Last night, the Romney campaign launched an intentionally dishonest ad falsely portraying a 2008 McCain campaign quote as Obama’s own. Romney’s campaign then blasted out an email to supporters from Communications Director Gail Gitcho with the subject line “Game On.” The email only expanded on their deliberately dishonest claims:

The White House doesn’t want to talk about the economy and continues to attempt to distract voters from President Obama’s abysmal economic record.

In defending their misleading ad, the Romney campaign bizarrely claims they were forced to resort to intentional dishonesty because the president refuses to talk about the economy.

President Obama, however, has been talking about almost nothing but the economy and his jobs plan, which independent economists agree will put millions of Americans back to work. Even a cursory review of the president’s recent remarks at official events posted on the White House website underscores the president’s eagerness to discuss the economy and ways to get it moving:

Tomorrow, I’m heading to New Hampshire to talk about another proposal in the American Jobs Act, and that’s a tax cut for nearly every worker and small business owner in America. Democrats and Republicans have traditionally supported these kinds of tax cuts.  Independent economists from across the political spectrum have said this proposal is one of the best ways to boost our economy and spur hiring. It’s going to be easier for us to hire our vets if the overall economy is going strong.  So there’s no reason not to vote for these tax cuts. -November 21, 2011

Now, the single greatest challenge for the United States right now, and my highest priority as President, is creating jobs and putting Americans back to work. – November 14, 2011

Our government needs their patriotism and sense of duty.  And that’s why I’ve ordered the hiring of more veterans by the federal government.  (Applause.)  Our economy needs their tremendous talents and specialized skills.  So I challenged our business leaders to hire 100,000 post-9/11 veterans and their spouses over the next few years and yesterday, many of these leaders joined Michelle to announce that they will meet that challenge. (Applause.) -November 11, 2011

So Congress still needs to act.  But if Congress continues to stand only for dysfunction and delay, then I’m going to move ahead without them.  (Applause.)  I told my administration, I want you to keep on looking for actions that we can take without Congress –- steps that can save consumers money, make government more efficient and responsive, help heal the economy, improve our education system, improve our health care system. We want to work with Congress, but we’re not going to wait. -November 8, 2011

And yet, while our economy has added more than 350,000 private sector jobs just over the past three months, more than 850,000 veterans remain unemployed.  Too many can’t find a job worthy of their tremendous talents.  Toomilitary spouses have a hard time finding work after moving from base to base to base.  And even though the overall unemployment rate ticked down last month, unemployment among veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan continued to rise.  That’s not right.  It doesn’t make sense — not for our veterans, not for our families, not for America — and we’re determined to change that. -November 7, 2011

So my hope is, is that the folks back home, including those in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives, when they look at today’s job numbers…think twice before they vote “no” again on the only proposal out there right now that independent economists say would actually make a dent in unemployment right now.  There’s no excuse for inaction. -November 4, 2011

Read more

ThinkProgress filed this report from the Western Republican Leadership Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Former Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle (R) declared late last week that she could “never” support a tax on millionaires if elected to the Senate next year. In an interview with ThinkProgress at the Western Republican Leadership Conference, Lingle, who is currently vying to replace Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-HI), expressed her opposition to a tax on millionaires. President Obama has proposed using the tax to fund the American Jobs Act, which would put 1.9 million Americans back to work.

Lingle objected to the phrase “millionaire’s tax,” preferring instead to call it a tax on small business. “I could never support something like that,” said the former two-term governor:

KEYES: It sounds like you’re against the millionaire’s tax that President Obama has proposed?

LINGLE: I guess I’d have to explain a little bit about my state to you, Scott. In my state, the majority of businesses are small businesses. The majority of them report their income as personal income. So while people may want to call it a “millionaire’s tax,” in fact, it’s a tax on small business, because almost every business in Hawaii will report their income as personal income. They have an LLC, they have a sole proprietorship, and that means if their business only earns $250,000, now they have to pay higher taxes at a time they’re struggling to keep people employed. So for me, they put that label on it, others put that label. I call it a small business tax, and therefore I could never support something like that.

Listen to it:

Conflating millionaires and small businesses in order to argue against increasing taxes on the wealthy is a common tactic on the right. However, as ThinkProgress economics editor Pat Garofalo explained in U.S. News & World Report, “fewer than 2 percent of small businesses make enough to file in the top two income tax brackets.”

A millionaires tax isn’t just supported in Hawaii, one of the most liberal states; it’s supported across the country. Polls regularly show overwhelming support for raising taxes on the wealthy — 73 percent of Americans, including two-thirds of Republicans, supported the idea in a September poll. Under the American Jobs Act, that money would be used to put 5,000 construction workers and teachers back to work in Hawaii.

Last night, the Senate voted on one piece of President Obama’s jobs bill — $35 billion in funding for states to protect the jobs of teachers and first responders who might be laid off due to budget constraints. The measure failed to overcome a filibuster by a 50-50 vote. Sens. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who voted against Obama’s entire jobs bill when it was put up for a vote earlier this month, voted against this more targeted measure. Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) also broke ranks to join Nelson and Lieberman in voting against the bill last night.

It’s rather difficult to understand Pryor’s position. On his Senate website, the Arkansas senator touts his own “Six point solution to job creation” — a nine-page PDF document which touts the need for education funding. In a section titled “Preparing tomorrow’s job-generators to compete (and win),” Pryor’s jobs plan claims that it ensures “that Arkansans have the right education and training…because a competitive workforce is vital to growing the economy.” That appears to be empty rhetoric from Pryor, given that he just voted against a bill that would have provided over $275 million to support over 4,000 jobs for Arkansas’ educators.

The bill last night also would have provided funding for “the creation of additional jobs for, law enforcement officers and other first responders.” Again, Pryor has a very recent history of promoting the need for funding first responders because, as he said, “firefighters put their lives on the line to protect their communities” and therefore need federal funds to “do their jobs efficiently and effectively.”

So why did Pryor vote to defeat funding for education and first responders that he purportedly supports? It might have something to do with the fact that bill imposes a surtax on millionaires. In the past, Pryor has voted against such efforts. And yet, just last month, his office expressed this concern: “It is maddening that hundreds of millionaires pay virtually no federal income taxes, and this should change.”

What is truly maddening is trying to understand why Pryor can’t vote in a way that is consistent with his rhetoric.

Last week, two Senate Democrats joined Senate Republicans to filubuster President Obama’s jobs plan, even though analysts have found that it could add 1.9 million jobs next year. Now, Democratic lawmakers have decided to introduce Obama’s plan piece-by-piece, beginning with Obama’s $35 billion aid package “to help state and local governments provide funding for teachers, police officers and firefighters” that would create or save about 400,000 jobs.

The first measure will be well received by the public, as a new CNN poll found that, for the past two months, about 75 percent of the American people support this measure:

The poll also shows that 72 percent support increasing federal spending for roads, bridges, and schools; 60 percent support increasing federal aid to the unemployed; and 76 percent support increasing the tax rate of those who make more than one million dollars a year — all positions that Republicans are dead set against. “I’ll bring this bill for a vote as soon as possible,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said today.

ThinkProgress filed this report from the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, DC

Republicans have continually slammed President Obama’s jobs plan, the American Jobs Act, as a second stimulus plan that won’t work — ignoring the success of the first stimulus and sticking to their own “job creating” policies that have, in the past, failed to boost job creation and economic growth. And last night, Republicans and two Democrats successfully blocked the Jobs Act from coming to the floor for debate, despite it winning majority approval from the full Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has led the charge against the Jobs Act and did so again yesterday, saying on the Senate floor that Republicans welcomed the chance to vote against it. But while McConnell was leading his party’s obfuscation, a coalition of grassroots organizations brought unemployed Washington residents to the Hart Senate Office Building to urge lawmakers to pass the Jobs Act.

The Rev. Paul Sherry held a prayer vigil among the groups in Hart’s atrium, where he and others spoke out about the need for the Jobs Act. “It is time, long past time, to rebuild our nation’s economy in the interest of justice, and compassion, and fairness for all our nation’s people, rather than a favored few,” Sherry said. “The American Jobs Act does all those things.”

The prayer vigil was followed by testimonials from multiple unemployed District residents. “I feel useless, I don’t have anything to do,” a tearful Linda Evans told the crowd of about 50. Evans, an unemployed home health assistant, has been out of that field for three years and recently lost her job working with children. “We are the people,” she said. “And we need jobs.”

Andre Henson, an unemployed 23-year-old who said he has applied for dozens of jobs over the last year, said he was tired of hearing lawmakers talk about how hard it is for the unemployed. “They talk about it, and I live it,” he said. “I live it every single day. Lying in bed asleep at night, wondering how I’m going to provide for my daughter. We helped the congressmen and senators get in office, and it’s time for them to help us.”

Watch video of McConnell’s criticism of the bill and from the gathering yesterday:

From there, the participants broke into smaller groups and went upstairs, visiting offices of senators who had pledged to oppose the bill. In office after office, staffers told the unemployed that they would relay their stories on to the senators, and a staffer in Sen. Mark Kirk’s (R-IL) office reminded them, rather flippantly, “It’s definitely tough times.”

But hours later, the Republican caucus stood uniformly against the Jobs Act, blocking it from coming to the floor for a vote it likely would have passed.

Hopes were not high today for this month’s jobs report after the economy appeared to net exactly zero jobs in August. While the numbers beat expectations, the story behind them reveals a pervasive trend in public sector job loss that Republicans seem committed to ignoring.

In August, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the private sector added 17,000 jobs, but the public sector lost the exact same number (those numbers have since been revised). This month, the private sector created 137,000 jobs, but the public sector continued to hemorrhage jobs, losing 34,000. As Matt Yglesias notes, “month after month we see a labor market that’s basically treading water primarily because government employment is shrinking rather than keeping pace with population growth.”

Political Correction charted the plummeting public sector growth next to the steady rise in private sector jobs over the past two years. While the private sector marked a net gain of 1.4 million jobs, budget cuts have eliminated 572,000 government jobs. If governments maintained the same employment rate since 2009, “the economy would have grown by about 2 million jobs”:

This trend of public job depletion puts the Republican jobs agenda in stark contrast with the administration’s approach. President Obama’s American Jobs Act would not only add 1.9 million jobs next year, but makes targeted investments to arrest the trend in layoffs. The plan includes $35 billion in direct state aid infusion that will “prevent up to 280,000 layoffs of teachers, who are — along with cops and firefighters — particularly vulnerable to local government budget shortfalls.”

However, Republicans continue to block Obama’s much-needed plan because, in part, they see public job loss as a positive. As Yglesias points out, “this shrinkage is exactly what conservatives claim to believe will spark growth once they bring the era of Kenyan Anticolonialism to an end.” Buying into the conservative campaign against government workers, Republicans governors like Chris Christie (NJ) and Rick Scott (FL) openly tout laying off thousands of workers as a badge of honor. Scott actually bragged about getting rid of 15,000 jobs in his state. In talking up his draconian budget cuts, Scott admitted that his “biggest cut” is “always people.”

However loud Republicans sing about the shrinking public sector, plummeting public job numbers have failed to deliver on the promise of “private sector magic” — and the economy will continue to suffer for it.