Despite Obama’s National Economic Success Republican State Economies Are Failing
It is too bad that during campaigning for the 2014
midterm elections, many Democratic candidates ran away from President
Obama’s economic achievements and did their level best to be
Republicans. Yesterday the President briefly touched on his successful
economic record that Democrats were terrified of and Republicans claimed
was a major disaster. Republicans ran on, and won big with, their
claim that the GOP is “the party of solutions” founded on conservative
pro-growth economic policies, deregulation, and tax cuts for the rich
they claimed were more successful than anything “hapless” Democrats or
Obama could ever hope to achieve. This is despite the President’s nearly
five-year job growth record, world-leading GDP growth, and increased
revenue paying down the nation’s debt at a record pace.
This column has given special attention to the trickle-down economic disaster
in Kansas, but plenty of other Republican states’ economies are failing
miserably; especially states with Republican governors held up as the
model for the nation in hopes of winning the White House and running
nation’s economy into the ground. Republicans said throughout 2014 that
Democrats and the President consistently offer up “ineffective economic
policies” responsible for the President’s failed economic policies
leading to increased income inequality plaguing the poor and middle
class. Republicans have no interest in addressing income inequality
according to red states with failing economies due to their storied
“pro-growth agenda” of tax cuts for the rich and corporations.
In New Jersey, Chris Christie campaigned on and
entered office on a pledge of balancing the state budget and
“replenishing the state’s pension program.” Instead, Christie’s
“pro-growth agenda” of cutting corporate taxes drastically increased
pension liabilities, created Kansas-style revenue shortfalls, and earned
the state a record eight credit downgrades;
a new mark for a sitting governor. New Jersey is also, like Kansas,
lagging the rest of the nation in creating jobs according to the Bureau
of Labor Statistics, and while the national unemployment rate has been
steadily dropping, New Jersey’s is growing just over the past year.
Christie tripled corporate tax cuts in less than three years with more coming this year and, like Brownback in Kansas and Republicans in Washington, he promised and still claims that more frequent and larger business tax cuts are absolutely necessary to grow the economy, create jobs, and most importantly; “benefit the big corporations.” The only part of Christie’s promise that reached fruition is the benefit to big corporations; the goal of all conservative “pro-growth reforms.”
Despite a flagging economy, poor job growth, revenue shortfalls, and eight credit downgrades, Christie has pledged that he will do nothing
to endanger the still-growing corporate tax cuts to save the state’s
economy. In fact, even raiding and cutting pension-fund payments is not
enough to make up for the growing corporate tax cuts he has no intent of
stopping.
In Louisiana, Republican Governor Bobby Jindal’s
conservative economic policies have the state facing “a very large
shortfall as we go into the spring session of 2015 because we’ve been
relying too much on those onetime funds for recurring expenses”
according to a fiscally conservative Republican state representative.
Brett Geyman said Jindal has relied “too heavily on a non-replenishable
pool of “onetime” funds that won’t be available next year.”
The “very large revenue shortfall” is in spite of
“the steepest cuts to education ever proposed for the state” that the
Republican speaker of the Louisiana House has vowed to block because
they “will set us back generations.” The fact that Jindal is still in
office is proof enough form semi-intelligent Americans that the state’s
education system has already set the state back generations. Jindal
claims the steep education cuts are necessary to balance the state’s
budget even though with the drastic cuts, the state still faces a
substantially large revenue shortfall. Jindal wants to completely eliminate
corporate taxes completely and raise them on the bottom 80% of the
population; a tactic that will exacerbate the revenue shortfall.
However, like New Jersey’s Christie and Kansas’ Brownback claim,
eliminating business taxes will be a “great benefit to big
corporations.”
Republican Scott Walker of Wisconsin is also facing a “pro-growth agenda” revenue shortfall this year to the tune of $2.2 billion as well as a record “slower than average job and wage growth” compared to the national figures according to a recent analysis.
Walker claims the facts are false, and that he will make up the $2.2
billion shortfall by “adjusting funding priorities” that in Republican
economic parlance means steep cuts to domestic programs and pension
payments. Walker already cut taxes for the rich and funded them partially with Medicaid cuts and still; the state faces a 2.2 billion revenue shortfall.
What is telling in all these Republican economic
failures is that the national economy is and has been steadily growing,
job growth is at record pace, manufacturing is growing, and gas prices
are falling. There is a reason why these, and other, Republican-led
states are not enjoying the same growth and recovery as the rest of the
nation and it is down to the Republican ‘pro-growth agenda’ of tax cuts
for the rich and corporations and cuts to pensions and domestic programs
that help drive the economy whether at the state or federal level.
Comments