[Vision2020] Taking Credit Where None Is Due

[Art Deco]

 [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>


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April 8, 2012
Taking Credit Where None Is Due

As Friday’s jobless numbers showed, the economic recovery has been listless
and fragile, but its upward
trajectory<http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/image/april_jobs_numbers.jpg>has
been clear enough that Republicans have been forced to acknowledge it.
To avoid giving President Obama the slightest bit of credit for the
improvement, however, they have come up with increasingly convoluted
explanations that have little relationship to reality.

Mitt Romney, for instance, has said that the American people revived the
economy while Mr. Obama made it worse. And last month he said it was
President George W. Bush, not Mr. Obama, who saved the
economy<http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/romney-raises-the-bank-bailout>by
bailing out the financial firms that caused the recession on his
watch.
He seems to have trouble sticking to one nonsensical explanation at a time.

The prize for the most ridiculous spin, however, has to go to a group of
freshman House Republicans who say that they are the ones who lowered the
unemployment rate and began to restore stability. “If anybody’s going to
get a pat on the back for [lower] unemployment and the better economy, it’s
House Republicans,” Jeff Landry, a freshman from Louisiana, told The
Hill<http://thehill.com/homenews/house/218305-cast-blame-or-take-credit-boehner-pressed-to-switch>recently.

Bear in mind that House Republicans opposed the stimulus bill, which did
more than any other piece of legislation to reduce joblessness. Many
continue to denounce the government bailout of the auto industry, which has
restored it to strength and is responsible for saving more than a million
jobs. And they oppose the very regulations designed to keep a similar
recession from recurring.

Recall, as well, that this group of antigovernment lawmakers also created a
debt-ceiling crisis that nearly drove the federal government into a ruinous
default. They tried to kill the payroll tax cut for the middle class. And
they succeeded in many of their demands for big cuts in spending on
domestic programs, state aid and unemployment insurance that are siphoning
fuel from the nation’s engine.

House Republicans haven’t been responsible for a single bill that has had a
positive impact on the economy. But they want to take credit for the
recovery, arguing that they stopped the Democrats from taking actions like
raising taxes on the very rich. “In many ways our greatest success is the
things we’ve stopped,” said David Schweikert, an Arizona freshman.

The public is unlikely to be persuaded by these absurd boasts. It’s hard to
see how these lawmakers will explain to voters that they are responsible
for a recovery they have worked so hard to block.

-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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