Yesterday, the Wonk Room noted how little discussion of the economy occurred during the Republican National Convention. One facet of the poor economy in particular – the housing crisis – was almost completely absent from the RNC.

The Associated Press reported today that the housing crisis is now affecting 4 million Americans, who are “either behind on their payments or in foreclosure.” Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has acknowledged the problem, saying that it is having a “devastating impact on our financial markets and the household budgets of millions of hardworking Americans,” and that “we have a responsibility to take action to help those among them who are deserving homeowners.”

Still, housing was mentioned only once during the entire convention, the same number of times as “Elvis,” and “Tyrannosaurus.”

Former Governor Mike Huckabee (R-AR) said during his address Wednesday that “If you’re a young couple losing your house…you want something to change,” and that McCain has “specific ideas to respond to a need for change.” However, Huckabee didn’t offer the specifics, instead going on to note, in the very next sentence, that “there are some things we never want to change – freedom, security, and the opportunity to prosper.” Watch it:

Perhaps Huckabee declined to put forth specifics because John McCain’s plan for solving the housing crisis consists of “policy platitudes instead of solutions.”

McCain, like President George Bush, advocates a laissez faire approach to housing, and has said that he would only “convene a meeting of the nation’s accounting professionals” and “top mortgage lenders,” who he hopes would voluntarily help Americans.

However, as the Wonk Room has pointed out before, “individual and voluntary negotiations between at-risk borrowers and mortgage servicers is clearly not working.” Instead, “effective solutions for foreclosed properties must be centered on state and local governments and their non-profit, private sector, and philanthropic partners.”

But the RNC speakers just ignored the problem, which is affecting millions of Americans today, and spent their time talking about “drilling,” “mavericks,” and “hockey moms.”

Digg It!

In his acceptance speech last night before the Republican National Convention, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) set forth a tax proposal that he claimed “will create jobs“:

Keeping taxes low helps small businesses grow and create new jobs. Cutting the second highest business tax rate in the world will help American companies compete and keep jobs from moving overseas

A job-creating economic plan is supremely important now that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has released new numbers showing that unemployment is at a five-year high of 6.1%. Last week alone, “the number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits jumped by 15,000.”

But if McCain wants to create jobs, cutting the corporate tax rate isn’t the place to start. According to the Congressional Budget Office, a corporate tax cut “does not create an incentive for [corporations] to spend more on labor” and “is not a particularly cost-effective method of stimulating business spending.”

As the Wonk Room has previously shown, cutting the corporate rate (which is only the world’s second highest on paper) would just lower America’s already below average corporate tax revenue. The Center for Economic & Policy Research co-director Dean Baker has said that “it doesn’t make any sense” to say that corporate tax rates are strangling the economy.

McCain, though, has thrown his chips in with the Bush economic philosophy, which has left the working and middle class behind. In fact, as McCain accepted his nomination, news headlines screamed of what Wonkette called an “economic collapse“: payrolls and stocks down, foreclosures and credit-market writedowns up.

Job growth in the eight years before Bush came to office was significantly better than in the eight years since. But to McCain, the Bush-Norquist agenda of tax cuts for corporations takes precedence over anything aimed at the anyone else.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released its monthly employment data, and the picture is bleak: the American economy lost 84,000 jobs in August, and the employment rate jumped to 6.1%, the highest in five years.

While productivity is up 4.3% since last year (people are working harder with better, more efficient technology), real wages have sagged, dropping .4%.

These numbers are a continuation of trends resulting from the policies of George W. Bush: when times are good, they’re only good for corporations and the wealthy, and when times are bad, they’re mostly bad for the middle class.

Take a look at the comparison in job growth from Bush’s presidency to the eight years before George W. Bush:

Unfortunately, John McCain plans to continue George W. Bush’s failed economic policies. Today, in response to the new job numbers, McCain’s campaign said “Americans are hurting and we must act to create jobs.”

They’re right, but that’s not what John McCain’s Bush-style economic plan would do.

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