There’s not much argument that Republicans as a whole support business and the free-market. They’ve long espoused their belief in government’s responsibility to support the private sector and its role in job creation. With machine like consistency, they’ve beat back efforts to spawn government jobs, always asserting that small business is where the jobs are. So, one would think the Republicans would support an attempt to assist small businesses. But such was not the case yesterday, when Senate Republicans voted unanimously to defeat a bill to stimulate investment in small business.

The Small Business Jobs and Credit Act of 2010 is intended to spur investment by eliminating capital gains taxes for investment in small firms, and also creating a Small Business Lending Fund to underwrite loans through community banks. It would also waive fees on Small Business Association loans and allow increased tax deductions for new equipment and other expenses. For many this sounded like a reasonable shot in the arm for beleaguered businesses, but Republicans filibustered yet again — and another potential jobs bill failed to pass.

This comes after weeks of Republican fighting to strip the job creation provisions from the bill to extend unemployment benefits, which they subsequently stalled even after stripping. Democrats in the Senate did finally pass the extension last week with the help of 2 Republicans, but not before 2.6 million Americans had seen their benefits run out. If this all seems more than a little counter-production in an environment where real unemployment is still over 16.5%, that’s because it is.

So, what is the reason for the seeming incongruity between Republican rhetoric and their voting record? The answer just might be found in their position on the Bush tax cuts.

When defending the extension of the Bush cuts for the wealthy, Republicans routinely cite the detrimental impact the “hikes” would have on small business. This slant certainly makes good political sense, since according to the Small Business Administration (SBA), 90% of U.S. firms have fewer than 20 employees. And considering the current state of unemployment, coupled with the fact that small business creates between 66% and 88% of net new jobs, it’s patently obvious that efforts to stimulate job growth must be focused on this segment of business.

So, Republicans profess support for the little guy, and typically rely on Grover Norquist’s 2008 estimate stating that two-thirds of small businesses would be adversely affected by expiring the cuts for the rich. Asserting their allegiance, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) recently appeared on CNBC to make his case for extending all tax cuts and claimed it was because of the Republican desire to, “commit ourselves to help small business.” Indeed, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Congressional Budget Office director who now runs a Republican think tank, tied it all back to jobs, claiming that the tax increase would reduce small business hiring by 18%.

Of course, all of this is as much nonsense as the Republican spin on tax cuts paying for themselves. In truth, only a small fragment of small businesses would be affected by ending the cuts for those making over $250,000. Tax expert Len Burman put the number at 3% of small businesses that are subject to the top two individual tax rates. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities set the number even lower, at 1.9%. As it turns out, Norquist’s calculations looked at the percentage of income, not of firms. What he was attributing to the ranks of small business was the wealthiest hedge funds, law firms and lobbying outlets in America.

Fortunately, once the layers are peeled off the onion, the Republican message at least becomes consistent. It’s not small business that they support, not unless you consider multi-million-dollar sole proprietorships or partnerships as small business — just because they have few employees. The sad truth is that Republican support for small business is as ephemeral as their concern over the unemployed. It only lives in the rhetoric they use to justify their policies while hiding their true and undying loyalty to the richest 2% of Americans.

Let all voters wake up and beware. A line has been drawn in the sand. We no longer need to debate the sides based on some nebulous idea of who Democrats and Republicans support. All ambiguity has been removed — the Republican Party supports big business and will gladly sacrifice small business, the unemployed, even the nation if it will increase the profits of their elite minority.

People need to take a serious look at this and ask themselves which side of the line they’re on. And if they make under $250,000 per year and still choose to vote Republican, they need to do so with full understanding that they’re contributing to their own demise.

Democrats are now starting to support the Republican call to extend the Bush tax cuts. In a recent interview, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) stated that, “The general rule of thumb would be you’d not want to do tax changes, tax increases … until the recovery is on more solid ground.” I’ve got to ask, what effing “recovery” is Conrad talking about? Is he referring to the Dow being over 10,000? He’s sure not talking about the 30 million Americans who are unemployed or the countless others who are underemployed, threatened, or who have seen their nest eggs decimated.

The thing that most revolts me about this “you can’t raise taxes in a recession” pitch is that it’s spoken by the same folk who are suddenly budget conscious and focused on the deficit. Most recently, Republicans fought the extension of unemployment benefits because the $34 billion price tag was not offset with corresponding spending cuts. Now those same “leaders” are fighting for a $678 billion reduction in revenue by maintaining the Bush tax cuts for the top 2%.

To support their case, they offer the same voodoo economic tenets that supply side crooks have been spewing for decades: they claim that “tax cuts pay for themselves.” Of course, nobody actually believes this — not even the liars who say it’s so. Everyone knows that there’s ZERO empirical evidence to support this claim. In fact, all evidence supports exactly the opposite.

In a 2005 Congressional Budget Office study looking at the macroeconomic impact of an across-the-board 10% tax cut, the CBO estimated that the BEST CASE return was an offset of the loss in revenue by 22% over the first 5 years and by 32% over the second 5 year period. And those were their most optimistic projections. Their more conservative assumptions concluded that the offset over the first 5 years would be only 1%, and that the second period would actually experience a 5% increase in lost revenue. Also, it’s important to keep in mind that this study looked at across-the-board cuts, for rich and poor alike. If the cuts were isolated to only the top rates, even less of the money would find its way back into the economy.

Mark Zandi, head economist for Moody’s, provided analysis in 2009 that supports a similar conclusion. His study of the Fiscal Stimulus of 2008 shows that general tax cuts will increase the GDP by only $1.03 for every dollar of tax relief. The increase in GDP would then theoretically be taxed at some marginal rate, which at present would return no more than $0.36 in tax revenues. The bottom line is that while economists might debate whether or when tax cuts are good for the economy, they virtually all agree that cuts don’t pay for themselves.

But, where tax cuts have questionable impact, government spending provides a much better return. In stark contrast to the weak stimulus provided by tax cuts, the Zandi study concluded that an extension of unemployment benefits would grow the GDP by $1.63 for every dollar spent. The same study estimated every dollar of increased infrastructure spending would return $1.59.

So, why is it again — that we have to offset increased spending, but we don’t have to cover tax cuts?

Oh yeah . . . I remember — it’s because we need jobs, and those tax cuts for the rich are supposed to produce them.

But, wait a minute. Haven’t we tried that before? Weren’t the Bush tax cuts supposed to produce millions of jobs?

Actually, the Bush administration sold the tax cuts of 2003 by claiming they would create 1.4 million new jobs. These jobs were supposed to add to the 4.1 million jobs “expected” from earlier efforts. But in the end, only 2.4 million jobs were ever created. Of course, this shouldn’t come as a surprise, since the entire boom cycle of the Bush years only produced 5.6 million new jobs. In fact, the Bush era had the slowest rate of average job growth of any cycle since 1945, and it was even worse for those in their prime work years (ages 25 to 54), where only 1.8 million jobs were added throughout the Bush cycle.

The sad truth is that we spent most of the past decade testing the effectiveness of growing the economy and creating jobs by cutting taxes, and the entire process has been proven to be an abysmal failure. The first decade of this century produced ZERO net job growth, while no other decade going back to the 1940s produced less than 20%. Do we really want more of this medicine?

What the supply-side fallacy of tax cuts for the rich actually produces is intuitively obvious to even the most conservative observer — it’s more money for the rich. Those very same Bush policies that added all those jobs also brought the after-tax income of the top 1% to it’s highest level since 1979 (17.1%), concentrated more wealth in the top 1% than the bottom 90%, and gave average Americans the first decline of median household income of any cycle since 1967.

There’s only one reason that Republicans, and some Democrats, support tax cuts for the rich, and it’s best summed up by none other than G.W. himself: spoken at the Al Smith dinner in 2000, “This is an impressive crowd — the haves and the have mores. Some people call you the elite — I call you my base.” They owe their allegiance to the wealthy; they willfully sacrifice the average American for the top 2%; they paint government as the problem, knowing that it’s the only hope of The People, and they will do or say anything to serve themselves and further their elitist goals.

The American middle class was created through a system designed to effectively and ethically share the wealth of our great nation. At the core of that system was a structure of progressive taxation that provided the revenue required for it to function. That progressive structure once asked much of those who gained the most, and for decades it worked well. It worked to pay off the war debt and create the programs of the New Deal. But it stopped working in the 1980s, when movement conservatism worked to cut the top rates in half. It doesn’t work today for the same reason. Now those same conservatives are at work again — working to save money for their elite, working to starve government, working to end the American middle class.