TAX CUTS DON'T CREATE JOBS

For millions of Americans the road to self-sufficiency is paved with a job. Jobs provide a roof over their heads, food on the table, a shirt on their back and a source of satisfaction at having accomplished something meaningful by the end of the day. A job also allows for interpersonal communications, intellectual growth and the opportunity to meet and succeed at challenges that spark human creativity. Very often jobs are the spark plugs of life. They keep engines running. They keep people moving ahead.

The value of a job is not measured in the amount of tax dollars it provides the government or the amount of unemployment compensation it saves the treasury. The true value of employment rests in the benefits it provides to the individual engaged in that labor and the families who depend on its fruits. As a society the preservation of jobs and the maintenance of job opportunities for everyone able and willing must be our highest priority. Without work, not only will Americans not grow, they will not survive.

During the eight years of the last Bush Administration massive tax reductions for the wealthy were instituted with the false claim that money in the hands of the rich would stimulate jobs and put Americans back to work. Instead, over 13 million American jobs were eliminated or shipped overseas by the very companies the wealthy invested in, millions of other American workers were idled in the economic recession and the faucet of new job creation was turned off.

Nonetheless, today's Republicans continue to call for making the wealthy tax cuts permanent with the same claim that such a move would finally produce jobs. Instead of advocating that the government create jobs, the GOP demands that the government eliminate jobs and place more workers in unemployment lines. Herbert Hoover tried that strategy, and it ushered in the great depression. Who’s the fool here? How would cutting taxes for the wealthy and eliminating government jobs suddenly turn the ship around? The answer is obvious: it won’t!