30 years of GOP economics

The nice woman who cuts my hair asked me on Saturday morning if I had heard Republican's blaming the Community Reinvestment Act (a legislative pet of Democrats) for the subprime meltdown and our current economic conditions. I hadn't at that point but since then it appears to be the latest vogue in right-wing excuse making. Yglesias explains, 

The technical term for this argument is “bullshit.”

For one thing, the timeline is ludicrous. The Community Reinvestment Act was passed in 1977. Are we supposed to believe that CRA was working smoothly throughout the Carter, Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton years and then only under Bush II did overzealous anti-”redlining” enforcement come into play, perhaps a result of Dubya’s legendarily close relationship with ACORN? Or maybe overzealous enforcement back in the late 1970s is somehow responsible for a real estate blowout that only materialized 30 years later? It doesn’t even come close to making sense.

Beyond that, the mere existence of “subprime” loans — i.e., mortgages given to less-creditworthy individuals at higher interest rates — isn’t the problem here. The problems have to do with what was done with the loans after they were packaged, sold and used to make leveraged plays.

Indeed. 

At some point Republicans are going to have to come to grips with reality. They controlled Congress from 1994 through 2006 and in that time prevented new regulations from being instituted and dismantled other regulations. From 2000 through 2008 they have been in control of the White House and built upon that legacy. Americans aren't stupid. They know full well who has been in power and they know full well which party is the party of deregulation. 

The party of "personal responsibilty" is running like hell from this mess but it's clear that Republican Orthodoxy is what caused this systemic rot. Sure there are corporate sell out Democrats who were involved in this mess but we've been ruled by Republican economic policies since Reagan and we're finally seeing the fruits of those labors - a decimitaed middle class, a collapsing financial system, a stagnant economy and exploding deficits. We've weakened worker protections, weakened the National Labor Relations Board and it's enacting legislation and loosened trade thus undercutting the workers who built this country into an economic powerhouse. At the same time we've shifted the tax burden to the middle-class (while their wages stay stagnant) so that we can fund billions in tax giveaways to the wealthiest 1% and giant corporations. 

Republicans bemoan such rehtoric from the left, they dismiss it as "class warfare." The reality is the GOP declared war on America's working and middle classes sometime around 1980 and what we're seeing today is the culmination of 3 decades of  assaults on the instiutions and workers who built this country.