After the last Republican debate on CNBC, pundits and reporters expressed surprise at the outrageous amount of lying and truth-dodging coming from Republican candidates. The New Republic called the last GOP debate a “grotesque festival of lies.” Slate observed that “leading GOP candidates aren’t at war with the press. They just have a problem with the truth.”
While these tactics may have come as a shock to some in the media, Correct The Record has been documenting this truth-dodging from GOP candidates for months. That’s why, ahead of tonight’s debate, Correct The Record has rolled out a new feature, “Plain and Simple,” to help breakdown the issues and explain exactly how it really is.
The first edition of “Plain and Simple” features CTR’s Senior Advisor, former Governor Jennifer Granholm, who breaks down the GOP’s economic lies—claims that are sure to resurface at this evening’s Fox Business/Wall Street Journal-sponsored debate.
Plain and Simple Truth #1: History doesn’t lie: The economy does better with Democrats in office.
“So, interestingly, the Republican Party claims to be the jobs party, the economy party, right? I totally understand why they would want to claim that brand, but it’s just not true.
“What are the facts? You know the old adage, ‘In God we trust, all others bring data.’ Well, here are the facts, here’s the data. In the U.S., I actually went back and looked at the data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and I wanted to find out under which presidents, Democrat or Republican, were there more jobs created.
“So, I went back to the start of the JFK presidency. 1961, that’s 54 years from today, backwards. And in that 54 years, Democrats and Republican presidents have served about equal number of years. Democrats one year less. In that 54 years, 89 total, 89 million total jobs were created. Republicans created 32 million of that 89 million, and Democrats 57 million.
“Wait, just make sure you get that. 89 million jobs were created, but under Republican presidents, 32 million jobs were created, under Democratic presidents, 57 million jobs were created. Could this be true? Put another way, Democrats created 2.1 million jobs per year, and Republicans 1.1 million. Almost twice as many jobs created under Democratic presidents.
“Nine of the 10 poorest states in the U.S. are Republican states. 97 of the 100 poorest counties in the U.S. are Republican counties. Or, even if you just look at the last two presidents, President Bush, 2 million net jobs were created, President Obama, 7 million net jobs were created. When I say net, I mean that includes the jobs that were lost when President Obama first came on. There’s been 68 straight months of private sector job creation in the U.S.”
Plain and Simple Truth #2: Don’t believe the hype: GOP tax plans help the wealthy, hurt everyone else.
“What is it about Republican and Democratic policies that are causing this disparity [in job creation]? Well, let’s take a look, for example, at the Republican candidates’ tax plans. They are pretty much the same over history.
“Tax cuts, Republicans say, will create jobs—and these Republican candidates in this election all support tax cuts like eliminating the tax on investments, or reducing it, the capital gains tax, or eliminating the estate tax. Many of them support a so-called flat-tax where everybody pays essentially the same percentage of their income.
“And independent analysts have looked at all of their tax plans and they’ve determined, for example, that Donald Trump’s tax plan would raise the top 1 percent’s after tax earnings more than any other group in the economy. Or, under Marco Rubio’s tax plan, much, much more money would go to rich people. In fact, the top 1 percent on average under Rubio’s plan get tax cuts that are more than 103 times larger than the poorest 20 percent would get. Jeb Bush’s tax package is a huge gift to the wealthy. He intends to slash rates. He wants to scrap the estate tax and, of course, cut the corporate tax rate. And Ben Carson’s flat-tax plan would either have to impose 20 to 25 percent tax across-the-board to raise the same amount of revenue that the federal government currently takes in, or he would see massive deficits as far as the eye could see, or he’d have to massively slash basic services. With his proposal, with Ben Carson’s proposal, middle incomes would get a tax hike and wealthy families would get a tax cut. The wealthy make out like bandits.”
Plain and Simple Truth #3: Tried, tested, and failed: Trickle-down economics does not work.
“Republicans would say the reason why they are doing all of that is because the people at the top of the income ladder are the job creators—and the more you cut their taxes the more money that they will have to invest in creating jobs. And that’s called trickle-down economics—cutting taxes at the top are going to cause the benefits to flow to the rest of us below.
“That’s really nice in theory, but here’s the thing, the wealthiest people in the U.S. make a large chunk of their money from investments. These wealthy people are called the investor class, the 1 percent. They make money with money, by investing it in companies who are doing business all around the world. They invest in global markets.
“Their money is used around the world through stock purchases to create jobs somewhere, but not necessarily in the U.S. So where are those capital gains and estate tax cuts going? They are going to create jobs around the world, not necessarily at home. And what’s the effect of those tax cuts? Well, either you create big deficits at home, or you cut programs that were funded by the tax revenue that are no longer coming in.
“And what are the programs that they cut? Well, often they are investments in our people, in our jobs, in our training, in our infrastructure, in our education system, in partnering with business, our health care.
“In other words, the effect of cutting taxes on the wealthiest, may actually facilitate job creation elsewhere, but it certainly doesn’t invest in our people, our communities, our businesses in the U.S. There is no guarantee of that. And that is why we need policy that rewards job creation in America. And that is why Democratic presidents are better for the economy.
“Lo and behold, it turns out that when you invest in your people and in their education and in our infrastructure, when you make sure that there is a safety net to protect people from falling through, not only is it right morally, but our economy does better, too. And this is one reason why Democratic presidents over the past 54 years have been, by far, the best job creators.”