Michael Steele, RNC Chairman wrote:
Republicans Fighting Back Against Bigger Government Spending
From: Michael Steele, RNC Chairman [ecampaign@gop.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2009 12:58 AM
To: Tom
Subject: Republicans Fighting Back Against Bigger Government SpendingDear Tom,
This morning, Governor Jindal and I continued our party’s fight for reform as the Democrats proposed more wasteful spending and bigger government.
In case you missed it, I hope you take a moment to watch Governor Jindal’s appearance on NBC’s Today Show this morning. As he did in the Republican address last night, Governor Jindal laid out the differences between Republicans and Democrats.
Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisianna
Another email today from the GOP. I don’t mind them since they keep me abreast of what’s on today’s spin cycle. It looks like Michael Steele is flaunting Gov. Jindal as som e kind of national hero, when everyone including FOX News, is reporting that the rebuttal speech was a dud. The Punditry’s responses are summed up here. And more at Greg Sergeant’s blog here. The critics are everywhere you look, except Rush Limbaugh. He’s out there spinning up Jindal for all he’s worth.
Get this: Steele is touting Jindal’s words as if they alone are the answer to the Republican Party’s doldrums. But, all the pundits are saying that Jindal’s rebuttal was a missed opportunity to define the Republican platform. So, the Republican Party is parading Jindal around the talking head shows anyway, no matter what he said in the rebuttal and and never mind that his performance stunk.
The real clincher in today’s email is that Steele is touting Jindal’s words as it they are gold when, in fact, they make absolutely no sense. Jindal says, “We think it’s more important to get the private sector moving rather than just spending government money.” What Jindal is saying here is why have a spending bill when we really need jobs. (?) Conversely, he’s saying that is is more important to create jobs than spend money. That’s great if were possible. His answer to the crises? Cut corporate taxes.
This makes no sense when history and mathematics proves this to be the wrong approach. And besides, tax cuts and spending both effect the budget by reducing cash on hand, so basically they are the same thing.
No only have corporate tax cuts been ineffective as an immediate economic stimulus, tax cuts are the worst investment for the long run. We get much more bang for our bucks in the stimulus department by spending on unemployment and food stamps and infrastructure. We cannot continue to keep the corporate fat cats afloat and hope that some of it trickles down to the physically hungry masses. We’ve tried that for the last twenty-five years and it has sadly taken that long to understand how stupid we were for following Reagan.
Even though they are squarely on the wrong side of history and they angrily push their agenda anyway, the Republicans really have no room to complain. The Recovery and Reinvestment Act contains the largest tax cuts in the history of the United States.
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