One week after the President admonished Republicans for lacking a serious alternative to his American Jobs Act, Senate Republicans introduced what they call a “jobs” bill yesterday. ABC News, the Washington Post and others reported on this development as if this meant Republicans have satisfied the President's call.
Furthermore, several media outlets reported — upon prompting by Speaker John Boehner's office — that Boehner complained to the President in a private phone call that he was falsely stating that House Republicans lack a jobs proposal.
But the President did not call for just any bill with a “jobs” label slapped on it.
President Obama called for Republicans to propose a jobs bill and have it “assessed by the same independent economists that have assessed our jobs plan,” so there would be some objective evidence that it would actually create jobs.
And the President urged the media to hold Republicans to that standard.
So far, both the Republicans and the media have failed that test.
There have never been assessments done on past proposals from House Republicans. As The New Republic's Jonathan Cohn recently reported, the House plan is so vague that even when asked professional economists are unable to score it.
Yesterday, GOP Sen. Rand Paul asserted — without any backup — that their bill would create 5 million jobs … during an undefined period of time.
But as New York magazine's Jonathan Chait noted: “There is zero chance that any independent agency or macroeconomic forecaster scores this proposal as either reducing the deficit or increasing employment over the next year. On the deficit, they may propose to cut tax rates, offset by spending cuts or closing tax deductions, but the latter will be totally unspecified. On jobs, the GOP simply will not engage with the premise of the entire macroeconomic forecasting field that the economy is suffering from a lack of demand.”
So the President and the public continue to wait for Republicans to propose something — anything — that an objective economist can say is expected to create a job.
And we continue to wait for the media to report that fact.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
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