‘Job creators’ haven’t lived up to name

Jim Weber, Mesquite

Tuesday, July 26, 2011 | 2:03 a.m.

It seems that all we hear about these days are debates over debt limits and taxes. We never seem to hear the words wealthy, millionaire or billionaire from Republican politicians. Almost universally, Republicans use the phrase “job creators” to describe the most affluent among us. But the performance record of these “job creators” is less than impressive. When the Bush tax cuts took effect in 2003, the unemployment rate was 6.2 percent. Now, in the ninth tax year of those cuts, the unemployment rate is 9.2 percent. So where is the evidence that these tax cuts for the most affluent actually create jobs?

Not only that, we lost 8 million jobs in 2008-09. Did the “job creators” turn into “job destructors” even while they held on to their tax cuts?

Presumably, the “job creators” were bright enough to figure out that their tax cuts were being paid with borrowed money. They didn’t seem to care if the money was borrowed from China, the Social Security Trust Fund or wherever. No one seemed too worried about paying it back then.

So it really annoys me that the flag bearers for the so-called job creators now identify repayment of money borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund as a major federal deficit problem and are plotting changes to reduce Social Security benefits. But, according to the GOP, whatever we do, we dare not think about raising the taxes of the affluent, because we all know what a job killer that would be. But just look at the history.