We just saw President Barack Obama go to Cleveland, where he engaged in some verbal slapping around
of Republican opponents of his budget. He took a shot at Speaker of the
House John Boehner, pointing out that the evidence – not ideology –
shows that trickle-down economics doesn’t work. He touted the success of
his own economic policies, which are undeniable.
John Boehner wasn’t sitting idly by, but was also on the attack. Cory Fritz
wrote at Speaker.gov yesterday:
His own budget plan is a
disaster. His ‘middle-class economics’ are a bust. Democrats are
bailing on his priorities. So what is President Obama going to do? He’s
going to Cleveland to try and start a partisan political brawl.
It’s almost as though Boehner is living in an alternate reality. Of course he is, and it is one of his own making. Fritz cites
USA TODAY, which reported “White House officials from President Obama on down are using a series of events to trash the GOP…”
Sorry, Cory Fritz, but the GOP has trashed itself. Obama is just drawing attention to the fact.
Hypocritically, after six years of relentless race-
and politically-based Republican attacks on the president, and six years
of Republican refusal to govern, Fritz claims,
Sadly this is just the
latest example of President Obama putting campaign-style events and
partisan politics above governing. And it’s all a ruse designed to
distract from the president’s own problems, including:
- His budget, which includes $2.1 trillion in new tax hikes, a
spending increase of 65 percent over 10 years, $8.5 trillion in new debt
and never balances…. ever.
- His inability to win over his own party on priorities like an AUMF, cybersecurity and trade (see Sherrod Brown).
- And his economic plan that “doesn’t actually help the average middle-class taxpayer.”
To the first point, the president doesn’t have any
problems except for a House that has refused to participate in the
parliamentary process since the day he was elected. From the very
beginning, when they announced their plan to make his presidency a
failure and render him a one-term president, they have played
partisan-politics while ignoring their duty to govern.
In the process, they have become the paid goons of
the Koch brothers, and betrayed their sacred duty to the American people
and the United States Constitution. If greater infamy than this is to
be found in Congress, it is among 47 Republicans in the United States
Senate.
To the second point, the Republicans
pretend to
care about a balanced budget, but for some reason, a balanced budget is
only an issue now (like executive orders) that we have a black
president. You can look at the last 60 years, and as Boehner himself
pointed out the other day,
we’ve had a balanced budget in only seven of those years, four of them
by a Democrat. They pound the myth of tax and spend liberals, but it is
only a myth.
The funny thing about trying to present NAFTA (North
American Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act NAFTA Worker Security
Act) as an Obama policy is that in 1993, when it was passed, more
Democrats in Congress voted NO than voted YES, while almost
three-quarters of Republicans voted YES (
34-10 in the Senate and
132-43 in the House).
In fact, negotiations for NAFTA began in 1990, under
the presidency of George H.W. Bush and the treaty was duly signed by
Bush on December 17, 1992, leaving ratification as the next step.
NAFTA was ratified only after President Bill Clinton
added to it the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC)
and the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation (NAAEC)
which protect workers and the environment respectively.
Just to be clear: Yes, Obama supports NAFTA and the
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – I am personally opposed to both – but
at this time, Barack Obama was teaching constitutional law at the
University of Chicago Law School. He was no more president when NAFTA
came about than he was when the Twin Towers were attacked, Republican
lies notwithstanding. Let’s not pretend NAFTA is an Obama problem
exclusively.
Bill O’Reilly, as he has about so much else, has
lied about Republican support for NAFTA,
claiming in 2006 that “[m]ost Republicans didn’t want” NAFTA.
Obviously, that’s a lie. Again, the facts disprove it. Here too, Frtiz
makes it sound as though Brown opposes Obama solely, but if you look at
the actual article cited, it says,
Sen. Sherrod Brown made it clear yesterday that he will oppose Republican efforts
next year to provide President Barack Obama with the same broad
authority past presidents have used to negotiate trade agreements.
Fritz descends to comedy gold when he refers to
Obama’s failure to help middle class taxpayers, linking to another
article full of lies on speaker.gov, as though linking to one set of
lies turns another set of lies into facts.
It is a sad commentary on a GOP that stands for
nothing beyond opposition to Obama that, while openly and repeatedly
lying about the facts, Fritz
points to an article that claims it is Obama’s message that “doesn’t line up with the facts.”
“Meanwhile,” Fritz claims, “in the House,
Republicans will be using today to move forward with markup and debate
on our budget, which balances within 10 years and paves the way to job
creation and new opportunities for all Americans”:
Republicans have passed
bill after bill this year to help make a difference for middle-class
families – including bipartisan proposals to expand 529 plans to help
make college more affordable, approve the Keystone XL pipeline and
create at least 42,000 jobs, and restore the 40-hour work week to help
Americans hit hardest by the president’s health care law.
Right. Anti-abortion bill after anti-abortion bill
is a big help to Americans, and those 35 jobs from the Keystone XL
pipeline will make all the difference.
It is a lie that Boehner is restoring the 40-hour
work week, because that is just a thinly disguised attempt to take away
healthcare from the workers affected by it, in the same way as the
much-touted human-trafficking bill is just a thinly disguised
anti-abortion bill.
And again – and not least – there is the little matter of taking healthcare away from 20 million Americans.
And letting them sicken and die.
Good stuff, Boehner. The Kochs bless you and keep you. Because we won’t.
Eviscerated by President Obama in Cleveland, Speaker
Boehner had no option but to try to bury Obama’s budget in well-tried
but obvious lies.
“It’s quite the contrast in leadership,” Fritz tells
us, and he is right about that, at least. It is quite the contrast in
leadership: A president who genuinely wants to help the middle class and
make the 1 percent and corporations pay their fair share, and a House
Speaker who wants to further enrich his corporate owners at the expense
of hard-working American families, fast-tracking them on the road to
servitude.
Pick the one you prefer, America.
