Yes, the ridiculous claim of Republicans (too many of them, at least) is that policies to address climate change and protect the environment we all need to live would kill jobs and hurt the economy. Well, really, where is the proof? Here’s a look at job losses with Bush as president and job losses and then gains after Obama took office. Is it clear who hurts jobs and who doesn’t? (Note, of course, that there is a lag in the effects of Bush’s policies.)
“The GOP mantra is to put the phrase ‘job-killing’ in front of any progressive policy. Now we see that Cheney’s pro-pollution, pro-rich policies aren’t as effective as even Obama’s modest clean energy, middle-class-oriented ones,” Joe Romm of Climate Progress notes.
And more on the graph above and related figures from Alex Seitz-Wald of Think Progress:
This morning, the Labor Department released its employment data for December, showing that the U.S. economy ended the year by adding 113,000 private sector jobs, knocking the unemployment rate down sharply from 9.8 percent to 9.4 percent — its lowest rate since July 2009. The “surprising drop — which was far better than the modest step-down economists had forecast — was the steepest one-month fall since 1998.” October and November’s jobs numbers were also revised upward by almost 80,000 each. Still, 14.5 million Americans remain unemployed, and jobs will have to be created much faster in coming months for the country to pull itself out of the economic doldrums.
Responding the jobs report, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) noted that President Obama and the Democratic Congress have created “more jobs in 2010 than President Bush did over eight years.”
Indeed, from February 2001, Bush’s first full month in office, through January 2009, his last, the economy added just 1 million jobs. By contrast, in 2010 alone, the economy added at least 1.1 million jobs. This chart [above], produced by Pelosi’s office, demonstrates the difference between the Bush administration and the Obama administration on jobs
Enough with the job-killing nonsense.
