Ah, my senator Mitch McConnell once again showed a keen grasp on Sunday of what his constituents want from a Washington politician.
CNN’s Candy Crowley reminded the Kentucky Republican that a recent Gallup/USA Today poll found that 75 percent of Americans supported President Barack Obama’s plan to provide additional money for teachers, police and firefighters.
“Republicans helped not break a filibuster, if you will, in a procedural vote,” Crowley explained. “You basically got rid of that jobs bill which would have given money to the states, designed to hire or retain fireman, policeman and teachers. When we look at the polling, 75 percent of Americans supported that and yet, the Republicans were against it. So, how do you justify that in your mind?”
“Well, Candy, I’m sure that Americans do,” McConnell remarked. “I certainly do approve of firefighters and police. The question is whether the federal government ought to be raising taxes on 300,000 small businesses in order to send money down to bail out states for whom firefighters and police work. They’re local and state employees.”
“The question is whether the federal government can afford to be bailing out states. I think the answer is no.”
Sorry unemployed Kentuckians, your senator says we can’t afford to lift a finger to rehire teachers and firefighters, or to in fact do ANYTHING. But we sure could afford a war in Iraq and to give the banks trillions, yes? Unemployed here in the Bluegrass State? Sorry, we’re broke. Jobs are not Mitch McConnell’s job, you see.
And we’re broke because we can never, ever raise taxes on our precious job creators…only that’s not what the bill would have done, anyway.
“Yeah, these bills are designed on purpose not to pass,” McConnell asserted. “I mean, the president is deliberately trying to create an issue here. Look, the American people don’t think, I’m sure, that it’s a good idea. Four out of five of the so-called millionaires are business owners, over 300,000 small businesses in our country that hire people. I don’t think the American people think that raising taxes on business, small business in the middle of this economic situation we find ourselves in is a particularly good idea.”
On the contrary Mitch, they think it’s a great idea. And the best part is that all these unemployed? President Obama is “deliberately trying to create an issue” because the unemployed should apparently really be invisible or something. Why, this unemployment issue wouldn’t exist if you know who would just keep his mouth shut, right?
If we eliminate taxes, it’ll create infinite jobs, you know.
amk
So let’s abolish the senate then. Good riddance.
Cliff in NH
Ask him for the names of the 300,000 ‘small’ business making OVER $1,000,000 a year And are filing as individual tax returns that’s $300,000,000,000 there. I’m Sure they are easy to find.
Rosalita
@amk: if only… or at least their lifetime benefits.
Paul in KY
My senator is an evil dick. The other one is Ron Paul’s son.
Yippie.
These quotes help our cause though. People see how well these ‘businessmen’ are doing & think that they can pay higher taxes, since the ‘job creators’ are sitting on big piles of cash & not doing any job creating.
PeakVT
Whaddya know, it turns out it’s entirely possible for a country to run its economy so that most of its citizens benefit. Somebody should tell ol’ Mitch.
Comrade Javamanphil
Our job creators really need to be fired for sucking at their job.
Cliff in NH
Cliff in NH:
It’s gonna be hard for him to do, since there were only 236,883 filers over $1,000,000 a year in 2009 (most recent data)
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/09in12ms.xls
from:
http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=96981,00.html@
Redshift
@Cliff in NH: Yes, we should not miss an opportunity to point out the basic lie that claims it’s a tax increase on people who have a million dollars (to pretend that it’s small business owners) when it’s actually people who make more than a million dollars a year (who are of course the people Republicans are really forcing layoffs of teachers and police to protect.)
Pity our professional journalists can’t be good enough to do the same.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
You know how you get to be a small business owner? Start with a medium sized business and then have a large chunk of your customer base go swimming in the U6 pool. Hey presto! Small business! Keep repeating that, and pretty soon you can be tiny business.
PeakVT
@Cliff in NH: And small businesses aren’t big jobs creators anyway.
Plethded
Did he explain this “we can’t be bailing out states” while smoking a giant cigar and sucking down oysters at his Washington club? Because the visuals should match reality.
Cliff in NH
@Redshift: And its a rate increase only on the million and first dollar and up, for all their ‘job creating’ income below a million a year nothing changes.
The Moar You Know
Mitch already told you what his only priority is. He doesn’t see the need to keep repeating himself. Frankly, I don’t see why he should either.
I wish the president had listened to Mitch. He wouldn’t have fucked away so much valuable time trying to reach an accommodation with these folks. I find it hard to understand how someone as smart as Obama is failed to figure out that Mitch really meant what he said, but oh well.
Here we are.
PeakVT
@PeakVT: Don’t click on that link, click on this one instead.
lacp
Yes, those low tax rates worked so well for job creation from 2001-2009, didn’t they?
Jewish Steel
Of all the nerve!
John S.
Candy Crowley is about as fucking useless as they come when it comes to villagers. The only tool on TV who is bigger than her is David Gregory. And of course, the only tool bigger than HIM is Paul Bunyan’s axe.
James
What is this crap?
Judas Escargot
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
For all the ‘bidness-friendly’ chatter from the GOP, they really couldn’t care less about small business. In fact, they seem hellbent to reduce the growth of small businesses, in favor of their Fortune 500 donors.
Shame that we can’t convince all those small businessmen of this fact.
boss bitch
@The Moar You Know:
The alternative to compromising is getting nothing. Obama is not going to sit on his ass his entire term complaining that Republicans won’t let him pass his agenda.
ThresherK
@Plethded: I believe he’s living the high life off his second-place winnings in a beauty contest.
But seriously, folks, did I really hear that this such a loser for the right wing that even Candy Crowley is talking smack to him on it?
“EvenTheBeltwayInbred” Candy Crowley is pointing out to a Republican that a poll favors a Democrat’s policy. And the mainstream press has not yet pastconned the jobs bill to “soon it will have been a political failure and the public has forgetten it (because we don’t mention it)” status that Democratic winning ideas all get anointed with.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@John S.:
The “who’s the biggest tool in the mainstream press corpse” parlor game is fun to play when we have time to kill, but fundamentally it is a Möbius strip of Epic Fail. It has no end.
Cliff in NH
@John S.:
and she already had the ‘small business’ thing explained earlier when they were actually discussing small business taxcredits (s-corps), and not individual filers who earn over $1,000,000 a year or more than $480/hour
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/van-hollen-calls-out-kevin-mccarthy-lie-it
Comrade Dread
Well, not by itself. We’ll also need to get rid of the minimum wage laws.
That way, we can ensure that everyone will be working two or three jobs instead of sitting on their lazy ass only working 40 hours a week. It’ll be good for our national character.
Cliff in NH
@The Moar You Know:
He had to get the debt ceiling and funding out of the way before he could attack back.
Brachiator
Here’s one of the reasons that the president’s job plan falls short. He talks about “rehiring teachers and firefighters,” and conservatives hear “public service union employees.” This makes it very easy to dismiss the plan as just being in the pocket of unions.
There is also the perception that teachers and firefighters have fat salaries and pensions, and that shortages are not entirely because of a bad economy, but because of improvident giveaways on the part of local and state governments.
Much of this is easily countered. Problem is, nobody is doing so, and it makes it easier for opponents of the job plan to fall back on simplistic notions of big government giveaways.
There is also this. The president’s plan is, like many typical Democratic Party approaches, narrow and targeted. And unimaginative. The unemployment rate in California, for example, is hovering around 12%. Rehiring teachers and firefighters, is noble, but it doesn’t put a real dent in unemployment. Emphasis on retaining jobs is not the same thing as creating new jobs, especially new jobs in the private sector.
@Redshift:
Although it’s obviously “20/20 hindsight,” I wish that the president had simply let the Bush tax cuts die in 2010, instead of agreeing to the bargain that led to their extension.
WereBear (itouch)
You know it, I know it, I’m sure the President knew it. But how many voters had grasped that fact?
I’m not seeing very many until lately.
rikyrah
this is you Turtle Man is…to his sociopathic core.
Jack the Second
Millions for defense but not one cent for education.
Jamie
I’m still at a loss why we give so much authority in DC to a Senator from the financial superpower the state of Kentucky.
gene108
@Brachiator:
For every 2 private sector jobs created, since 2009, we’ve lost 1 public sector job.
What’s hurting employment right now is public sector lay offs. The private sector is mostly stable and doing some hiring.
Putting public sector workers back to work will do wonders to drop down the unemployment rate.
The problem with the economy is there is no demand, i.e. no one wants to spend money. Usually the government spends money to fill in the drop in private sector spending, but that’s being blocked by Republicans.
If the government stepped up and started spending money, by putting public sector workers back to work, you’d start seeing moment build, in terms of people being more secure and more willing to spend money.
Lihtox
Whenever someone says “we can’t afford to raise taxes on small businesses…”, the immediate response should be “what about large businesses?” Any little bit of revenue would help, after all. If raising the top marginal rate raises taxes on small businesses, then add a new deduction or tax credit for businesses (or more specifically legitimate businesses, rather than individuals who simply incorporate themselves to dodge taxes).
The underlying implication is that the tax law is incapable of distinguishing between large businesses, small businesses, and individual wealthy people, which is of course completely absurd.
Brachiator
@gene108:
Just not true. It depends on the region of the country. Also, a lot of the first stimulus went to saving public jobs, not creating new ones. And public employees in some states are getting hammered over wages and pensions.
Any way you cut it, there are two big parallel problems. Retaining jobs and keeping new ones. And with state and local budgets getting squeezed, there is more call for shedding public sector jobs.
I just don’t see the numbers here, anywhere, that supports your claim. And here in California, we have an odd imbalance. In some school districts, declining populations are seeing the closing of schools and cutbacks on school construction. There is a continuing need for teachers, but it is not uniform.
The consumption model, that Americans can just revive the economy by spending, is defective. Job loss and wage stagnation is crippling the economy. Here’s a little nugget from former NY Times reporter David Cay Johnston’s economic blog:
What makes people feel secure is not seeing somebody else with a job. What makes people feel secure is when they themselves have a job with good wages.
Brachiator
David Cay Johnston is a former NY Times business reporter who writes very clearly about economic issues, which is probably one of the reasons he gets ignored by dumber ass pundits, who don’t understand business or economics, but love to pass on the received wisdom of the Beltway.
Here is some key data about jobs and wages from the government’s most recent data. It all comes down to this:
Fewer Jobs, Less Pay.
Fewer jobs, less pay. If the government is not tackling this problem, they ain’t even in the game.
Catsy
@Brachiator:
Who cares what conservatives hear? This proposal isn’t intended for their ears; we already know they’ll oppose any Obama proposal and refuse to even allow a vote on it. It’s going nowhere. That’s not the point.
This mind-bogglingly wrong analysis is only possible if you look at this one specific bill in isolation and ignore every shred of context surrounding it.
President Obama already proposed a jobs bill that was not “narrow and targeted”. I’d have liked to see it even larger, but it would’ve helped. And the GOP shot it down in lockstep, as they’ve vowed to do to anything Obama proposes.
We know, by this point, that the GOP has no intention of compromising, no desire to fix the economy, and in fact have all but broadcast their intent to deliberately sabotage the economy and harm this country in the hopes that American voters will blame Obama for the damage.
I mean, honestly: is there anyone who can in good faith even dispute this, at this point? No? Moving on.
Since the GOP will not pass any constructive proposal Obama puts forward, the only option we have left is to make the GOP’s priorities and responsibility for this inaction as clear as possible. So Obama picks one piece of the larger bill that was shot down, and proposes simply saving jobs for teachers and firefighters–two jobs which have broad appeal to just about everyone who isn’t a rabid right-winger.
McConnell is absolutely correct that this bill isn’t designed to pass, but what he doesn’t acknowledge is that it won’t pass because he and his party have no intention of passing anything that will put Americans back to work. This leaves the administration and Democrats in Congress with only one option for legislation: bills which will get Republicans unequivocally on the record with their priorities. With a larger, broader bill, it’s easy to obfuscate about exactly what part of the bill you were opposed to and voted against. By submitting each piece of the bill like this, it forces Republicans into the corner they’ve painted for themselves.
Brachiator
@Catsy:
You mean, conservatives don’t vote? It’s not just about what obstructionist GOP politicians hear, it’s about what voters hear.
While I commend the president over doing something, I stand by what I said about the bill being narrow and unimaginative. The bill would extend the payroll tax cut and 100% expensing of the purchase of new assets used in business. Neither of these proposals have done much for the economy so far. And if you don’t have a job, and haven’t worked in a few years, a payroll tax cut is absolutely meaningless to you. Also, the payroll tax cut has not led to increased employment.
One of the larger components of the bill, with a price tag of $35 billion, was the portion that would go to retain teachers and firefighters.
I understand the political appeal. I’m just saying that this is an economic bandaid.
I agree with you here about the politics of it. Hopefully, voters will make Republicans pay for their stupidity. But in the meantime, the economy will continue to sputter.
Carol from CO
Also note that he approves of police and firefighters, but not mention of teachers. There is a war on teachers.
The Other Chuck
“Republicans helped not break a filibuster”
And John Dillinger helped not keep money inside bank vaults.
What. Fucking. Bullshit.
The Other Chuck
@Carol from CO:
It’s simple self-preservation: every success a teacher has reduces the Republican base by one.
chrome agnomen
@Judas Escargot:
if they are at all astute business owners, they already DO realize this.