Merkley Makes The Case
by digby
Greg Sargent:
Senator Jeff Merkley opens fire on the House GOP plan for budget cuts in some of the harshest terms I've heard yet:
The GOP budget plan will destroy 700,000 jobs. The last thing our nation can afford right now is further job losses. We need to be creating jobs, not destroying jobs.
There are common-sense budget cuts that could reduce our deficits without wrecking the economy or attacking working families. We can start by cutting back on the bonus tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires that Republican leaders insisted on just ten weeks ago. We could end tax subsidies for oil companies and save tens of billions of dollars in the process.
Republican House Speaker John Boehner summarized his perspective on the Republican budget as follows: if people might lose their jobs, "so be it." You might think the House Republican leaders would show some humility after their failed agenda turned record surpluses into massive deficits in 2001, or after their policies reduced the wages of working Americans during the modest expansion in the middle of the decade, or after they burned down the economy with unregulated derivatives and predatory mortgage securities in 2008.
Apparently not. Their proposals are exactly the same: give massive tax cuts to the wealthiest, shred the safety net, and eliminate investments that would help restore American economic leadership.
Thank you Senator Merkley. That has such a ring of truth that like Sargent, I can imagine how powerful it would be if the Democratic Party would adopt this as their new rallying cry:
It's tempting to imagine what would happen if Dems were united behind a hard hitting message emphasizing the charges Merkley leveled here: GOP budget cuts will destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs. Republicans are hacking away at programs that benefit working and middle-class Americans even as they preserve tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. And Republicans have no business lecturing America with pieties about the deficit, given that their policies played a major role in creating it.
But Dems are not united behind such a message.
No they aren't. But this shows that such a message is possible.
Sadly, if one thinks it's important to be seen as the most "bipartisan" guy in the room the result is likely to be fairly ugly in light of this:
Just over one month ago, the Senate largely abandoned a plan to ambitiously reform the Senate rules after the GOP agreed to a “handshake deal” which would curb the unprecedented spike in filibusters since the GOP lost control of the Senate. Rather than uphold their side of the bargain, eight Republican senators have now promised to take their obstructionism to unprecedented heights.
Sens. Tom Coburn (R-OK), John McCain (R-AZ), Jim DeMint (R-SC), John Ensign (R-NV), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) circulated a letter to their colleagues yesterday threatening to place a hold on any bill which does not comply with five very broad criteria.
This is the Teabag faction, of course, which now includes John McCain (who I always knew was a fanatical right wing scumbag at heart)and John Ensign who is under big time pressure. (I expect Orrin Hatch will be joining this group any day now.) Essentially, they are now running the US Senate and any "deals" that happen will have to get past them. Doesn't that sound grand?
So I'm frankly rooting for gridlock at this point. And if that's what we have, then it's necessary to use it wisely. Merkley's speech is a great starting point.
Unfortunately, it's not looking good. As Sargent concludes:
Merkley's strong stand reminds us that by and large Dems are not really united behind a powerful, coherent, and consistent critique of the GOP's fiscal policies. And Republicans are rubbing their hands together in glee about it.
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