Republicans still can’t explain why their economic ideas keep failing

[n2doc]

By Paul Waldman

Watching last night’s debate, I experienced a moment of breathless anticipation when one of the moderators, Gerard Baker of the Wall Street Journal, asked Carly Fiorina a version of what I think is the single most important economic question the Republican presidential candidates should have to answer. Let’s look at what Baker asked, and then we’ll look at how I’d put it, and what the candidates did and didn’t say:

“Now, in seven years under President Obama, the U.S. has added an average of 107,000 jobs a month. Under President Clinton, the economy added about 240,000 jobs a month. Under George W. Bush, it was only 13,000 a month. If you win the nomination, you’ll probably be facing a Democrat named Clinton. How are you going to respond to the claim that Democratic presidents are better at creating jobs than Republicans?”

As Brian Beutler noted afterward, that is exactly what Democrats will be saying next year. So how did Fiorina respond? She told the story of a woman she met who worries about her economic situation, then said, “Yes, problems have gotten much worse under Democrats,” which is the opposite of the truth, then went on to decry how government has been “crushing the engine of economic growth for a very long time.”

In other words, she didn’t answer the question. But its essence is this. The Republican candidates all propose variations on the same theme, which is that the way to boost the economy is to cut taxes and scale back government regulation of business. In other words, here’s the plan all the Republicans agree on:

1) Cut taxes, particularly for the wealthy.

2) Scale back regulations on business.

3) Watch the economy boom.

The trouble is that we’ve been testing their theory for some time now, and it isn’t holding up well. That’s particularly true of its flip side, which is that tax increases and more regulation inevitably strangle the economy. Barack Obama has increased taxes and regulations, and job growth during his presidency has been solid. Unemployment is now at a mere five percent; you may remember that in 2012, Mitt Romney said his economic plan was so great that he could bring unemployment below six percent by the end of 2016. It’s true that wages have been stagnant, but that’s a condition that goes back decades. Even if you grant that the economy isn’t what we’d like it to be right now, the Republican theory predicts that the Obama policies would have produced not an incomplete recovery from the financial collapse, but outright economic disaster. Their theory also says that we should have had a huge economic boom during George W. Bush’s administration, and another economic disaster under Bill Clinton, who also raised taxes and increased regulations. None of those things happened.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/11/11/republicans-still-cant-explain-why-their-economic-ideas-keep-failing/

Republicans don't explain. They just repeat the same lies, and are never called on it. At least on TV. And rarely elsewhere.

[randys1]

1. And yet tens of millions of lower middle class Americans will break their necks getting to the

polls in November to vote for the people who will destroy them


Not because they believe in trickle down or even understand it, but because the people telling them stuff are white and hate Black people and Gay people and Women people the way they do.

Yes, even Carly and Ben will be viable as spreading hatred of all these groups.

There is endless proof that Democratic rule always improves the economy and republican rule always harms it.

But it does not matter.

[BlueJazz]

2. Republicans are going to bring us back right before the Great Depression. Their policies didn't..

...work then, didn't work under Ronald Reagan and won't work now or ever.
The definition of republican is doing the same stupid thing over and over and expecting different results.