Enough with the false, lazy "job-killing" frame.
The Washington Post has an excellent piece on the latest Republican strategy of prefacing everything they don’t like with “job-killing.” As the Post notes, such tactics are “a substitute for serious discussion.”
The insincerity of these actions is apparent in the indiscriminate way that Republicans throw this term around. Although it is to be expected that Republicans will repeat the falsehood that regulations are job-killing, they venture into the truly absurd when they decry “job-killing” stimulus projects and deficit spending.
Inadequate public protections and corporate disregard of safety rules are the true danger to jobs. If Republicans were serious about this discussion, they would look at companies like Massey and BP, who saw dozens of their employees die on the job last year because they ignored safety rules in favor of profits. These companies are the real job killers.
The Post notes that in addition to ignoring the companies that kill their employees, Republicans also attack the very legislation and regulation that promises to save lives. Besides successfully preventing any workplace or mine safety legislation last Congress, Republicans also attacked health-care reform and food safety legislation that would have given more people access to medical care and made our food safer.
Republicans believe they have found a winning frame, and they’re going to stick with it. The House’s attempt to repeal the recently passed health care law, for example, is literally called “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.” If I were a member of the House, I would be embarrassed by this. It is juvenile and lazy. What is obvious is that they think very little of the intelligence of their constituents and believe that simply adding a magic word to something they don’t like will make Americans dislike it too.