As Pres. Obama prepared to take the oath of office in January 2009 his ambitious plans to repair the American economy drew comparison to the New Deal reforms and programs pioneered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Conservative Republicans, unable to intellectually accept or unwilling to honestly admit that thirty years of cutting taxes for the rich and cutting regulatory oversight on the financial sector led to financial calamity twice in a period of 80 years, signaled they were as opposed to President Obama's new "New Deal" legislation as their conservative forefathers were to FDR's New Deal legislation.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the most powerful conservative Republican in Washington, said he intended to delay Obama's proposed $1 trillion economic stimulus legislation and use his 40 Republican Senator cloture vote filibuster power to block all Democratic legislation.
Within two months of taking the oath of office, Republicans had convinced Pres. Obama to push for half the amount of stimulus that his advisers thought necessary and substitute additional massive tax cuts as part of the stimulus plan.
Most economists now say the 2009 stimulus plan was slow to kick in, did little to promote American job growth and unnecessarily added to the deficit because the stimulus plan indeed provided half the amount of spending needed and the added tax cuts have not enticed corporations to reinvest their massive profit gains in U.S. based business growth and job creation.
Republicans continue to claim only more tax cuts for billionaires and mega-corporations will fix the flagging economy. But, will yet more corporate tax cuts really promote job growth in America? As a share of GDP, the U.S. has the second lowest tax rate, behind only Iceland. This statistic flips on its head the often-repeated Republican charge that America has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world (which is only true on paper). In 2009, U.S. corporate taxes had fallen to only 1.3 percent of GDP, from 4 percent in 1965.
The Republican 2010 mid-term election messaging strategy was to falsely claim Obama's Stimulus Spending and Private Health Insurance Reform legislation is depressing the economy just as Roosevelt's New Deal reforms and programs caused the 1930's economy depression. Republicans continue to use this messaging strategy.