CONGRESS FAILS BECAUSE THEY WANT TOO

Olympia Snowe, retired three term Senator from Maine, was the guest on Morning Joe, this morning. I found it revealing that she felt congress was not doing its job, yet her voting record would suggest she was one of the big reasons that body is not functioning in the best interests of the American people. She talked specifically about the government not doing anything to help increase the number of jobs in the United States. While it is true that she is history; therefore, it does little good to blog in opposition to her reelection; however, blogging about her does allows me to make one big point; she is a Republican and their philosophy is the main reason the government failed to do anything about jobs. The reason they do not want to do anything about jobs is that they feel the private sector should correct the jobs problem and not the government. Congress has the low single digit performance rating they have because the people think only the private sector should solve the job problem; they are out of touch. Citizens United made it that way; they are in touch with the money not the people.

In contrast to reason, the fundamental stance of the Republican Party is to shrink government. Almost all economists feel the government should step in, correct the Bush depression by economic stimulus, and create jobs. To the Republicans, especially the Tea party, to do so would smack of Keynesian economics, which they hate. This is not just 21^st century thinking. During his administration, Republican President Herbert Hoover allowed the country to go to ruin because he wanted the private sector solve the economic problems of the day and did not allow the government to correct the problem. President Roosevelt solved the problems with a broad stimulus package such as the New Deal with many government jobs in rebuilding the infrastructure. Like Keynesian economic, Republicans hate the New Deal with fevered passion: they even hate Social Security (1935), where workers invest for their own retirement. All this talk about balancing the budget and lowering taxes on the “job creators” are like straw men. Their real target is to destroy the government, crate an upper class of the economic elite and a lower class of low paid menial laborers, obviously with the rich in charge: Ronald Reagan’s trickle down economics or a plutocracy. This is not what this great experiment in democracy does for us. Our freedoms are the envy of the world; our social security is the envy of the world; and our congress should be the envy of the world but its not; it is our embarrassment. Olympia Snowe, you have shamed us. The only nice thing I can say about your three terms in congress is that perhaps you do not even know what you were doing, which does not make sense because you do not seem to be humiliated by your Republican label . . . and are jobless.

   

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