Among Competing Jobs Plans, It's Not Even Close

The Maddow Blog, July 26, 2012

"here is, however, a problem. As Erin Mershon reported yesterday, the Republican job bills don't actually create jobs.

The GOP jobs package, which currently includes 32 bills, represents Republicans' hallmark legislative accomplishment over the past two years. In the months ahead of the election, they will lean on it as proof of two things: that they are not the do-nothing obstructionists that Democrats paint them as, and that they are working hard to address the 8.2 percent unemployment rate.

But there's a problem with their jobs bills: They don't create jobs. At least, they won't any time soon.

In interviews conducted by The Huffington Post with five economists, most said the GOP jobs package would have no meaningful impact on job creation in the near term. Some said it was not likely to do much in the long term, either.

Gary Burtless, a senior economist at Brookings, went so far as to call many of the bills touted by Boehner as "laughable."

Jesse Rothstein, an economics professor at UC Berkeley added, "It's game playing to try to pretend like they're doing something. It's silly season, and so they know they have to put up something that has the label 'job creation' on it, whether or not it would work."

The larger significance to this is the realization that comes when we compare the House GOP's "jobs bills" to the American Jobs Act proposed by President Obama."