Explaining the Inexplicable

Fred Upton (R-Curly Socialist Lightbulbs)a member of the Supercommittee can't explain the core of modern Republican economic policy. All it took was Al Hunt of Bloomberg to ask the right questions, something that is sadly a rarity among journalists these days.

Here's the exchange:

HUNT: Why under those pre-Bush tax cut tax rates did the economy do so well in the ‘90s? And why under the Bush tax rates, less for the wealthy, to do so poorly in this decade?

UPTON: Well, a couple things. One, spending went up, Al, the wars. I mean, that’s trillions of dollars. And also there was no change in the entitlements. And we also know -

HUNT: But that shouldn’t hurt the economy. That shouldn’t hurt economic growth.

UPTON: Yeah, but that impacts the debt and the deficit.

HUNT: But I’m asking, why did the economy grow a lot? Why were more jobs created in the previous decade under higher taxes than in this decade under lower taxes?

UPTON: I don’t know specifically the answer to that question. I can – I can maybe merit a guess. But, I mean, in large part is because our job – we lost jobs. I mean, look at the jobs report that came out this last week, three-hundred- some-thousand people actually stopped looking for jobs.

Could this be the Republican's Achilles heel in the election? All polls show anywhere from 60-70% support raising taxes on the rich.