Republicans Demand "Job Creation"-- And That Means Higher Unemployment And More Pain For American Families

Boehner and Cantor have a song they want to sing you about jobs

This week, a slightly inebriated Boehner was whining about some hostage crisis he's cooking up-- for the national debut, if I remember correctly-- and demanded the price of not driving the U.S. government into default on the debts Congress had run up would be… job creation. Job creation? Everyone likes job creation, right? Well, no, actually. Republicans have steadfastly tried to undermine the economic-- for purely partisan reasons-- by sabotaging every single jobs creation bill President Obama has proposed. And the Ayn Rand/Paul Ryan Republican version of "jobs creation" means lower taxes for the wealthiest Americans and jobs creation in China, India and Vietnam where wages are measured in cents, not dollars. Oh-- and 300 permanent jobs that the Keystone XL Pipeline would create. Ezra Klein reported on the relentless, concerted Republican Party economic sabotage yesterday.

The U.S. has been in a jobs emergency since at least 2008. The cause of the crisi-- too little deman-- isn’t mysterious, and neither are the solutions. We could invest in infrastructure to create construction jobs. We could give tax breaks to employers who hire new workers. We could restore the payroll tax cut to workers so they have more money to spend. We could help state and local governments hire back some of the employees they laid off during the recession. Macroeconomic Advisers, an economic consulting firm, found that the American Jobs Act, which contained many of these policies, would have created 2 million jobs.

But in recent years, these policies have been either blocked or canceled by congressional Republicans. They fought Democrats to scuttle the American Jobs Act and allow the payroll tax break and long-term unemployment benefits to expire. Creating jobs, they argued, was neither feasible nor affordable.

Thanks to GOP sabotage last month saw slow growth in jobs-- just 113,000 new ones in January, a tiny increase over bad December numbers. Unemployment dropped from 6.7% to a still miserable 6.6%, something Republican strategists figure will help them in the midterms. Republicans have even knocked and opposed the simplest and most straight-forward proposals like building infrastructure. Instead they have demanded policies that kill jobs, like gutting the food stamps program and taking money out of the pockets of the poorest Americans-- money that goes right back into the economy-- by refusing the extend unemployment insurance to workers who have lost their jobs because of bad GOP policies. Boehner has been raging against increasing the minimum wage, which would be a huge stimulus for the entire economy and probably create hundreds of thousands of jobs Boehner fears would doom GOP control of the House. Boehner after the President announced he is raising the minimum wage for federal workers: "I suspect the president has the authority to raise the minimum wage for those dealing with federal contracts. But let's understand something: This affects not one current contract, it only affects future contracts with the federal government. And so I think the question is, how many people, Mr. President, will this executive action actually help? I suspect the answer is somewhere close to zero."

Asked more broadly about Obama's push to raise the federal minimum wage, Boehner signaled he doesn't support the proposal.

"When you raise the cost of something you get less of it," he said, adding later: "The very people the president purports to help are the ones who are going to be hurt by this."

Boehner suggested that an increased minimum wage would adversely affect minorities who hold low-wage jobs and would be "bad policy."

Yes, his heart breaks for minorities… always.

Scott Paul, president of the Alliance of American Manufacturing seemed encouraged by today's numbers. “It’s still far from a resurgence, but the jobs picture in manufacturing is certainly better than it was last decade. And the latest jobs report offers fresh evidence that it is possible to create manufacturing jobs in America again. We believe better public policies would bring about a real resurgence: That would mean balancing our trade in goods, investing in infrastructure and training, combatting currency manipulation overseas, and boosting innovation. And even though manufacturing may be one of the brighter spots in this jobs report, we’re still well below the pace needed to achieve the president’s goal of adding one million such jobs in his second term.”

How is this playing out across the country? Here in the L.A. area, up in Santa Clarita's 25th CD, Lee Rogers is running for Congress against two right-wing ideologues, Steve Knight and Tony Strickland who are fanatically opposed to raising the minimum wage. Rogers is an advocate of raising the minimum wage and he's using the difference prominently in his campaign. "There are 3.4 million hard-working people right here in California that a minimum wage increase will significantly help. I support the growing movement to raise the minimum wage above $10," he told CA-25 residents again this week. "Raising the minimum wage would create jobs by rewarding people properly for their work and allowing them to spend more in our economy. This is 'middle-out economics,' not the failed 'trickle-down economics' of the past." Watch this two-minute Robert Reich video that explains the Republican War on working families: