BIG GOV'T BAD OR GOOD?

So the tea party is against big government and has used this as their rallying cry. Health care reform was what really got them riled up in the first place. And it is intrusive--that when the mandate kicks in and we will be forced to buy some kind of insurance or we will be fined. Gun rights are another of the tea partiers concerns which like health care, at least I can understand even if I don't agree with.



But here's what doesn't make sense to me. The main issue in this election is jobs, right? Unemployment doesn't discriminate between democrats or republicans. So which party has the better solution for it? I will freely admit that I don't have a firm grasp of economic policy. But I know this: republicans represent big business and the wealthiest. They want to keep tax breaks for the richest 2% of us and for corporations who ship our jobs overseas. How will this create jobs? It does the opposite--it exports them!

On the other hand, the democrats' BIG GOVERNMENT stimulus has definitely created jobs and kept others which might have been lost in place. In fact, many republican politicians who railed against the stimulus and voted against it were quick to point out, eventually, how it created jobs in their states--even several senators and governors who claimed that they were so opposed to the stimulus that they'd refuse the stimulus money offered. Refusing $ which creates jobs? So that jobs are NOT created? How could this possibly help? So I guess BIG BAD GOVERNMENT can be good?

I know the economy is a mess and we're all scared and broke. But it's a really simple-minded approach to just think "Times are bad. So vote out whoever is in office. Me no like. Grunt." George Bush and a republican-controlled congress gave us this mess. How will voting a party back in who created this mess, represents the wealthy AND corporations which outsource and thereby destroy our jobs going to improve the situation of the hard-up people who make up the bulk of this nation?