If Republicans weren’t so damned pathetic, they’d actually be funny. The Latest Republican “Contract With America”/ “Path to Prosperity” type thingie has arrived, this time it’s called “Principles for American Renewal”. They’re really good at coming up with names for these declarations, just lousy at ever accomplishing anything in them; in fact, they tend to do precisely the opposite. Let’s look at this new Luntzian fairy tale:
CONSTITUTION
Our Constitution should be preserved, valued and honored.
Well there’s a duh moment if ever they’ve had one; problem is, what they really mean is “the parts we agree with”. Having attacked women’s rights, voters’ rights, workers’ rights, and now denouncing the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear marriage equality appeals, they’ve pretty much whittled their version of the Constitution down to free speech and religious rights for corporations, and guns, guns, guns everywhere. To hell with the rest of it.
ECONOMY
We need to start growing America’s economy instead of Washington’s economy so that hard-working Americans see better wages and more opportunity.
Irony, thy name is Conservatism. Most of us might think that better wages would mean raising the minimum wage, but not Conservatives. In fact, some of them think we should do away with the minimum wage entirely. That’s “opportunity”, just not for actual working Americans.
Diversity Inc: Congressman Joe Barton told National Journal that he would rather just get rid of it altogether. “I think it’s outlived its usefulness,” the Texas Republican said.
Most of us are pretty sure you’ve outlived your usefulness, Joe.
Minnesota’s The Uptake: Minnesota Republican candidate for Governor Jeff Johnson says if elected he will slow the growth in the minimum wage. “The minimum wage should not be what anybody aspires to, they should aspire to a career. They should aspire to a job that allows them to raise a family. The minimum wage won’t do that.”
So take that $7.25 an hour and go get a Bachelor’s degree you lazy slugs!
Iowa’s Gazette: Joni Ernst, state senator from Red Oak and the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate…“I do not support a federal minimum wage. I think every state has a different economy, a different cost of living. I don’t believe that’s the role of the federal government.”
You can find more quotes here, and one from millionaire senator Tom Coburn here.
BUDGET
We need to pass a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution, make government more efficient, and leave the next generation with opportunity, not debt.
These guys slay me. How many times must we point out that it was Republicans that got us into this mess? With all of their so-called policy and budget wonks, after decades of failed economic policy, Conservatives still espouse the false notion that tax cuts create jobs. Truth is, the only job creation ideas they have put forth in the six years since Barack Obama was elected, 40+ times mind you, are the same three:
Cut corporate taxes
Deregulate
Drill Baby Drill
When President Obama attempted to give tax breaks to small businesses for hiring American workers in 2012, Republicans killed the measure because they couldn’t get tax cuts extended for the rich. And from the Fiscal Times:
The Republican Party has long promoted itself as the party of business. Republicans understand the needs of business, we are told, and if the country would leave the economy in their hands business would boom. All we need to do is to give those at the very top of the income distribution – the “job creators” – more income through tax breaks, and then sit back and wait for the magic happen. Our investment in the wealthy will produce remarkable economic growth, and everyone will be better off.
The Bush tax cuts were a test of these claims about supply-side economic policies. To justify the tax cuts the nation was, in effect, given a business prospectus from the Republican Party. We were promised that cutting taxes on the wealthy would result in much higher economic growth and broadly shared prosperity…
HEALTHCARE
We need to start over with real healthcare reform that puts patients and their doctors in charge, not unelected bureaucrats in Washington.
Hmmm… “real healthcare reform”…where have I heard that before? There was Richard Nixon in ’74, the 1989 Heritage Foundation plan, a 1991 proposal put together for the first President Bush, the GOP’s Health Equity and Access Reform Today Act of 1993, Sen. John Chafee’s plan in ‘93, the Don Nickles/Cliff Stearns bill in 1994, Dennis Hastert’s plan from ‘98… well, you get the drift. The GOP even introduced a plan of sorts in 2009 to counter the President’s, but as the New York Times reported:
The Republican bill differs from the Democratic measure in that it would not require people to obtain insurance or require employers to offer it. It is almost surely cheaper than the House Democrats’ bill because, unlike that proposal, it would not expand Medicaid or offer federal subsidies to low- and middle-income people to help them buy insurance…
The House Republican bill would not explicitly prohibit insurers from denying coverage to people because of pre-existing medical conditions, even though many Republicans have said they agree with Democrats that the federal government should outlaw such denials…
What would the GOP plan do? As New York Magazine put it:
The general outlines of the plan involved deregulating health insurance, so that healthy customers paid less for cheaper plans and sicker customers paid more, and shifting the tax burden off the wealthy and onto the middle class…
The first blow to its coherence came when the authors faced questions about their proposal to cap the tax deduction for employer-sponsored health insurance, a politically risky but economist-approved change that provided most of its money for covering the uninsured. Asked about this piece of their plan, the authors changed the language within hours to ratchet back its scope, insulating them from political attacks, but also neutering its value.
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Republican health-care proposals reside in a state of quasi-existence, and any attempt to summon them into political reality will cause them to disappear. Their purpose is to refute the accusation that Republicans lack a health-care plan. The elusive quasi-plan allows them to claim all the potential benefits of health-care reform without having to defend any drawbacks.
Republicans have no desire to make healthcare coverage affordable and available for all, or they would have done it long ago. As Johnathan Chait headlined a post in February of this year:
The Republican Health-Care Plan Is Almost Here, and Always Will Be
VETERANS
Our veterans have earned our respect and gratitude, and no veteran should have to wait in line for months or years just to see a doctor.
Which of course is why Senate Republicans almost unanimously voted against the Comprehensive Veterans Health and Benefits and Military Retirement Pay Restoration Act of 2014. As North Carolina Senator Richard M. Burr explained it:
With $17 trillion in debt and massive annual deficits, our country faces a fiscal crisis of unparalleled scope. Now is not the time, in any federal department, to spend money we don’t have. To be sure, there’s much to like in the Sanders bill. And if those components were presented as separate, smaller bills, as part of a carefully considered long-term strategy to reform the VA, hold leadership accountable and improve services to veterans, we would have no problem extending enthusiastic support.
Of course, a huge part of the reason we’re $17 trillion in debt is two unfunded wars, courtesy of the GOP, that created our veterans’ health issues. Pardon me for being blunt, but the only soldiers Conservatives have ever respected are dead ones.
SECURITY
Keeping America safe and strong requires a strong military, growing the economy, energy independence, and secure borders.
Translation: More billion dollar military toys that we don’t need, and the Joint Chiefs don’t want; blah, blah, blah economy; drill baby drill; they won’t vote for us so they can die of thirst in the desert for all we care.
EDUCATION
Every child should have an equal opportunity to get a great education; no parent should be forced to send their child to a failing school.
Says the party that has robbed billions of dollars from public education across the country and handed it to 1%-ers in vouchers for private schools their kids were already attending.
POVERTY
The best anti-poverty program is a strong family and a good job, so our focus should be on getting people out of poverty by lifting up all people and helping them find work.
You mean they really want to help all those lazy good-for-nothings who are out of a job because they don’t live in China?
VALUES
Our country should value the traditions of family, life, religious liberty, and hard work.
Valuing family, like Ronald Reagan, who divorced his first wife after they had two kids; Newt Gingrich, who divorced 2 wives then married his “devoutly Catholic” mistress; thrice married Bob Barr, author of the “Defense of Marriage Act”; or maybe Scott DesJarlais, who cheated on his wife numerous times with his patients.
Religious liberty – we all know that means Christianity only.
And I’m not sure that people who vote themselves a raise then schedule themselves for 113 days of work in a year and still accomplish nothing have any moral authority when it comes to “hard work”.
ENERGY
We should make America energy independent by encouraging investment in domestic energy, lowering prices, and creating jobs at home.
I’m assuming they mean the whopping 35 net jobs that would be created by the Keystone pipeline. Consider this from the Labor Network for Sustainability:
The same fossil fuel interests pushing the Keystone pipeline have been cutting, not creating, jobs: Despite generating $546 billion in profits between 2005 and 2010, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP reduced their U.S. workforce by 11,200 employees over that period. In 2010 alone, the top five oil companies slashed their global workforce by 4,400 employees “” the same year executives paid themselves nearly $220 million. But at least those working in the industry as a whole get paid high wages, right? Turns out that 40 percent of U.S oil-industry jobs consist of minimum-wage work at gas stations.
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…the solar industry continues to be an engine of job growth — creating jobs six times faster than the overall job market. Research by the Solar Foundation shows a 13 percent growth in high-skilled solar jobs spanning installations, sales, marketing, manufacturing and software development — bringing total direct jobs to 119,000 in the sector. And according to the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts”“Amherst, investment in a green infrastructure program would create nearly four times as many jobs as an equal investment in oil and gas.
Taxpayers are already “investing” in oil and gas to the tune of $4.8 billion a year, how much more should we give them? At the same time, Congress failed to renew wind energy subsidies this year, with Sens. Lamaar Alexander and Joe Manchin claiming:
“Our nation’s energy policy must make economic sense for taxpayers and not manipulate markets.”
IMMIGRATION
We need an immigration system that secures our borders, upholds the law, and boosts our economy.
Most people agree we need to secure our borders, not to keep people who want to work out, but those that would do us harm. If Conservatives are truly worried about upholding the law, they need to go after those companies hiring workers not authorized to work in the U.S. And call me crazy, but it would probably have helped if, when republicans signed their 2006 Border Security Act, they had actually appropriated the funds to pay for it.
Well, there you have it, another installment of Conservatives’ great plan for America; just the same old tired talking points in a new package. By now even their own voters must know it’s all just smoke and mirrors.