COST OF DEREGULATION AND TAX CUTS

Clearly, private sector job grown has been increasing since the people elected Obama as President. Of course, the unemployment rate is following suite; in spite of the Republican controlled House of Representatives and states governors doing everything in their power to prevent that from happening. In some ways, we are paying the price; our infrastructure is falling apart for lack of government support in creating jobs. In addition, fossil fuel emissions are devastating our climate in the name of saving jobs. Add to this, the sky rocketing national debt because the rich are not paying their share of taxes in the name of protecting the job creators who never create jobs. Worker productivity is increasing dramatically but wages are not going up which is closely correlated with Republican union busting efforts. State and federal government is shrinking public sector jobs, such as public school teachers, fire fighters, and police forces. The Bureau of Labor Statistics catalogue these job decreases only as a slowing of job growth; thus, prevents the unemployment rate from falling as it would without congress. Various state governors around the nation live in states that have differing employment results but for the most part those who complain most about the slow increase in job growth in their states couch their complaints in negative terms such as “slow recovery from the recession”. These very same governors balanced their state budgets by following the Republican agenda of cutting public education, environmental control, preventing infrastructure rebuilding, and prevented needed police and fire protection.

The politics of this is that Republican candidates for elective office, from school boards to U.S. Senate, do not admit to any of this. I live in North Carolina where we have had a tremendous coal ash spill, and our public education is in a deplorable state. Nevertheless, I defy any one to listen to the end-to-end string of political advertisement and show me just one where a politician will admit to being a Republican, or take responsibility for cutting public school budgets, or lifting environmental regulations. We constantly hear about the nation Republican discourse about getting rid of the Federal Department of Education, shedding “small” business of the burden of EPA regulations, cutting endless government regulations, cutting budgets on all government programs. For the most part, they actually do just the opposite. However, when it comes to lowering taxes on individuals and small businesses they act decisively; of course, what they mean by small business is General Motors, General Electric, AT&T, Exon, Shell and BP, which is where the money is but also almost as an afterthought, “mom and pop” grocery stores and restaurants where the votes are. What they mean by cutting taxes on “individual” is to lower “income” taxes and switching the tax burden to sales taxes. This shifts the tax burden to the backs of people, including the owners of small businesses who they rhetorically isolated from “individuals”, but who also earn little and also spend every dollar they earn—technically, change form progressive to retrogressive taxation.

These things translate into pro-republican headlines, “McCrory Cut Taxes”;  Pat McCrory is governor of North Carolina and is an employee for Duke energy.  Senate Candidate Thom Tillis Balanced State Budget”, or “Duke Energy Rates Increase”; Thom Tillis as Republican Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives shaped the current destructive government programs now in place. Of course, there are the anti Democratic headlines such as, “Economic Recovery Slow under Obama”, and “Jobs Increase at Snails Pace in Obama administration”. The one that gets me the most is “Teacher’s Unions are Reason for decline in Public Education”; I challenge you to show me just one Republican controlled state government that has not drastically cut education budgets. Isn’t it time we read in a headline that says “Obama Single Handedly Increased Job Growth in spite of Congress” or “Our President Engineered a Remarkably Rapid Recovery After Drastic Tax Cuts and Deregulations Nearly Destroyed the Country”, or that “Obama Administration Is Working to Improve Education Across the Nation”. For some strange reason, it seems the truth hurts Republicans more when it appears in a headline.   

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