From ‘Where are the jobs?’ to ‘Where are Republicans on jobs?’
From Where are the jobs? to Where are Republicans on jobs?
by Steve Benen at the Maddow Blog, MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/where-are-the-jobs-where-are-republicans-jobs
"SNIP.............
The economic news on Friday was even better than optimists expected: the United States added nearly 300,000 jobs in December, wrapping up the second best year for the American job market in over a decade. In fact, looking at the last two years combined, 2014 and 2015 were the best back-to-back years for job creation since 1998 and 1999, at the height of the dot-com boom.
While no mainstream American politicians publicly root against the U.S. economy, the fact remains that this strong job growth must be baffling to Republicans. GOP orthodoxy, repeated ad nauseam, is that President Obamas domestic agenda the Affordable Care Act, higher taxes on the wealthy, Wall Street regulations, environmental safeguards, et al is crushing the economy and stifling the American job market.
The only way to put Americans back to work, Republicans insist, is to do the exact opposite of the policies that cut the unemployment rate from 10% to 5%.
Obviously, thats a tough sell for anyone with even a passing familiarity with the facts, but it got me wondering: how exactly did Republican officials and candidates respond to Fridays good news?
When I say they reacted to jobs report with silence, its important to stress that Im being quite literal. For years, the Republicans economic line was, Where are the jobs? With over 14 million new private-sector jobs created in the last 70 months, the new, more salient question has become, Where are the Republicans on jobs?
...............SNIP"