Thursday, September 8, 2011

Thom Hartmann: Why Republicans may throw their support behind the President's job plan...

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With the President set to present his job creation plan to a joint session of Congress tonight - he's already getting some bad news from economists. Early reports indicate the job's plan will cost between $300 and $400 billion - with less than half going to actually rebuilding our infrastructure - and the rest devoted to tax cuts and an extension of unemployment benefits. But economists are warning the President that his plan will likely do very little to turn the economy around.

The labor economist at the Brooking Institute - Gary Burtless - said, "If we're talking about whether the package is big enough to...start making a dent, it's probably going to fall short of that goal." And Nigel Gault - the chief economist as HIS Global Insight said about the President's plan, "The kick to growth is going to be pretty small. It will add substantially less than 1% GDP growth in 2012." Now that they know it will do very little to improve the economy - expect Republicans to suddenly throw their support behind the President's job plan.

That way they can keep up the illusion they care about jobs - while actually doing nothing to improve the economy before the 2012 election. And it will make it impossible for him to pull a Harry Truman and run against a "do-nothing Congress."

-Thom

(Do you think they will? Tell us here.)

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