I'm not sure why ABC News believes that anyone should care what Ms. there are no "god-given" American jobs Carly Fiorina has to say about much of anything, much less what it takes to get Americans back to work and improve our economy, but that didn't stop them from allowing her to weigh in on the Democrats and President Obama's record on job creation and lying about their attempts to pass legislation to help in that regard, along with the amount of obstruction they've faced from Republicans.
Right-wing media figures continue to attack the Obama administration's economic recovery efforts, claiming that Democrats have virtually no plans to improve the economy, despite years of proposing legislation and laws that prove otherwise.
On the August 18 edition of ABC's This Week With George Stephanopoulos, guest and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina propped up this claim to attack Democrats: [...]
Fiorina's analysis ignores numerous proposals put forth by the White House that have been met with resistence by Republicans. [...]
During the 2012 presidential campaign, President Obama unveiled a plan that the Economic Policy Institute found would create 1.1 million jobs in 2013 and 280,000 jobs in 2014. By comparison, Republican nominee Mitt Romney's plan would have created 87,000 jobs in 2013 but would have resulted in the loss of 641,000 jobs in 2014.
In September 2011, President Obama laid out the American Jobs Act. Economist Mark Zandi analyzed the plan and claimed it would result in 1.9 million jobs and cut the unemployment rate by a full percentage point. The plan included $250 billion in tax cuts.
Fiorina ended by concluding that "the stimulus didn't work," but nonpartisan research suggests otherwise. In August 2010, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act "[l]owered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.8 percentage points" and "[i]ncreased the number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million."
Heaven forbid a Republican is ever going to let a few facts get in the way of the B.S. they're spewing. And of course host George Stephanopoulos offered no push back whatsoever. Apparently, like David Gregory, he doesn't seem to think it's his job to say anything to his guests when they tell lies on the air. I'm not sure just how many times Republicans have to tell the same lies over and over on the air, like claiming that stimulus for infrastructure doesn't help the economy or create jobs for these hosts to finally say something to their face on the air, but apparently we haven't reached that number yet for Stephanopoulos.
Transcript of the exchange below the fold.
PLOUFFE: Because what's going to be said on those stages to secure the Republican nomination is going to cause huge problems in the general election. It happened with Mitt Romney, it will happen in '16.
Governor Christie, this is probably a kiss of death for him, for me to say this, he would potentially be a very strong general election candidate. In the current Republican Party that's going to show up to decide the nomination in '16, someone like him can't win in my opinion.
FIORINA: No, I do not agree with that.
But let me go back to David's point, we don't have a product to sell. Let me talk about young people for a moment and jobs. So, unemployment among youth is at historic highs in inner cities as well as people coming out of the college. And there is nothing that is appealing to a young person about the solution to every problem being a large, bloated bureaucracy that can not be held accountable and who's budget continues to rise year after year.
The Democrats have a single product, which is let us centralize decision-making, let us create a government program to solve a problem. And what we're seeing, whether it's the IRS or whether it's the debate about national security is we cannot hold these bureaucracies accountable, we do not know what they're doing, and the programs are ineffective. And we're seeing that with the rollout of Obamacare as well.
ELLISON: Young people do not care -- young people don't care about bureau -- they care about a job.
FIORINA: That's right. They don't have one right now.
ELLISON: In the Republican majority in the House has obstructed at every single turn. They have not...
FIORINA: It's so easy to blame the Republicans...
ELLISON: I'm there every day.
FIORINA: The Democrats are in charge of the national government.
ELLISON: And we have not -- and you know what, under Obama -- the jobs picture has been brightening. Not enough, but not with any Republican help. And you might want -- I might want to point this out -- with pure obstruction from the Republicans. But I want to point out to you, that building our nation's infrastructure, which would help jobs, is actually a good thing, It's something the president has proposed, Democrats have supported it. We -- Republicans...
(CROSSTALK)
STEPHANOPOULOS: OK, let Bill Kristol in here and then Dave Plouffe. Go ahead.
