The Republicans Had their revolution last year. They stormed into State Houses all over the country, and while they ran on a platform to create jobs, once in power they concentrated in slashing Social Programs.
There is very little that Obama and the Federal Government can do to create jobs, but almost every economist will agree that it takes money to grow the economy and create jobs, and the Republicans are going in the wrong direction.
Since the Republican Revolution, the Stimulus Program that they so hated has ended. The money that saved us from going into a major depression, that saved Detroit and got the Auto Industry back on it's feet, has dried up.
Now the environment has changed, and everyone, both Republican and Democrats advocate cutting spending. The States which no longer get as much aid from the Federal Government are being forced to slash their budgets, closing down programs and laying off people. 18,000 educators have lost their jobs.
This atmosphere of cuts has created an atmosphere of fear and uncertainty. People are afraid once again of loosing their jobs, so they stop spending and this causes businesses to lay off people and put off hiring that they had planned.
The economy runs on Consumer Confidence, and when Republicans threaten to destroy the Economy by not passing the Debt Ceiling, that causes uncertainty and Fear in business. When the vast right wing propaganda machine tells people a hundred times a day that the country is broke, it doesn't spur consumer confidence. It creates the opposite. They have caused unemployment to grow and may force us into a Double Dip Recession.
The Republicans are more concerned with getting Obama out of office so they are intentionally creating a bad economy so that hurts Obama. Some Republicans say that we shouldn't have stopped the depression. They say that the stimulus just prolonged the needed correction, and that we should have allowed the auto industry to fail. They say that the deficit is more important than unemployment.
If we did not spend that stimulus money and did not save the auto industry, all of those jobs lost would have spread the pain even further than it is today. There would have been 25% unemployment.
Republicans say that we shouldn't have saved the banks or stimulated the economy. We should have let the free market system correct itself.
Most economists say however that the problem is that we didn't do enough to stimulate the economy. We should have spent twice as much as we did to stimulate the economy. We should have nationalized the banks and forced them to lend money, or at the very least put some requirements that if they received federal funds they had to lend that money out to help people keep their homes and to help entrepreneurs start new businesses, expand, and hire more people.
The key to both helping the Economy and to reducing the Deficit is creating Jobs. If people have jobs, they spend more, they pay taxes, and that grows the economy and reduces the deficit.
The Republicans believe in redistribution of wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich. They have been very successful in that endeavor, and income inequality is higher than it has ever been before. During the time of the robber barons the richest 1% had 18% of the nations wealth. Now the richest 1% have 24% of the nations wealth.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/...The result of this redistribution of wealth is that the common people have no money to spend so the economy slows down, businesses lay off people, there are less taxes paid, and the deficit grows.
"Currently we have a huge $1.4 trillion deficit, but if the economy grew at a rate of 2.8% that deficit would shrink to $861 billion. If the economy did better and grew at a 3.3 % rate the deficit would be reduced to $521 billion. If it grew at a rate of 3.9% our deficit would be reduced to $113 billion!"
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/articl...So the secret of reducing the deficit is not cutting programs that help people, it is reversing the current income redistribution so the poor and middle class use some of that money we are showering on the rich, and using that money so the middle class have more to spend, so that money can be used to create jobs, so that money can increase consumer confidence, so businesses start hiring more people, so there are more people to pay taxes, so the deficit shrinks.
We can have austerity measures and fiscal stimulus at the same time. We can create jobs and still cut waste in the military. All we need to do is get the rich and the corporations, who are paying historically low tax rates to pay their fair share.
It is time to enact austerity measures on the rich who can afford it. We have now seen that asking only the poor and the middle class to sacrifice, results in an increase in unemployment, a lack of consumer confidence and an increase in the deficit. The Republicans are doing exactly the opposite of what they should.