Republican Math: An Oxymoron?

Pau Ryan really is good. i can't think of anyone who can spin a tall tale as well as he does it. Every time someone interviewing him asks him whether he thinks the President has won a mandate, he says something like:

No. I don't think so. After all, we Republicans still hold the majority in congress. I think our economic message is a very popular one.

That's a sweet sentiment, but he has left out a few pertinent facts.

1) As mentioned in a previous post, Obama's margin of victory was almost 3%--very, very close to 3%, and considering the Republicans' vigorous efforts to suppress Democratic-leaning voters--the poor, hispanics, the elderly, African-Americans--that's a healthy margin.

2) While it's true that the Republicans still have a majority of the seats in the House of Representatives, it's a smaller majority than it was before this election. The Democrats have gained eight seats so far--there is at least one seat still not settled, in Arizona, where the vote count still isn't complete; so the House of Representatives now has 234 Republicans and 201 Democrats.

Sounds like the Republicans still have something of a mandate in congress, right? Well, consider the fact that:

3)  because of the huge Republican gains in state legislatures in 2010, when the results of the census were determined, Republican legislatures were in charge of re-districting, and as good party workers, they did their best to isolate pockets of Democratic voters so that a minimum of Republican congressional seats would be endangered in the 2012 elections.

So while it is true the Republicans do still have a majority in congress, their majority is not necessarily a result of enormous voter enthusiasm. A number of districts were redrawn to favor retention of Republican seats. There is more than one way to win an election.

Mr. Ryan still has not explained, in a way that convinces non-partisan agencies such as the Congressional Budget Office, how his proposals for budgetary change would result in a balanced budget. In fact, the CBO has concluded his approach would significantly increase the deficit.

One fact remains that Mr. Ryan has yet to explain: the tax rates that obtain today, which are the same as the past ten years, are the lowest in decades. And they have not produced job gains until recently under President Obama. These very low tax rates, with a cap of 35% for the highest income bracket, should have given the people Mr. Ryan and other Republicans call "job creators" great incentive to create jobs . . . but they haven't really done so.

Therefore one has to ask why that would change under his projected budget.

On the other hand, when we had really large job gains  under Clinton, and when we were recovering from the Reagan recession, tax rates were higher. Mr. Ryan must hate this fact, but it is a simple, if perhaps inconvenient truth: tax increases stimulate job growth.

Trickle-down economics, the Republican model, never has worked. That is another inconvenient truth for Mr. Ryan. And that's why I wonder whether the term "Republican math" is an oxymoron.