It Is Still, As It Has Always Been, the Economy, Stupid

Once President Obama signs health care reform - in January, with any luck - there is one priority and one only for the next six months: a giant, humongous jobs bill that will prevent another economic crisis that would hand Congress back to the repugs.

And that will bring this administration and any hopes for cleaning up the nuclear waste of a mess left by Smirky/Darth to a screaching, smoking, permanent, fatal halt.

The only way to get cap-and-trade, to get EFCA, to restore Glass-Steagall, to fix the shitty parts of health care reform, to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, to repeal DADT and DOMA, and do everything else that must be done before 2012, is to pour government resources into tens of millions of new jobs.

And shoot on sight anyone who even hints at cutting spending.

Paul Krugman warns that 2010 is starting to look a lot like 1937, a year where statistical good news about the economy caused FDR to pull the plug on stimulus projects...and immediately plunged the economy right back into the Great Depression.

So the odds are that any good economic news you hear in the near future will be a blip, not an indication that we’re on our way to sustained recovery. But will policy makers misinterpret the news and repeat the mistakes of 1937? Actually, they already are.

The Obama fiscal stimulus plan is expected to have its peak effect on G.D.P. and jobs around the middle of this year, then start fading out. That’s far too early: why withdraw support in the face of continuing mass unemployment? Congress should have enacted a second round of stimulus months ago, when it became clear that the slump was going to be deeper and longer than originally expected. But nothing was done — and the illusory good numbers we’re about to see will probably head off any further possibility of action.

Meanwhile, all the talk at the Fed is about the need for an “exit strategy” from its efforts to support the economy. One of those efforts, purchases of long-term U.S. government debt, has already come to an end. It’s widely expected that another, purchases of mortgage-backed securities, will end in a few months. This amounts to a monetary tightening, even if the Fed doesn’t raise interest rates directly — and there’s a lot of pressure on Mr. Bernanke to do that too.

Will the Fed realize, before it’s too late, that the job of fighting the slump isn’t finished? Will Congress do the same? If they don’t, 2010 will be a year that began in false economic hope and ended in grief.

Zandar says:

Krugman's problem is that he doesn't realize Republicans in Congress very much want to see exactly that happen. If there's positive GDP growth numbers in February for Q4 2009, then there's going to be enormous pressure to cancel the stimulus and use it to pay down the national debt instead, all but guaranteeing a nasty spike in unemployment just before the November elections.

We've already established time and time again Republicans are willing to wreck the country in order to con voters into giving them the keys to the kingdom again. This is no different.

The question is, will Obama fall for it?

Via Digby, we have Devilstower with more evidence than even Obama should require that the last decade is irrefutable proof conservatives can never again be trusted with political power.

Don't forget the naughts, because this decade, no matter what anyone on the right might say, was conservatism on trial. You want less taxes? You got less taxes. You want less regulation? You got less regulation. Open markets? Wide open. An illusuion of security in place of rights? Hey, presto. Think we should privatize war by handing unlimited power given to military contractors so they can kick butt and take names? Kiddo, we passed out boots and pencils by the thousands. Everything, everything, that ever showed up on a drooled-over right wing wish list got implemented -- with a side order of Freedom Fries.

They will try to disown it, and God knows if I was responsible for this mess I'd be disowning it, too. But the truth is that the conservatives got everything they wanted in the decade just past, everything that they've claimed for forty years would make America "great again". They didn't fart around with any "red dog Republicans." They rolled over their moderates and implemented a conservative dream.

What did we get for it? We got an economy in ruins, a government in massive debt, unending war, and the repudiation of the world. There's no doubt that Republicans want you to forget the last decade, because if you remember... if you remember when you went down to the water hole and were jumped by every lunacy that ever emerged from the wet dreams of Grover Norquist and Dick Cheney, well, it's not likely that you'd give them a chance to do it again.

And they will. Given half a chance -- less than half -- they'll do it again, only worse. Because that's the way conservatism works. Remember when the only answer to every economic problem was "cut taxes?" We have a surplus. Good, let's cut taxes. We have a deficit. Hey, cut taxes even more! That little motto was unchanging even when was clear that the tax cuts were increasing the burden on everyone but a wealthy few. That's just a subset of the great conservative battle whine which is now and forever "we didn't go far enough." If deregulation led to a crash, it's because we didn't deregulate enough. If the wars aren't won, it's because we haven't started enough wars. If there are people still clinging to their rights, it's because we haven't done enough to make them afraid.

Forget the naughts, and you'll forget that conservatives had another chance to prove all their ideas, and that their ideas utterly and completely failed. Again.

The point of remembering bad events is to stop them from repeating. So remember, and remind others if they start to forget. Because really, this is one trip to the water hole we can't afford to repeat.

Read the whole thing.

Say it with me: Jobs, More Jobs, Still More Jobs, And Even More Jobs Than That. And Fuck The Deficit.