Clearly, the economy’s not creating jobs as rapidly as we’d all like. Of course, we’re in this mess in the first place thanks to the Great Recession which began and accelerated on the watch of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, etc. So now, Willard “Mitt” Romney is running for president and trying to blame everything, probably including the common cold, on President Obama. In reality, of course, Obama’s policies helped save the U.S. auto industry from bankruptcy, while Romney advocated that we “let Detroit go bankrupt.” Obama’s policies also helped prevent Great Depression Part Deux, and would have been a lot more effective without lockstep opposition to every idea he’s put forth the past 3 1/2 years by purely partisan, “we want him to fail” Republican’ts.
Anyway, a few minutes ago Romney laid out a few of his “ideas” for creating jobs. Don’t get too excited, make sure you’re sitting down, because these are truly astounding (snark):
He listed a handful of his ideas: The Keystone pipeline; open markets in Latin America; lower marginal tax rates; fewer deductions; taking on China when they “cheat.”
My first reaction to this was, “this isn’t The Onion, this is seriously Romney’s ‘plan’ for creating jobs?” But yes, this really is it: cut taxes for rich people below their already-at-historically-low rates (brilliant! also so innovative!), more “free trade” (which, by the way, the Obama administration has already been pushing ahead with), and…wait for it…build the Keystone pipeline to transport Canadian tar sands. OK, we already know that tax cuts for rich people do NOT create jobs. They also blow up the budget deficit, as we saw under both Reagan and Bush. That’s a non starter. What about Keystone? Sorry, no go:
In fact, according to an independent study by Cornell University… there actually would be ZERO net increase in jobs, just 3,000 or so temporary jobs while the pipeline is being constructed, from the Keystone project…”may actually destroy more jobs than it generates…and will have a chilling effect on green investments and green jobs creation.”
That’s right, Willard “Mitt” Romney’s great jobs plan would blow up the budget deficit and actually kill jobs in this country. Of course, Romney has a great deal of experience killing jobs in the U.S., in his work as outsourcer-in-chief at Bain Capital. Why would we expect him to do anything different if he ever, god forbid, became president?!?