Republican Jobs Plan is to Attack Obama’s Plan

President Obama gave his pitch for creating jobs the other night, and it was nicely summarized by Mr.Mark Zandi. Some of his key points are listed below.

• President Obama’s jobs proposal would help stabilize confidence and keep the U.S. from sliding back into recession.
• The plan would add 2 percentage points to GDP growth next year, add 1.9 million jobs, and cut the unemployment rate by a percentage point.
• The plan would cost about $450 billion, about $250 billion in tax cuts and $200 billion in spending increases.
• Many of the president’s proposals are unlikely to pass Congress, but the most important have a chance of winning bipartisan support.

The last bullet got me wondering, “Ok, well if Republicans are going to object, what is their plan for creating jobs?” So I found this statement on the the House Republican website.  Now you can read it there for yourself  (the details being way down at the end of the page), but I’ll note a couple of things about it.

• It seems to be me a little duplicitous that the research reference is to the Heritage Foundation, whose clearly stated mission is “to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.”  This not not the mission of science or the objective research into truth. My opinion in fact is that such an organization is trying to confuse people into thinking the organization is producing objective scientific research when they are not.
• Something like 75% of the article is dedicated to deriding the policies of the President, with only a snippet at the end actually advancing their own proposal. Consequently, the proposal itself is very bland, mainly a restating of traditional Republican positions.

While there are some points of the proposal that appeal to me, I find its credibility diminished by the above points. It seems to be more of attack piece than a well thought out proposal.