create jobs pretty much rests on proposing legislative measures that might help create jobs.
So, what has President Obama done on that score? Well, of course, there was the dreaded and much maligned stimulus plan that he and a Democratic Congress was able to get passed (with the aid of 3 Republicans) which, while smaller than it ultimately needed to be, brought unemployment down and kept us from falling over the cliff. Second, he proposed the American Jobs Act late last year but Congress has failed to act on it for the past year. The House has refused to hold a vote on it and/or work out any kind of bipartisan compromise with President Obama and the Senate Republicans would eagerly filibuster it in the Senate so that it wouldn't even be brought up for a vote. Given that this is an election year, it is beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Republicans- still primarily obsessed with repealing ACA- will NOT do anything substantive for the rest of the year on jobs or anything else. Recent history, I think, will bear me out on this, unfortunately.
So, I ask again, WHEN are Republicans going to start "feeling the heat" about NOT doing anything about jobs? They ran in 2010 on focusing on jobs yet they spent last year madly trying to repeal ACA, gut Planned Parenthood, NPR, and pretty much any government and/or social safety net program they hate in the name of cutting the deficit. On top of all that, they decided to act out a nearly year-long drama over raising the debt ceiling, which appeared ultimately delivered a "kick to the gut" to the economy and, worse, resulted in the first ever downgrade of our country's credit rating, largely due to the dysfunctional mess that Congress has become due to rampant Republican Tea Party obstructionism. President Obama introduced the American Jobs Act in the fall of last year but nothing has been done on it since in the House, which the Republicans control. I would suggest that the Democratic-controlled Senate hold a vote on it but the Republicans will, of course, ensure that it never comes close to getting an up-or-down vote.
Is the GOP "economic sabotage" meme starting to get out there and, more importantly, is ANYBODY in the corporate media starting to notice? Are the American people starting to notice at all?
The basic message that President Obama needs to communicate to the electorate between now and November is that the economy was a mess when he took office and his policies helped make things better but the Republicans have repeatedly kneecapped every other effort to create jobs and reduce unemployment and have no viable plans to do differently if given total control of the country (again) in November, just more of the same old policies that got us into the previous mess even though the Republicans will then be saddled with the mess, so I'm not sure how this really works towards their long-term advantage but I guess I'm not entirely sure that matters to them either. Nothing seems to matter much to them other than power and their ability to implement their radical agenda.
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