Republicans Want to "Peel Off" Tax Breaks, Can Jobs Portion of Obama Jobs Plan

The Earth is not flat. You don't catch STDs from a toilet seat. And lowering taxes on corporations and the rich never, ever, pever, jever, hever, kever, pfever, schmever creates jobs.

As proof, the only parts of President Barack Obama's job plan Republicans wanted to enact were the tax cuts, tax breaks and tax subsidies for businesses and corporations. Those, and the free trade deals with Panama, Columbia, and South Korea, which would facilitate GOP cronies setting up shop in those countries and taking their rake.

Republicans liked the $4,000 tax credit for employers who hired poor schmucks who'd been out of work for more than six months. Republicans liked the payroll tax break for employers, although they opposed any payroll tax cut for employees.

Republicans loved those features because they won't create new jobs, and the last thing Republicans wanted the economy to do while Barry H. Obama was in the White House was create jobs.

Republicans loved those features because they won't create jobs, but they'd give the GOP's oil moguls and coal magnates and corporate cronies big, fat tax subsidies on workers they were going to hire anyway, and strangle Social Security just that much more to boot.

Republicans loved that oil and gas companies laying on extra crews to hydrofrack the crap out of every available square inch of Texas and Pennsylvania and Upstate New York won't have to shell out for payroll taxes on the extra crews they were laying on anyway.

Republicans loved going to their industry cronies and taking all the credit for "peeling off," as House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) put it, another fat tax subsidy for fat cats already making money hand over fist to devastate the environment and despoil the nation's groundwater.

Because tax breaks and subsidies never, ever, pever, jever created jobs.

"You still need to have the business need to hire," Nutsonline owner Jeffery Braverman told the New York Times. "Business demand is what drives hiring."

65% of economists the Wall Street Journal surveyed in July stated lack of demand was keeping businesses from hiring more workers. There was no sense in hiring more people to design and engineer and manufacture and sell and distribute more widgets if there was nobody buying widgets. Only 27% of economists said uncertainty over what the government might do was holding back hiring, despite Republicans and Fox News claiming that was the main reason America was in the economic doldrums. Another smattering cited cheaper labor overseas as the drag on the U.S. jobs picture.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce chief economist Marty Regalia summed it up. "If I get a $4,000 benefit for hiring you, and I pay you $80,000 and you're going to sit at your desk and do nothing because there's nothing to do," he said, "then the businesses aren't going to hire you."

Thus, tax cuts and tax breaks and tax subsidies to employers alone never, ever, pever, jever created more jobs. Without demand, employers, those hallowed magnificences Republicans dubbed Job Creators so they could appropriately bear the same initials as Christendom's namesake deity, won't hire anyone no matter how many sacrificial tax offerings were laid upon their altars.

Demand created jobs. Demand for goods, for services, for parts, for labor. Widgetco would make more widgets only when people had enough disposable income to buy them. Then, and only then, would Widgetco hire more workers to make, sell, and distribute widgets. Then, and only then, would Widgetco hire the widget designers and widget engineers they'd need to create the next generation of new, improved widgets. Then, and only then, would Widgetco install new, improved widget makers to cast all the new, improved next generation widgets. And, everyone Widgetco hired would then themselves have disposable income to spend on everything widget makers spent disposable income on.

The trick then, was to jump-start demand. The trick, then, was for someone, anyone, to start hiring a few people to do something, anything, just so you could pay them enough for them to go to Safeway and Walmart to get the demand ball rolling.

That someone had always been government.

Which was why Republicans hated the part of Obama's jobs proposal that hired people to do things. Which was why Republicans hated the jobs part of Obama's jobs proposal.

Republicans hated Obama's proposal to fix roads and bridges and tunnels and highways and byways. That would create thousands of jobs, which would create millions in disposable income, which would create tens of millions in demand. Most of all, Republicans really, really hated Obama's plan to repair and upgrade 35,000 U.S. schools. Not only would that create thousands of jobs, and income, and demand, it would educate millions of kids and prepare them for college for even more and better jobs.

Republicans hated the thought that any significant portion of the million unemployed construction workers presently cooling their heels might start putting up steel and sheetrock. Republicans hated the notion that a million guys and gals swinging hammers and pouring concrete would get paychecks they'd cash for food and clothes and school supplies and refrigerators and, gawdferbid, cars and whole new houses.

Republicans hated the 2% payroll tax cut for workers being expanded to 3.1%, putting an extra $500 in people's pockets, which they'd doubtless spend on shoes or Miracle Whip or Tylenol or, gawdferbid, an iPhone, or iPad, or iMac.

This was why Republicans absolutely, positively had to "peel off" all the oil mogul-coddling, non-job creating tax cuts, tax breaks and tax subsidies in Obama's plan and pass them, while making absolutely, positively sure the worker-boosting, job-creating parts of Obama's plan never, ever saw the light of day.

How else were they ever going to get Gov. Rick Perry into the White House?