The Free Press, Mankato, MN

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January 9, 2010

Your View: Republicans counting on forgetful electorate

Tom Maertens, Mankato





Few political myths are more assiduously cultivated than the claim that Republicans are good for the economy. The lost decade of George W. Bush conclusively refutes that fiction, with its record bankruptcies, foreclosures, market collapse and towering under/unemployment.

It is the only decade in our history, reported The Washington Post, when not a single net new job was created. Because of Bush’s “reverse Robin Hood,” trickleup policies, middle income households had a lower net worth and made less at the end of the decade (inflation adjusted) than they did in 1999.

Over Bush’s eight years, the Republicans financed three tax cuts, two wars and a $1 trillion prescription drug bill entirely through deficit spending, running up $5 trillion of debt. As Sen. Orrin Hatch recently declared, “It was standard practice not to pay for things.”

Bush’s presidency ended with an economic crisis and a $700 billion bank bailout that bequeathed Obama $1.2 trillion more debt.

House Republicans, proving that they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing since the Depression policies of Herbert Hoover, voted unanimously for a budget freeze as a solution.

Their other model is Ronald Reagan, who thought tax cuts were a miracle free lunch that, coupled with deregulation, paid for themselves. Republican orthodoxy repeats the free lunch myth but ignores the half-dozen tax increases Reagan passed, including TEFRA, the largest tax increase in history, and his $3 trillion in additional debt.

Despite the spectacular failure of their deregulatory and borrow-and-spend policies, Republicans hope that bafflegab and corporate money can sell their crony capitalism to the rubes again in 2010.

Their only hope is that voters have learned nothing and forgotten everything.

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