Rooting For Recession

CORE MESSAGE

The Republican Recession:
They started it, they kept it going, and by their own admission, they'd bring it back.

Connect: Americans are beyond frustrated with politicians who put their narrow political goals ahead of jobs.

Define: Republican politicians admit their top political priority is to defeat President Obama and they're willing to throw our economy into a recession to get it done.

Explain: They started the recession by letting Wall Street crash the economy, killing millions of American jobs. They sustained the recession with spending cuts that threw hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work.

Expose: Even Mitt Romney admits that massive spending cuts will "throw us into recession or depression" -- but he supports them anyway because he'll do better if Americans do worse.

Values: They're choosing to cut our way into recession because they care more about winning for themselves than winning for America. That's not leadership. That's sabotage.

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ATTACKS AND RESPONSES

ATTACK: "Obama is wasting taxpayer money on 'public equity' failures that don't create jobs."
RESPONSE:

• Right-wing pundits and politicians are at it again, using their old playbook to attack the President and kill off Big Oil's clean energy competitors -- at the expense of American competitiveness and jobs.
• Actually, the energy investment programs they're attacking are highly successful at developing American clean energy businesses -- more successful than the private sector.
• Examples like Solyndra show exactly why we need to invest more in clean energy, not less. Solyndra went bankrupt because it was beat out by Chinese companies that benefit from China out-investing us in clean energy.
• Clean energy is the fastest growing job sector in the world -- America should be leading, not getting left behind by China and Europe.

ATTACK: "If Romney is president, he'll bring the unemployment rate down to 6% by 2016."
RESPONSE:

• If Romney isn't president, our economy on its own is already expected to lower unemployment that much by then. If Romney was president, he'd be pushing the very thing -- massive job-killing spending cuts -- that he admits will make unemployment WORSE.
• In fact, if Republican politicians hadn't pushed so hard to lay off our teachers, cops, and firefighters and block Obama's job creation efforts, unemployment could be 6% already.
• We have a long way to go before our economy's fully recovered. Americans shouldn't have to keep fighting the GOP to get there.

ATTACK: "Unlike Obama, Romney knows how to create jobs in the private sector."
RESPONSE:

• Here's what Mitt Romney knows about our economy: how to help Wall Street make millions off of businesses that fail and make working families pay more so millionaires like him pay less.
• Does Mitt Romney know how to make himself and Wall Street investors very rich? Absolutely. Is he a voice for working families? No way.
• When he was governor of Massachusetts, he had the same corporate experience as he has now. What did that get Massachusetts? Ranked 47th out of 50 states in job growth.
• Americans need a president who fights for an economy that works for everyone. That means putting jobs ahead of maximizing profits for corporate executives and their wealthy investors.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW 

• Mitt Romney's admission that slashing our investments in America hurts our economy isn't the first -- even George W. Bush's speechwriter admits that Republican politicians support the same policies they're attacking now when it's a Republican president in the White House.
• Despite Republican efforts to sabotage the recovery, our economy has steadily created over 4 million private sector jobs in the last two years.
• The Romney-Ryan budget that House Republicans just passed could wipe out all those jobs gains, costing our economy over 4 million jobs in the next two years.
• Last year alone, Washington Republicans tried to kill over 7 million jobs. At the state and local level, Republican leadership is responsible for most of the public sector layoffs that are dragging down our national economic recovery.
• If Republicans in Congress hadn't pushed so hard to lay off our teachers, cops, and firefighters and block efforts to put Americans back to work fixing our roads and bridges, the unemployment rate could already be down to 6%.
• In fact, if public sector employment had grown since the official start of the recovery by the average amount it grew in the three previous recoveries, we'd have nearly 2 more million jobs today.

We develop messaging by aggregating, analyzing and distilling polling, tested messaging, and expert recommendations, and monitoring the media to identify what is and isn't working. See here for some of the experts and organizations we draw on.