What the President is saying is that if the republicans would allow him to pass more stimulus and spend our way into poverty that the economy would be much better and everyone would have a job. After all, he said that everyone was on-board except congressional republicans. If only we could have more government spending, the problem would be fixed.
Now, please realize that I understand that government spending creates jobs. It's true. If the government dishes out more paychecks, those are new jobs. However, (you could see that word coming, couldn't you?) This doesn't necessarily mean that it's a good idea. Wait a minute, why isn't creating jobs a good idea in some cases? We desperately need more jobs! Of course we do, but more government jobs also means more government debt. More government debt means more financial uncertainty, more financial uncertainty means a decrease in business investment and growth, and decreased growth means less jobs.
Of course, that's not the only problem. Jobs that the government actively creates tend to be unnecessary, inefficient, and temporary. These kinds of jobs are not what results in a booming economy. These Keynesian jobs result in a fragile, government dependent economy (AA+ rated government no less). You can't pay people to do unprofitable things and expect that create a booming economy. And if the jobs are profitable, then let the private sector do it. At the very least, the private sector won't use taxpayer dollars to do it with the private sector.
Finally, I would argue that government spending initiatives for the sole purpose of creating jobs are attacks on American's freedom. First of all, they require either higher taxation or an increase in debt. The first is an attack on freedom because higher taxes are an attack of on the sovereignty of property. Although it is just for the government to subject it's citizens to taxation for the purpose of defending it's citizens property from internal or external threats and maintaining order, it is unjust for the government to take from one group of citizens (those who work hard and earn a good living) and give to members of another group (those who do not). This steps outside of the historical, tradition, and constitutional bounds set up for governments and is most often driven by corruption in the form of politicians who buy the votes of lower class citizens at the expense of the others.
The second option is an attack on freedom because it is a risk to national security. When our nation becomes a debtor to our enemies we become reliant on them, which is obviously detrimental to our security. Also being severely in debt has proven to to be a source of internal violence (think Greece almost ever other European country).
With this in mind, I think that the President is wrong in saying that the Republicans are standing in the way of decreasing unemployment. In fact, I would argue that the President and the rest of his party are standing in the way by insisting on increasing the detrimental affects of policies that have already been tried and proven a failures. Remember that Keynesian economics are supposed to be fast acting, sort of like injecting medicine into the bloodstream, while the economics favored by the republicans can arguably take a longer time. If anything, Keynesian economics are expected to cause immediate relief but wear of quickly, even if they work as best as they could be hoped to. Instead we have seen that they may cause a slight upturn, but quickly cause a downturn that takes us back to where we were before or worse. I'd say that it's about time we try something else. Spending our way out of public and private debt hasn't worked so far. Maybe we could just try reducing spending for a little bit and see if that is more effective.
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