January 17, 2012

Mitt Romney’s Big Obama Jobs Lie

Mitt Romney.<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wacphiladelphia/4559118112/sizes/m/in/photostream/">World Affairs Council of Philadelphia</a>/Flickr

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At the Fox News/Wall Street Journal debate Monday night in South Carolina, GOP presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney made a breathtakingly bogus claim about President Obama’s jobs record. “We have a president in office three years,” Romney claimed, “and he does not have a jobs plan yet.”

Romney is either suffering from selective amnesia or is trying to dupe the public. Last fall, the president unveiled his American Jobs Act, a $447 billion package of tax cuts for businesses; funds to retain more teachers, cops, and firefighters; and money to hire construction workers to upgrade and retrofit public schools nationwide. The bill also included $50 billion for investing in America’s roads, bridges, rail lines, and other infrastructure. All the measures in the Jobs Act are intended to spur hiring and prevent layoffs throughout the American economy. Need more? Check out this entire website devoted to the Jobs Act.

In November, Senate Republicans blocked various pieces of the American Jobs Act on three separate occasions. Now, Obama says he’s going to try to implement job-creating measures on his own without sending legislation to Congress. But to claim that the president “does not have a jobs plan yet,” as Mitt Romney did on Monday night, couldn’t be further from the truth.

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We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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