Bill O'Reilly

Bill O'Reilly

President Obama's job creation bill was greeted with alarm by conservative TV and radio hosts who unanimously pronounced it dead on arrival. Bill O'Reilly was particularly dismissive of the bill and wondered why the president would put the American people through the trauma of watching it be torn apart by the republican-led Congress (read transcript of show). O'Reilly is, of course, aware that something must be done about the ailing economy but he doesn't believe that offering hiring incentives to businesses, investing in infrastructure and cutting taxes for the middle class is the way to go, if it means his taxes will go up.

Surely the president knows the Republican-dominated House will not pass the legislation because it includes an income tax increase to pay for it – or at least, we think so. The president will announce that next week. So why is Mr Obama putting us through all this? I don't – as it stands now, you know, he is saying that the corporations and the wealthy Americans have to pay their, quote, "fair share". I mean, that's just code for, "look, I'm going to raise taxes" – and, you know, the House isn't going [to]. So why, why are we on this merry-go-round?

O'Reilly is correct that the president has proposed some measures that would increase his personal tax bill, such as limiting the itemised deductions that wealthier tax payers can claim and treating capital gains income, which is currently taxed at 15%, as ordinary income, which is taxed at 35% – a loophole that allows billionaires like Warren Buffet to, in his own words, enjoy a lower tax rate than his secretary.

O'Reilly discussed the issue with Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume, who didn't agree that the president just put the bill forward for his own amusement or for political gain. While he was certain that Republicans will and should block the jobs bill, they must be careful not to be "too defiant about it", lest they be seen as scoring a victory over President Obama at the expense of the American people. That said, he thought if Republicans could sell the bill as "another failed stimulus", then the political danger of opposing it was minimal.

No, and they won't. And they won't. So the die will be cast again. President Obama will tell the nation these people are obstructionists: they don't care about jobs. They don't care about you. And the Republicans will say to the folks, "He doesn't know what he's doing. Why would we throw more bad money after the stimulus failed in the first place? That's insane." And the folks will have to decide who is right. That's what it comes down to, correct?

Hume wasn't sure it was quite that simple, but replied, "That's certainly one way of looking at it."

Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh also opposed the job creation bill because taxes on people like him would have to go up to pay for it (listen to show). He is concerned about the potential political fallout, however, and thinks the bill was deliberately designed to ensure Republicans look really bad when they refuse to pass it.

"What Obama has proposed is not a jobs plan. And, by the way, it is not designed to pass. It is not designed to pass! It is designed for the Republicans to oppose this thing. I mean, every tax increase Obama's ever dreamt of, wet or dry, that he's been trying for three years to get passed, is there – tax increases that even the Democrats, when they ran the whole House and Senate, when he had super-majority, couldn't get passed. It's the same tax increases. He wants to punish the people that create and produce energy for us in this country. He wants to punish them with higher taxes."

Like O'Reilly, Limbaugh never mentioned that the bill actually contains a tax cut for the middle class. In fact, this central component has been so overlooked by the rightwing media that the watchdog group Media Matters went so far as to suggest that there has been a deliberate attempt to spin the jobs bill as being "all about tax hikes". Limbaugh must have been aware of the provisions in the bill to give both employees and employers with a payroll tax cut (from 6.2% to 3.1%), as he had a copy of the bill in his possession.

In fact, I have a PDF copy of the thing there. It's 155 pages. There are 235 mentions of the word "tax" in the 155-page bill. At any rate, what Obama wants to do is limit mortgage deductions, as well as the deductions for charitable contributions and state tax deductions. He's been trying to get these same exact tax increases passed for more than three years.

Presumably, among the 235 mentions of the word tax, there was something about the cuts, but maybe Limbaugh chose not to mention them to avoid stoking class warfare. It is a delicate issue for conservatives like himself who supported no-strings-attached tax cuts for the wealthy to now oppose tax cuts for the middle class on the grounds that we can't afford them.

Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck doesn't like the jobs bill either, though it took him longer than usual to articulate why. This week, he launched his new internet venture, GBTV, and the 230,000 paid subscribers will no doubt have been glad to find that other than the program being three times as long, little has changed. Conspiracy theories abound, there are chalkboards aplenty and Beck wept his way through much of the inaugural episode.

The tears were for 9/11, but by 9/13, they had subsided and he was able to turn his attention to his opposition to the jobs plan. He seemed to think that if we engage in any more spending in America, we will end up like Europe, where tensions are rising because the industrious, BMW-producing Germans are having to bail out the do-nothing Greeks who lounge around on beaches all day wearing speedos and retire at 45. Beck fears that the conflict between the hardworking European nations (Germany) and the lazy ones (everyplace else) will lead to a rise of what he calls the "old right" (fascism) and the "old left" (communism). But he clarifies that the right wing in Europe still comprises socialists because they are for "big government".

The Germans work hard. They will push back. This will cause the beginning of the rise of the old right. Remember that's the socialist right; it's not the American right. It's the socialist, big-government right, the spooky Nazi right. Greeks are going to push back, which will be the rise of the old left. This is already happening. The Greeks are already saying wait a minute the Germans can't tell us how to spend our money.

So Europe is struggling to cope with tensions between rightwing socialists and leftwing socialists, and Beck believes that the only way to avoid the sort of problems they are having (high unemployment and mounting debt) is to make sure that socialism doesn't creep into America's backyard. This is why he doesn't like the jobs bill because he thinks it's just another attempt by President Obama to level the playing field and bring about a Marxist utopia – like they have in Europe.

What you have to be aware of the president is spending us into oblivion because you have to equalise the rest of the world. If the rest of the world is going down and your desire is to fundamentally transform – remember, in his campaign promise, he said we will start with the United States and then we will transform the world? You can't have anybody with a white horse to ride in on, not that we even own our own horses – we'd be borrowing them from China. But you can't have anybody to ride in on with a capitalist horse.

The studio audience looked a little alarmed (and confused) at this point, but Beck reassured them that Republicans will never pass a bill that increases taxes on the rich, and as long as they are willing to volunteer in soup kitchens to help the growing numbers of unemployed, all will be well.