Do Republicans really want Americans back to work before the next election?

By Richard K. Barry

It seems that Republicans never get tired of saying the same things about how to strengthen the economy no matter how wrong their prescriptions are proven to be.

Tiresome as it is, the only thing we can do is correct them, again and again.

President Obama thinks we need a jobs bill. Most sane people, including most Americans, think we need a jobs bill that works to increase demand. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, apparently, thinks that creating demand is irrelevant and that we need only deregulate the economy to get things back on track.

Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly cites two papers that demonstrate how wrong Republicans are about this -- one by Lawrence Mishel at the Economic Policy Institute and another by Bruce Bartlett, an economist and veteran of the Reagan and H.W. Bush Administrations (you know, that hotbed of socialism).

As Bartlett explains, Republicans like to argue that freeing the private sector of all those pesky consumer safeguards and worker protections will "reduce uncertainty" for business and get the economy humming again. The problem is that it's just not true:

Evidence supporting Mr. Cantor's contention that deregulation would increase unemployment is very weak. For some years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has had a program that tracks mass layoffs. In 2007, the program expanded, and businesses were asked their reasons for laying off workers. Among the reasons offered was "government regulations/intervention." There is only partial data for 2007, but we have data since then through the second quarter of this year. [...]

As one can see, the number of layoffs nationwide caused by government regulation is minuscule and shows no evidence of getting worse during the Obama Administration. Lack of demand for business products and services is vastly more important.

These results are supported by surveys. During June and July, Small Business Majority asked 1,257 small-business owners to name the two biggest problems they face. Only 13 percent listed government regulation as one of them. Almost half said their biggest problem was uncertainly about the future course of the economy - another way of saying a lack of customers and sales.

As Bartlett concluded:

In my opinion, regulatory uncertainty is a canard invented by Republicans that allows them to use current economic problems to pursue an agenda supported by the business community year in and year out. In other words, it is a simple case of political opportunism, not a serious effort to deal with high unemployment.

Here we have Republicans pushing an agenda that has nothing to do with helping Americans who are out of work find a job. No doubt they are using the poor economy to push deregulation because that is always what the business community wants. And they also tend to have ideological blinders on about the value of any kind of government regulation.

But it is a terrible thought to contemplate that Republicans know quite well that a jobs bill will bring down unemployment, if only marginally, and that is not what they want to see before the next election.

Terrible thought indeed.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)