Dems Credibility Gap

Repeated failure can have the tendency to dampen the spirit and one’s ego adjusts accordingly.  Conversely, a defiant Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid declared, “For the sake of our economy, it’s time for mainstream Republicans to stand up to the Tea Party and rejoin Democrats at the table to negotiate a responsible solution that cuts spending while protecting jobs.” 

Senator Reid forgets to mention that besides gratuitously spending the American people’s money with few discernible results, the Reid led 111th Congress failed to even propose a budget, while holding the reins of power just last year (first time in Congressional history).

The key point to understand when gauging Senator Reid’s remarks is the relentless belief that government creates jobs, despite all factual evidence suggesting otherwise.  Government can create public sector government jobs, but that money is extracted from the private sector diverting resources from potential job growth in other areas of the economy.  From this viewpoint, this process is a zero sum game.  However, when we look more closely a different picture emerges.

The “stimulus” package that was exalted as the omnipotent job creator of our time did little to stimulate anything other than government and debt.  Senator Reid and the White House promised that the unemployment rate wouldn’t go above 8 percent, but it has been steadily above 9 percent for most of the previous year, finally landing at 8.9 percent recently.  Even if you buy the liberal trope of “saved or created” jobs, each job the “stimulus” package was purported to have created cost over $228,000.

This is a completely unsustainable method for job creation and economic prosperity.  Eventually, the realization occurs, as we are currently facing, that some fiscal belt tightening is in order.  Burgeoning bureaucracy created by flawed economic and regulatory policy will be slashed to avert economic calamity.  Government jobs will need to be reduced. Thus, these flawed Keynesian economic policies actually create a net loss to the economy and job growth, not just a zero sum game.

Reid and Democrats in congress, awash in Keynesian clichés and erroneous economic policy, have introduced patently unserious and basically laughable proposals on how to cut spending.  The latest being Harry Reid’s proposal of $7.5 billion in cuts, which falls short of the total cuts in the last two continuing resolutions combined.  Will cowboy poetry finally get the axe? With over $14 trillion in total debt and a deficit of $1.65 trillion for this year alone, cuts this miniscule should be shrugged off as political gamesmanship, during a situation that desperately desires serious fiscal policy proposals to address our enormous debt crisis.

This is just scratching the surface of failures and deficient economic initiatives of the Reid led Democrat congress.  They are too innumerable and redundant to be contained in one blog.  The question remains, will conservatives on Capitol Hill go on the offensive against the Democrats insufficient credibility or will someone with the dubious economic track record of Senator Reid shape the debate?