Republican Jobs Plan Doesn’t Create Them

Posted by | October 20, 2011 10:53 | Filed under: Top Stories


Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler punches holes in the ludicrous claim that five million jobs would be created with the GOP jobs plan.

Senate Republicans, including Rand Paul (Ky.), John McCain (Ariz.) and Rob Portman (Ohio), last week unveiled what they labeled as their alternative to Obama’s plan. Their plan was mostly a mish-mash of previous offered bills, such as that hardy perennial–a balanced budget amendment to the constitution. (Some experts would argue that such a requirement could hurt employment if government spending dropped too quickly.)

…Moira Bagley, a spokesman for Paul, said the figure was derived from three proposals: individual and corporate tax cuts that reduced the top tax rate of 25 percent, which the Heritage Foundation said would boost employment by 1.6 million jobs over the next decade; a tax holiday allowing U.S. companies to return cash held overseas, which a Chamber of Commerce study said would create 2.9 million jobs in two years; and a study by energy consultant Wood MacKenzie, which said allowing access to domestic energy resources and imports of Canadian oil would generate more than 1 million jobs by 2018.

Republicans are using a study that uses the same methodology that said the Obama stimulus plan was a success.

The 5 million figure cited by Paul, and echoed by other Republicans, is ludicrous. Even if one accepts the studies that came up with the figures, in most cases they indicate the GOP proposals would do little to create jobs in the near future.

The one exception is repatriation, but Republicans can’t have their cake and eat it too. If they are so convinced that Obama’s stimulus was a failure, they shouldn’t cite a study that uses a methodology that concludes the stimulus was a success.

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Copyright 2011 Liberaland
By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.

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