Newt GinGRICH is parading around acting like he is some sort of economic genius. He says he will be the “Paychecks President” as opposed to Obama the “Food Stamps President”, and claims that he created the economy that allowed Mitt Romney to get rich.
But nothing could be further from the truth. As a matter of fact, Gingrich is one of the Founding Fathers of modern American poverty. Not only did Gingrich vote for NAFTA, but he worked with Bill Clinton to ram GATT through Congress, thus surrendering the USA’s economic sovereignty to the World Trade Organization.
That was in November 1994. Now, allow Mexico, China, and India a few years to ramp-up their infrastructure, building sea ports, air ports, power grids, water systems, sweatshops, worker barracks, railroads, highways, etc. By 2000, they were ready to accept the mass exodus of American factories and offices as ordained by Gingrich.
And so they did. And our stock market crashed. And when the “jobless recovery” baffled the Fed, Greenspan kept his foot on the gas, no doubt chanting “free trade will create jobs” over and over, praying to his libertarian gods. But the economy couldn’t respond like it had in the past, because Gingrich had relocated it to foreign lands. And all the cash that Greenspan injected to stimulate our newly hollowed-out economy blew up a giant housing bubble, destroyed our banks, and crashed our stock market again.
Today, our once powerful economy bumbles along, eeking out meager job growth while the Fed holds interest rates at 0% – lower than Greenspan dared.
Nice work, Newt.
Mitt Romney says he will put an end to the dollar-yuan currency peg imposed on America by Beijing. But, he says that he will do so by petitioning Gingrich’s WTO. This approach is, shall we say, effete. I can see Romney now, petitioning the WTO on bended knee:
“Please! Throw us a scrap of economic sovereignty! We’re dying here!”
Pathetic.
Ron Paul is just as clueless. As a Fed-stalking, libertarian ideologue, he is in complete denial about the colossal failure of his precious free-trade ideology. He makes fellow libertarian Alan Greenspan the villain, but Greenspan was only responding to the consequences of wide-open trade with low-wage nations that H. Ross Perot so presciently warned us about.
And Gingrich knew exactly what he was doing in 1994. He publicly stated that the USA was giving up its economic sovereignty:
“…twenty years from now we will look back on this as a very important defining moment.”
Well, I’m looking back right now.
Note to Newt. You were right; the moment you ended American prosperity was indeed a defining moment. The 13 million people unemployed, and the 46 million on food-stamps are more your responsibility than almost anyone else.
Note: Here is what Gingrich told the House Ways and Means committee in June 1994
“I am just saying that we need to be honest about the fact that we are transferring from the United States at a practical level significant authority to a new organization. This is a transformational moment. I would feel better if the people who favor this would just be honest about the scale of change.
“I agree … this is very close to Maastrict [the European Union treaty by which the EU member nations have surrendered considerable sovereignty], and twenty years from now we will look back on this as a very important defining moment. This is not just another trade agreement. This is adopting something which twice, once in the 1940s and once in the 1950s, the U.S. Congress rejected. I am not even saying we should reject it; I, in fact, lean toward it. But I think we have to be very careful, because it is a very big transfer of power.”
At the beginning of ABC’s presidential debate last night, Diane Sawyer asked the candidates how they would “bring jobs back from overseas.” None of the six Republican candidates answered the question. Maybe Sawyer herself should be president. At least she knows what the right question is.
Matt, I would love to hear Trump (in a Trump debate) ask Newt what benefit these agreements have brought forth for America and what Newt intends to do if he were President given the results. Think that will ever happen?
Steve,
So far, only Gingrich and Santorum have accepted the invitation to Trump’s debate. Hopefully, it won’t be cancelled.
Matt
I heard on the news last night that the Trump-moderated debate has been canceled.
John,
Yes, Trump cancelled it. And at the same time I got an email from his “Should Trump Run” campaign asking me to recruit people to the cause. Of course, it’s hard to tell what the cause is now.
Matt