Questioning their motives: Are Tea-Publicans intentionally sabotaging the U.S. economy for partisan reasons?

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Remember the old TV ad for E.F. Hutton? "When E.F. Hutton speaks, people listen." Not so much today.

Bill Gross is the manager director of PIMCO, which makes him one of the most important bond traders in the world, if not the most important. When he speaks, the banksters of Wall Street and their paid-for politicians in Washington damn well better listen.

Ezra Klein writes in Bill Gross: Deficit reduction can — and should — wait:

[H]is exit from the Treasury market a few months ago, plus his intense and very public concern over the deficit, has attracted a lot of concern. “Keep that in mind when you hear people arguing about austerity,” wrote Megan McArdle. “People like Bill Gross are the ones we ultimately need to convince, because they’re the ones whose defection will precipitate a crisis. And he’s not buying either supply-side claims that tax hikes will cause disaster, or the super-Keynesian argument that we can’t cut spending because the economy will contract so fast that we’ll actually end up with a bigger deficit.”

Or so we thought.

But in an unusual mid-month note to his investors, Gross hammered the “anti-Keynesians” in both parties who believe “that fiscal conservatism equates to job growth.” The truth, he says, is just the opposite. “Fiscal balance alone will not likely produce 20 million jobs over the next decade. The move towards it, in fact, if implemented too quickly, could stultify economic growth.”

Gross goes on to spend some time mocking the “ivory tower theorem” that deficit reduction will convince consumers to spend more now because they’ll worry less about taxes and service cuts later. “I know of no family,” he writes, “who, after watching the Republican candidates’ debate in New Hampshire, went out the next day and bought themselves a flat screen under the assumption that their Medicare entitlements would be cut in future years and the U.S. budget balanced.” That theory belongs “in the trash bin of theses and research aimed more towards academics than a practical remedy to America’s job crisis.”

So what should we do? “Government must temporarily assume a bigger, not a smaller, role in this economy, if only because other countries are dominating job creation with kick-start policies that eventually dominate global markets.” But what about the deficit? “Deficits are important, but their immediate reduction can wait for a stronger economy and lower unemployment. Jobs are today’s and tomorrow’s immediate problem.”

Gross goes on to offer some ideas for how the government can goose job growth, both in the short term and the long term. Some of them I find convincing, some of them I don’t. But his overall point is well-taken, and more subtle than some commentators are giving it credit for: Politicians have increasingly been pretending that deficit reduction slices, dices and blends. Don’t believe them. Cutting deficits tends to destroy jobs. And though the deficit matters in the long run, we need to survive the short run first.

Gross’s credentials as a deficit hawk are unimpeachable, but he’s arguing here that, to be a deficit hawk over the long term, you need to be jobs-focused now, as no economy with 9 percent unemployment is going to achieve the growth necessary to get its deficit under control. And he’s right.

Will the banksters of Wall Street, their paid-for politicians in Washington, and their media villager echo chamber listen? Or is the economic policy debate going to be controlled by the deficit peacocks pushing austerity measures to stifle the nascent recovery and to kill jobs to create the economic conditions Tea-Publicans believe they need for their political calculations in 2012?

Yeah I said it: Tea-Publican insurrectionists are intentionally sabotaging the U.S. economy for perceived political advantage. They are waging economic terrorism against the very people they claim to want to represent for partisan reasons (sorry folks, if you are not a corporation or a member of the "two-percenters," these economic terrorists do not represent you).

Democratic leadership is finally finding the spine to speak out. Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer Accuse GOP Of Sabotaging Economy For Political Gain:

"Unfortunately our Republican colleagues in the House and Senate are driven by putting one man out of work — President Obama," Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) declared at a Capitol Hill press conference called the day after Senate Republicans blocked an economic development bill that they have backed in the past.

Durbin pointed to remarks made by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), in which he said the top goal of Republicans should be to make Obama a one-term President.

"You can see in the way that the Republicans are acting on the floor of the Senate and the House, that is their goal — their only goal," Durbin argued.

"They want to play political games at the expense of getting this economy back on its feet," he said. "They believe a weak economy is their best chance of winning the next election."

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the number three Democrat in the Senate, seconded Durbin, noting that the GOP is opposing infrastructure investment that's favored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — a major GOP ally. He also noted that Republican leaders recently derided a White House proposal to offer a new temporary payroll tax break as a "gimmick" when they'd supported such measures before.

"Now, all of a sudden, they're coming out against it," Schumer said. "Do Republicans really oppose a tax cut for businesses that created jobs? This is sort of beyond the pale."

"If they oppose even something so suited to their tastes ideologically, it shows that they're just opposing anything that helps create jobs," Schumer added. "It almost makes you wonder if they aren't trying to slow down the economic recovery for political gain."

Steve Benen writes The ‘sabotage’ question goes mainstream:

This isn’t subtle. Durbin is saying that Republicans are deliberately holding back the economy for purely partisan reasons. It’s an explosive charge, and as of today, he’s not the only one making it.

* * *

At a minimum, it hardly seems unreasonable to call for some national discussion on this. Republicans said a payroll tax cut would help create jobs, and now they’re opposed to their own idea. Republicans said the Economic Development Administration is great for the economy, and now they’re opposed to that, too. Many Republicans endorsed the TANF Emergency Fund last year as an incredibly effective method of lowering unemployment, and then the congressional GOP killed that, too.

Republicans are blocking qualified Federal Reserve nominees who could help improve the economy. Republicans are also blocking qualified Treasury Department nominees who could also be working on economic policy. The GOP is demanding that Congress and the White House agree to immediately take money out of the economy and eliminate public-sector jobs, even when conservative economists say that’s crazy. What’s more, these same Republican officials have made it abundantly clear that failure to give them the cuts they want would force them to crash the economy on purpose.

And it’s against this backdrop that one of the most powerful Republican officials on Capitol Hill has argued, more than once, that his “top priority” isn’t job creation, but rather, “denying President Obama a second term in office.”

Is it really that outrageous to at least ask the question? It’s an uncomfortable subject, to be sure, but maybe it’s possible the political world should have the awkward conversation? When Republicans oppose ideas they used to support, at a critical time for the economy, are we not even allowed to consider their motives?

Update: I should also note that Senate Dems aren’t the only one broaching the subject. Some respected and knowledge pundits — E. J. Dionne, Eugene Robinson, Daniel Gross — have all said recently it’s at least possible that some Republicans are pursuing a destructive economic policy on purpose.