Saturday, November 10, 2012

Boehner and McConnell, Amnesia Victims

The Speaker of the House and Senate Minority Leader are still posing for pictures nobody is taking.

In answer to the President’s Weekly Address, John Boehner huffs, “If there was a mandate in this election, it was a mandate to work together to do what’s in the best interest of our country.”

To the sympathetic Wall Street Journal, Mitch McConnell croaks, “We won't agree to any tax increases that will hurt the economy."

Wrong and wrong. Barack Obama rightly insists the election validated his approach to economic recovery and that Republicans can’t forget that in either the lame duck session or the next Congress.

In his Address, the President tells Americans that “you voted for action, not politics as usual. You elected us to focus on your jobs, not ours.

“That’s why I’ve invited leaders of both parties to the White House next week, so we can start to build consensus around challenges we can only solve together. I also intend to bring in business, labor and civic leaders from outside Washington...

“Last year, I worked with Democrats and Republicans to cut a trillion dollars’ worth of spending...But as I said over and over again on the campaign trail, we can’t just cut our way to prosperity. If we’re serious about reducing the deficit, we have to combine spending cuts with revenue--and that means asking the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more in taxes. That’s how we did it when Bill Clinton was President.”

On Sunday morning talk shows, the usual suspects will out blathering about the complexities of doing this or that in Washington, but McConnell and Boehner, both of whom face voters again in two years, can maintain their amnesia only at the risk of joining the ranks of the unemployed then.

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