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When Asked What, Besides Tax Cuts, Would Help The Economy, Pence Says Tax Cuts

Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) went on Fox News last night to back up House Minority Leader John Boehner’s (R-OH) over-the-top call for President Obama to sack his entire economic team, including Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and top adviser Larry Summers. “The President ought to ask for and accept the resignation of the Secretary of the Treasury and Larry Summers, and he ought to bring a new team,” Pence said.

But beyond that, Pence, like the rest of his GOP colleagues, didn’t offer any ideas of his own that would help the ailing economy. When host Greta Van Susteren asked what, besides tax cuts, he would do to turn the economy around, Pence at first dodged, but then said tax cuts for the rich would be the way to go:

VAN SUSTEREN: What — besides the sort of the usual — the — you know, the tax program, extending the Bush tax cuts that I know the Republican Party want, what is it that you could do to turn it around?

PENCE: Yes, look, the enemy of our prosperity is uncertainty. … the greatest uncertainty right now is — and you just heard — you heard the Vice President again kind of defend it in passing, their tax cuts — their tax increases on the rich — is this administration actually thinks that it would be a good idea to allow a tax increase on job creators on January 1st, 2011. You know, higher taxes never got anybody hired.

Watch it:

In addition to creating massive deficits, extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans would do little to help the economy and create jobs. In fact, the evidence suggests that if the GOP got their tax cuts for the rich, the economy could get worse. After the Bush tax cuts were enacted, the country “registered the weakest jobs and income growth in the post-war period.” And as the Wonk Room’s Pat Garofalo noted, GDP increased faster following the tax increases of 1993 than it did following either the Bush or Reagan tax cuts.

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It’s clear that Pence and his GOP colleagues just don’t have much to offer. Given that Pence has been asked repeatedly for new ideas on the economy — and hasn’t been able to offer any — one would imagine that he could think of something other than “tax cuts,” but apparently not.