Tuesday, April 24, 2012

An ‘Update’ To The Bush Years?

New GOP Economic Plan is Same as Previous Disastrous GOP Economic Plan

In nearly every policy area, Republicans from Mitt Romney on down the line have been proposing that we go back to the disastrous policies of the Bush administration — only on steroids. For example, Mitt Romney not only wants to keep the Bush tax cuts for the rich, he wants even more tax cuts for the very wealthiest Americans. The total tab for his tax cut package would be an astounding four times larger than that of the Bush tax cuts.

This past week, a spokeswoman for the RNC, Alexandra Franceschi, went on The Fernando Espuelas Show and confirmed that Republicans don’t have any new ideas and are instead merely proposing an “updated” version of the policies that caused the economy to collapse in the first place:


ESPUELAS: What do you mean by economic security? Regardless of who the ultimate nominee is, what’s the general idea that the RNC, or the Republican party in general, has in terms of this message?

FRANCESCHI: Well, it’s a message of being able to attain the American dream. It’s less government spending, which a Tarrance Group poll, came out last week actually, shows that the majority of Hispanics believe that less government spending is the way out of this deficit crisis. It’s lowering taxes so small businesses can grow and they can employ more people, because we understand that the private sector is the engine of the economy. It’s not the government. [...]

ESPUELAS: Now, how different is that concept from what were the policies of the Bush administration? And the reason I ask that is because there’s some analysis now that is being published talking about the Bush years being the slowest period of job creation since those statistics were created. Is this a different program or is this that program just updated?

FRANCESCHI: I think it’s that program, just updated.

You can listen to the interview here.

ThinkProgress Economy Editor Pat Garofalo offers a helpful reminder of what the RNC hopes to double down on:
As a result of the Bush economic platform, “growth in investment, GDP, and employment all posted their worst performance of any post-war expansion,” while “overall monthly job growth was the worst of any cycle since at least February 1945, and household income growth was negative for the first cycle since tracking began in 1967.” Meanwhile, the deficit and debt exploded. It would have to be quite the update for the GOP to make anything better happen this time around.

IN ONE SENTENCE: America couldn’t afford the disastrous economic policies of the Bush administration the first time around and everyone from students to middle class workers to the elderly definitely can’t afford a second round of policies favoring the wealthiest Americans at the expense of everyone else.

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