Louie Gohmert's Brainless and Typically Republican Jobs Plan

By now, it should be obvious to even the most casual observer that Rep. Louie Gohmert is not burdened with the curse of genius. In fact, while there may be a lot of competition for the title of Dumbest Member of Congress, Gohmert is definitely a frontrunner. This is the guy who came up with the ridiculous "terror babies" conspiracy theory, who argued that President Obama was in league with the Muslim Brotherhood, and that passage of hate crimes legislation would lead to Nazism, legalization of necrophilia, pedophilia, and bestiality. This is one underachieving mind.

So it should come as no surprise that he has idiotic ideas about what will and won't create jobs. In a headline-chasing maneuver, Gohmert filed a bill titled the "American Jobs Act" before Democrats filed the President's bill by the same name. So now dems can't pass Obama's bill -- unless they change the name to something like "American Employment Act" or the "Jobs for America Act." That should really set them back about thirty seconds. What a crippling blow from a procedural grandmaster.

But it's not Gohmert's pointless poaching of the title that's so demonstrative of his idiocy -- although it's not a bad one. It's his bill itself. Two whole pages legislation is all it takes to get America back to work, according to Gohmert. And it's what's in this simplistic legislation that shows the true depth of Representative Gohmert's intellectual capacity.


[The Hill:]

The Texan lawmaker's measure would eliminate the 35 percent corporate tax to spur job creation in the private sector.

Gohmert says that he's talked with CEOs of corporations, who moved their companies to China because "the number one reason, every time was the 35 percent corporate tax; China has 17 percent corporate tax -- if you move a big corporation (to China)," then they can reinvest money into the company.


That's right, a 100% free ride for corporations. Of course, this is stupid.


[ThinkProgress:]

The two-page bill changes the tax code to replace any mention of the current "35 percent" tax rate with "0 percent." Corporations are already sitting on trillions in cash, so cutting their taxes would likely do very little to help the economy, but would balloon the deficit by depriving the government of about $300 billion in revenues annually. As the CBO found, cutting taxes on businesses "typically does not create an incentive for them to spend more on labor or to produce more, because production depends on the ability to sell output."


So lowering taxes won't create jobs, because demand does not depend on supply. Imagine my shock at this discovery.

"Nothing's more pathetic than the GOP doing the bidding for corporate America while pretending to be on the side of the little guy," a senior House Democratic aide told The Hill. "Republicans who want to put more money in the pockets of billionaire CEOs instead of helping to put people to work is just wrong."

Think we've reached the bottom of Gohmert's idiocy? Sorry, but it is bottomless. Gohmert has also been pushing an argument argument that shows he doesn't even understand what job creation is. A provision in the Obama plan calls for an end to discrimination against the unemployed, which is actually becoming a real problem. Gohmert thinks the ban would be the worst thing ever.

"We have created in this bill a newly protected class, not on race, creed, color, sex -- not even sexual orientation, this is a new one," he recently told Sean Hannity. "It's not religion, it's a prohibition of discrimination in employment on the basis of an individual's status as unemployed. By golly, if you apply for a job and you're unemployed and you feel like you got discriminated against and not hired because you were unemployed, see a lawyer. You've got a claim under this bill."

Here's the thing; if you hire someone who's already employed, you've created zero jobs. I mean come on, it's freakin' simple math. If the number of unemployed stays the same, you haven't created a job, you've just given someone a different job. It's not the same thing at all. Yet here he is, defending the so-called "job creators" from actually having to do something crazy like create jobs. The unemployment discrimination ban in Obama's plan should be a no-brainer -- which goes along way toward explaining why the brainless Louie Gohmert is against it.

But how far away from the rest of his caucus is Gohmert on this? Not very. This is all just rightwing economic flateartherism taken to it's logical extreme. If Republican economics works, then Gohmert's plan should really work. Cut taxes, employment skyrockets. Never mind that a decade of experience is telling us right now that this isn't true at all. And it should create jobs by allowing employers to continue to avoid creating jobs. Because we don't want any of those burdensome, job-killing regulations.

Yes, it's stupid. Yes, it's backwards. Yes, it ignores realities, factual data, recently history, basic math, simple logic, and common sense. And that's why it's just so damned Republican.

-Wisco