DOWNLOADS: (117)

PLAYS: (471)

Embed

Sen. Orrin Hatch continued the whining we've seen from Republicans over the fact that President Obama didn't immediately cave on these so-called "fiscal cliff" negotiations in this week's Republican weekly address. It seems someone needs to explain to the Senator what the definition of "bait and switch" is.

Sen. Hatch: Obama fiscal proposal 'classic bait and switch':

The top-ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee accused President Obama of pulling a "bait and switch" this week with the administration's proposed deal to avert the so-called "fiscal cliff."

"What [Obama] proposed this week was a classic bait and switch on the American people—a tax increase double the size of what he campaigned on, billions of dollars in new stimulus spending and an unlimited, unchecked authority to borrow from the Chinese," Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said in Saturday's weekly GOP address.

"Maybe I missed it but I don’t recall him asking for any of that during the presidential campaign. These ideas are so radical that they have already been rejected on a bipartisan basis by Congress."

On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was dispatched to Capitol Hill to share Obama's plan with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) The deal included $1.6 trillion in tax hikes, $50 billion in economic stimulus spending and $400 billion in spending cuts. Republicans have demanded more severe spending cuts - including entitlement reform - to begin a discussion on raising taxes. Read on...

As Think Progress noted, Hatch's claim that President Obama did not ask for any of the items they proposed is just not true:

Obama’s proposal — which includes $1.6 trillion in increased taxes on the rich over the next decade, $400 billion in savings in Medicare and other social programs, $50 billion in stimulus spending to begin next year, and an end to current debt ceiling rules — is not new or radical: it reflects the very same same policies Obama advanced for years and promoted extensively on the campaign trail.

For instance, Obama’s FY 2013 budget — released in February 2012 — raised “an additional $1.7 trillion in revenue” and proposed $360 billion in savings from entitlement programs, including Medicare and Medicaid. (Comparatively, Simpson-Bowles called for $2.7 trillion revenue over 10 years, more than what Obama requested). Obama advocated for additional stimulative spending throughout the campaign, calling for a path “forward” that will “continue investing in education and infrastructure.”

Republicans are feigning shock that Obama is proposing to implement the very same policies that Americans voted for in November, as they seek to define his second term agenda and bolster their own negotiating position. Meanwhile, they have yet to offer their own detailed proposal to avert the cliff.

And as they noted in their update to the post, much of what President Obama proposed this week appeared in his 20-page plan, released in October. If there's any party that hasn't negotiated in good faith for years now, it's the Republicans.

DOWNLOADS: (34)

PLAYS: (135)

Embed

It seems Republicans are determined to continue to be completely tone deaf if they think trotting Allen West out there as someone they want representing their party on a national level is a good idea. This is the same man that bragged about torturing a policeman in Iraq, that has called the progressives in the Congress Communists, and who regularly shoots his mouth off being as mean and nasty towards those on the other side of the aisle as possible, where the list is too long to go into here.

The reason I say they're continuing to promote him on a national level is because Mitt Romney decided this is just the guy who should serve as the chair of his Black Leadership Council. Now they've got him out there, giving their weekly address, complaining about the defense cuts that their vice presidential nominee voted for. I can only assume they're hoping that no one ever watches this, or that their base who might be interested in it, is just too uninformed to realize that all West is serving up for them here is a big huge pile of steaming hypocrisy and misinformation about who has been obstructing and making sure nothing gets done or passed in the Congress if President Obama might gain from it, the consequences of their actions and how damaging they have been to the American public and our economy be damned.

West seems to be doing his best to give cover for their vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan, who voted for those defense cuts and as David Plouffe pointed out last weekend, is now running from that vote as fast as he is his fictional marathon time.

And this is a member of Congress that just decided to go on vacation again while, as Think Progress noted, leaving key bills awaiting action. They've got more on other bills but here's the portion on the defense cuts:

5. Sequestration. A spokesman for Boehner said earlier this week that stopping budget cuts he voted for last August “topped our July agenda and remains atop our agenda for September.” While House Republicans have complained about the imminent spending reductions and passed a bill that would require President Obama to find offsets for spending cuts they don’t like, Republican Leader Canter could not name a single compromise he was willing to make to get a deal.

Go read the rest of the list if you want your stomach to churn. But never mind all that. It's all President Obama's fault that these cuts might be coming if you believe Allen West and not the fault of a House of Representatives that is completely unwilling to compromise, ever -- Weekly Republican Address: Rep. Allen West (R-FL) on President Obama’s Defense ‘Sequester’:

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (86)

PLAYS: (117)

Embed

More fearmongering from one of the guys who helped break the bank under Bush: Portman: ‘We Need To Face Facts, We’re Going Broke’:

Sen. Rob Portman delivered the Republican weekly address, saying, “We need to face facts: we’re going broke.” Portman is considered by many to be near the top of Mitt Romney’s list of potential running mates. CNN reports that Portman on Saturday will appear at the opening of a Romney campaign office in Ohio.

As Ben Adler at The Nation wrote last month, here's why the Romney campaign might want to avoid choosing Portman as their pick for vice president: Meet Rob Portman, Bush Republican:

If Mitt Romney is looking for a running mate to completely undermine his argument that his campaign represents the outsider-businessman, fiscally responsible alternative, he would be hard-pressed to find a better choice than Senator Rob Portman (R-OH). And yet the freshman senator and Washington insider is reportedly high on Romney’s vice-presidential short list. (This past weekend he was one of the chosen few attendees at Romney’s mysterious confab with big donors and nominal outside organizers such as Karl Rove.)

Portman’s pedigree is that of a generic establishment Republican career politician. Born in Cincinnati, Portman graduated from a private high school, Dartmouth and the University of Michigan Law School. After law school he moved to Washington, DC, where he worked for the paradigmatic lobbying firm Patton Boggs. Portman registered as a foreign agent, because he represented repressive foreign autocracies such as the Sultanate of Oman and the Republic of Haiti (ruled at the time by infamous dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier). In 1989 Portman joined President George H.W. Bush’s administration as assistant White House counsel, later serving as White House director of legislative affairs.

In 1993 Portman entered a special Congressional election back in Ohio. Portman’s Congressional career was hardly that of a legislative powerhouse. His signature accomplishments include authoring laws to eliminate capital gains taxes on most home sales and drug prevention efforts.

While lobbying for dictators would usually be a prospective running mate’s biggest liability, it is not Portman’s. By far the biggest risk in choosing Portman would be his role in the failed policies of President George W. Bush’s administration. Portman served during Bush’s second term as US Trade Representative and then as director of the Office of Management and Budget. Read on...

Transcript of Portman's remarks below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (99)

PLAYS: (106)

Embed

The Republican Party decided to bring out the author of the controversial Blunt Amendment, that thankfully was killed in the Senate last month, which would have allowed employers to deny coverage of health services to their employees on the basis of personal moral objections, to give their weekly address this Saturday.

Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt continued with the GOP's series of attacks on the Obama administration for the rising price of gas, of course conveniently omitting the fact that they soared to record heights after Republicans deregulated oil speculation back in 2008.

Blunt was also still flogging the Keystone pipeline project as some great "job creator" even though, as Media Matters' Political Correction noted, the numbers given by Republicans on the number of jobs created have been highly inflated and a lot of those jobs would be temporary or go to workers in other countries.

And like his buddy John Boehner over in the House, Blunt was calling the Buffett rule a "gimmick" because we all know that anything a Democrat proposes that might lower our deficit but doesn't fix the problem completely is a cheap trick, but when Republicans propose to go after the funding for Planned Parenthood, they're being completely serious about reducing the deficit and not just playing partisan politics.

Transcript of Blunt's remarks below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (61)

PLAYS: (128)

Embed

During this week's Republican response to President Obama's Weekly Address, we got more of the same with their solutions on energy and gas prices, which is "drill baby drill", pretending that the Keystone XL pipeline is going to create tons of jobs, and pretending that they're for an "all of the above" energy policy when they've been completely dismissive of President Obama for pushing a move to new sources of energy like solar, wind and geothermal.

Hastings also completely ignored the fact that domestic oil production is up in the United States and it hasn't lowered gas prices, that it's a global market that President Obama doesn't have a lot of control over if they're unfairly going to try to blame him for the costs of gas rising and that oil speculation has a good deal to do with the price of gasoline going up which his party doesn't seem to be too interested in confronting since they don't want any regulation of Wall Street or anyone else for that matter. Let the 'free market" rule.

Hastings was also still pushing the GOP's old "jobs plan" which Jon Perr already took apart for us here at C&L, not to be confused with their "new" jobs plan which he also debunked for us as well.

Transcript of Hasting's remarks and their description of the video from their You Tube posting below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (171)

PLAYS: (440)

Embed

Any time you hear a Republican use the word "Greece" to defend not raising taxes on the rich and to push the austerity measures, it's a safe bet--before you even hear anything else they had to say--that they're lying. They may claim that they are willing do anything to make the situation better in the United States in regard to jobs and the economy, but the truth is those measures will kill us.

I've been following the Republicans' response to President Obama's Weekly Address almost since he's been elected and if there's one thing you can say for them, it's that they've got their messaging down pat. No matter who gives the response, they are going to repeat that messaging week after week, usually jam-packed full of lies.

Case in point is this week's latest, with Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R - WA) doing the duties and a repeat we saw from her fellow House member Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-NY) last month. I'll just quote a bit of what I already wrote about Hayworth here:

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-NY) delivered this week's Republican address and lo and behold, they're still pretending like they care about job creation and pushing their House Republican Plan for America's Job Creators that Jon Perr wrote about here last October:

So there's one of the lies in Rodger's statement: that they actually have some "plan" for jobs that isn't just more of their standard fare of dismantling all government regulations and lowering taxes for the rich.

As to her statement that we're going to become "Greece", I'd just refer readers back to Paul Krugman who debunked that back in May of 2010 -- We’re Not Greece. Sadly, they've refused to quit using that lie at every single opportunity no matter how many times it's been debunked or for how long.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (56)

PLAYS: (155)

Embed

We've been down this road before and it only took a week for TPM's Sahil Kapur's prediction to be correct that this trial balloon for Republican governors trying to take credit for the economy improving being one of their talking points we're going to hear more of, this time with Virginia's wingnut Gov. Bob McDonnell repeating it during their weekly Republican response to President Obama's weekly address.

For a reminder of why McDonnell is just as full of it this week as he was last week, I'll refer back to my post from here -- Gov. Bob McDonnell: Economy is Recovering Because of What Republican Governors Are Doing, Not the President.

I didn't see McDonnell on the list of Sunday show hackery this weekend, but I believe he agreed to make an appearance on Rachel Maddow's show this week. I look forward to seeing whether she calls him out for the fact that these Republican governors he's touting here have done nothing but do their best to destroy, weaken and sabotage our economy with the help of their cohorts in the Senate and House in order to make President Obama a one term president, which is their political goal, if he actually shows up for the interview.

Transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (114)

PLAYS: (202)

Embed

With the upcoming primary in Florida next week, the Republicans decided to trot out their "golden boy" Marco Rubio for a good bit of projection on who it was that tanked our economy and to rattle off their usual list of grievances about President Obama not magically fixing the mess he inherited from George W. Bush in the face of unprecedented obstruction by the Republicans in the Congress.

What Rubio dished out here was more of their upside down definition of "class warfare" where they obviously think most Americans are too stupid to know what the actual definition of class warfare is and that it's their wealthy political donors who are winning that war right now with record income disparity in the United States.

Rubio also repeated the zombie lie that we've been hearing from Mitt Romney on the campaign trail, that "Obama made the economy worse." Jon Perr debunked that lie already for C&L in his post here -- Romney's Big Lie on the Economy Gets Bigger. And for a little reminder about that economic mess the Obama administration was left and who caused our current deficit, I'll just remind everyone again about this chart -- The Bush Deficit.

Rubio again says that the stimulus bill didn't work even though we know that Republicans have been talking out of both sides of their mouth on the issue since we know they were all clamoring for that money for their individual states and districts as we documented here, and here, and here, and here, and here. And we have more where those came from but I'll stop there.

Rubio pretends that the Republicans care about upward mobility and everyday Americans being able to get ahead, but their policies of trickle-down economics and tax breaks for the richest among us have led to nothing but record income disparity the likes of which we haven't seen since The Gilded Age, and their solutions are for more of the same that we saw under George W. Bush, but put on steroids. If this is really the message they want to carry into the general election, it's going to be interesting to see how the public responds once they all start trying to campaign on this around the country and try to sell this snake oil to someone besides Republican primary voters.

If the reactions from my coworkers, friends and family that I've spoken to so far are any indication, I don't think it's going to go well for them. I've gotten nothing but completely negative reaction from anyone who has been even remotely paying attention on their messaging, their "class warfare" rhetoric and even my lifelong Republican father has called the current crop of GOP presidential candidates "a bunch of clowns" after watching some of their debates.

Transcript via Real Clear Politics below the fold -- Rubio Gives GOP Weekly Address: Obama Has "Made Everything Worse":

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (60)

PLAYS: (130)

Embed

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Rep. Nan Hayworth (R-NY) delivered this week's Republican address and lo and behold, they're still pretending like they care about job creation and pushing their House Republican Plan for America's Job Creators that Jon Perr wrote about here last October:

As it turns out, this is one of those rare occasions where John Boehner is right. After all, that same day Boehner's Republican colleagues in the Senate introduced their own GOP jobs plan titled the "Jobs Through Growth Act." Of course, President Obama could be forgiven for assuming the GOP had nothing new to say on the subject of the economy. Because as a quick glance reveals, John McCain's new "Jobs Through Growth Act" like Eric Cantor's "House Republican Plan for America's Job Creators" is just a cynical rehash of the same tried and untrue policies the GOP has been pushing for years.

That the Senate Republicans' ersatz plan is a merely a repackaging of a years-old Republican wish list is apparent from the description on John McCain's web site. It's not merely a litany of existing GOP legislation; the call for upper class tax cuts, cutting federal regulations and tort reform could have come straight out of George W. Bush's 2000 campaign playbook. And the demands for steep spending cuts, a balanced budget amendment, 25% tax rates for individuals and corporations and the repeal of the Affordable Care Act are just a copy and paste from the Republicans' Ryan budget, the GOP "Pledge to America", the Tea Party "Contract from America" and other recent conservative manifestoes mercifully consigned to the dustbin of history.

Of course, if you think you've heard this story before, that's because you have. Read on...

Republicans also obviously have no shame whatsoever when they can continue to lie to the American public and pretend like they care about job creation when they are the ones who have been doing everything possible to sabotage any economic recovery.

Transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (210)

PLAYS: (432)

Embed

As I've already written about here in my post on Neil Cavuto bringing in a speed reader to attack government regulations, as Media Matters pointed out, Fox News began a week long assault on government regulations in conjunction with the GOP's push to roll those regulations back as well. During their weekly address, Rep. Peter Roskam continued that assault.

Some of the businesses he named off have already been written about at C&L, such as the Gibson guitar case, and the GOP's attempt to gut the NLRB and their union busting in the Boeing case. Roskam also mentioned a business called Chicago White Metal Casting, which is "a third-generation family-owned die casting company employing 250 workers in suburban Chicago", that apparently isn't too happy about the amount of paperwork they're having to do in order to comply with the Clean Air Act and mercury emissions standards.

Fox did some follow up on the numbers being pushed over at Fox "News" on the costs of regulations which I'm sure were fed to them straight from the GOP here -- Fox's Attack On Regulations Relies On Widely Discredited Cost Estimate:

As part of a weeklong series helping to push an anti-regulatory agenda, Fox News is citing a discredited estimate that regulations cost businesses on average $161,000 each year. The estimate, which comes from a report prepared by outside researchers for the Small Business Administration, has been criticized for using a flawed research design, cherry-picking the highest cost estimates, and relying on "crude" data.

Lots more there and I don't want to just copy and paste all of their research here, so just go read the rest. And they also followed with another post this weekend which took a closer look at just what government programs, laws and regulations Fox, and by default the GOP were carping about as "burdensome" to small business owners.

Fox's War On Regulations Takes On Child Labor, Workplace Safety, Civil Rights Laws:

Continue reading »