The Republican Job Creators Myth

By Jon Perr
CrooksandLiars

On Thursday, John Boehner and the House Republican leadership team unveiled their "Plan for America's Job Creators." As he repeatedly made clear before the Economic Club of New York and again on CBS Face the Nation, Boehner's "job creators" are the top two percent of income earners whose Bush tax cuts President Obama has proposed ending. And that presents a bit of problem for the Republicans. After all, George W. Bush's tax breaks for the wealthy sadly coincided with the worst period of job creation of any president since Herbert Hoover. Which means the GOP plan for America's job creators is just another tax cut windfall for the gilded class.

Earlier this month, Speaker Boehner warned that "The mere threat of tax hikes causes uncertainty for job creators -- uncertainty that results in less risk-taking and fewer jobs." As he told Harry Smith of CBS two weeks ago:

"The top one percent of wage earners in the United States...pay forty percent of the income taxes...The people he [President Obama] is talking about taxing are the very people that we expect to reinvest in our economy."

If so, those expectations were sadly unmet under George W. Bush. After all, the last time the top tax rate was 39.6% during the Clinton administration, the United States enjoyed rising incomes, 23 million new jobs and budget surpluses. Under Bush? Not so much.

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