After Doing Nothing for Six Years, Republicans Claim We Need More…Republicans

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The midterms are fast approaching and Republicans are scrambling to blame the Democrats for having done nothing at all to move the country forward since the day Barack Obama took office in 2009.

In a CNN op-ed, Sen. John Thune (R-SD) and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) claim – and you wonder if they didn’t giggle helpless over their keyboards as they wrote –

Our party has heard Americans’ concerns, and that’s why we’ve put forward hundreds of bills to help grow the economy, create jobs, expand opportunity and give American families hope for tomorrow.

The Republican Party has, of course, done nothing of the sort. But according to Thune and Rodgers, “The House Republican majority has passed one jobs bill after another.”

Right.

John Boehner keeps claiming that Republicans have produced 40+ jobs bills, and Nancy Pelosi’s office finally had to put together a fact sheet to disprove the scurrilous allegations that the GOP had tried to create even a single job for Americans:

Speaker Boehner’s list of 43 so-called “jobs” bills includes:

33 partisan, special interest bills, which are message bills to nowhere and are not “jobs” bills; and
10 mostly modest bills with bipartisan support still being considered in the Senate; not significant “jobs” bills.

That’s how much Republicans love Americans’ concerns. As just one example of these mythical jobs bills,

* GOP’s Budget to Give More Tax Breaks to Millionaires, As Well As To Destroy 3 Million Jobs (Path to Prosperity Budget, H.Con.Res. 96) – Instead of creating jobs, this House GOP budget is estimated to destroy 3 million jobs and decrease economic growth by 2.5 percent in 2016. The GOP budget guts investment in America’s highways, railways, transit systems, and ports and slashes education funding. In addition, the GOP budget raises taxes on middle class families with children by an average of at least $2,000, while giving a $200,000 tax break to millionaires.

Yeah, sorry Sen. Thune and Rep. Rodgers. Those just don’t sound all that helpful to the bulk of us who are NOT rich. Which is most Americans. You know, the ones you pretend to care about.

Since none of “Mythical 40 actually create jobs, what do they do? As Jason Easley explained it on September 8, “The list of “jobs bills” reveals that the legislation falls into three categories.”

The largest category is tax breaks and gifts for the oil, coal, and natural gas industries.
he second category is regulatory repeal, which is also another gift for big business.
The last category is attacks on Obamacare. Boehner’s jobs bills for veterans increased fees for services to vets.

But we’re supposed to believe “While Democrats stand in the way of 21st-century solutions that will move our economy forward, Republicans continue to advance them… We want to make it better.”

For whom? Not for you and me, that is for certain. The Koch brothers might feel differently.

If that isn’t fantasy enough for one op-ed, Thune and Rodgers want you to believe that,

Unfortunately, once these bills go to the Democrat-led Senate, their progress comes to an abrupt halt. Scores of jobs bills and other important legislation are currently gathering dust on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s desk.
The same thing has happened to Senate Republicans.

“Americans need solutions. But as long as Reid continues to obstruct meaningful legislation in the Senate, they’re not going to get them.”

In a classic example of blaming the other guy for your own deeds, the dynamically dishonest duo write,

While Democrats stand in the way of 21st-century solutions that will move our economy forward, Republicans continue to advance them.

The contrast between the two parties couldn’t be more clear: Republicans are working to create jobs for Americans. Democrats are working to save their own.

Really? How about when, back in July, you Republicans voted against American jobs by blocking a bill to end tax breaks for companies outsourcing jobs? I might be missing something, but sending American jobs overseas is a peculiar way to benefit Americans.

And what about that unfortunate little fact from just last week? You know, when, House Republicans screwed the American people by canceling jobs votes and leaving until November?

As Jason Easley wrote,

After a nearly a year of having done nothing, House Republicans have rewarded themselves by canceling all of their remaining votes and leaving town until after November’s midterm election.

DCCC Chairman Rep. Steve Israel said in response,

House Republicans are now abandoning any pretense of doing actual work for the American people, skipping town one day after doing the bare minimum required to keep the government functioning but blocking any progress for the middle class. House Republicans have proved yet again that they are only interested in doing their jobs long enough to stack the deck for special interests and launch political stunts. Democrats are committed to jumpstarting our middle class, not setting the government on autopilot and then heading for vacation.

In fact, far from moving the country forward, Republicans have plotted to hold the country back. As Robert Draper’s 2012 book, ‘Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the US House of Representatives’ explained, 15 Republicans, “House members Eric Cantor, Jeb Hensarling, Pete Hoekstra, Dan Lungren, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan and Pete Sessions. From the Senate were Tom Coburn, Bob Corker, Jim DeMint, John Ensign and Jon Kyl…gathered at the Caucus Room in Washington” and came up with a strategy to make the Obama presidency a failure.

They planned to do this by obstructing the president. Not to move America forward. Not to create jobs. But to oppose everything Obama did so that he would not get re-elected in 2012.

That was it, their grand strategy for America in a time of crisis. A plan that – given we were in two wars the Republicans themselves had started and struggling with an economy they themselves had destroyed – was nothing short of treason.

David Axelrod tweeted at the time, and really, “appalling” just doesn’t seem a strong enough term,

“This is sad, appalling but not terribly surprising. A GOP plan to obstruct from day one.”

It is not Democrats who have refused to work with Republicans, but Republicans who, on Day 1 back in 2009, decided that they would never ever agree with anything the president wanted, even if it meant exposing themselves as buffoons by opposing their own bills should Democrats ever agree with them.

As Earl Ofari Hutchinson wrote over at HuffPo in January, “the GOP’s biggest foe in 2014 will remain the GOP.”

Reading Thune’s and Rodgers’ op-ed, I can only think that Lewis Carroll could not have indulged in a more bizarre wonderland of the imagination.

You want to help Americans, Thune and Rodgers? If you want to help, don’t come back. Stay on vacation.

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Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen's Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.

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