John Boehner's Priorities

Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner (R Ohio), has once again shown us where the Republicans' priorities are. The President has been working with leaders of both parties in Congress to iron out a deal to cut back spending in the budget in exchange for raising the national debt ceiling. First of all, during the Bush administration, current GOP leaders voted to increase the debt ceiling 5 times, and never demanded spending cuts. Yet when a Democrat is in office, it's a political game. We all know that Mitch McConnell said his #1 goal is to make President Obama a one term President. And if that means the United States of American going into default on its debts, causing interest rates to skyrocket, the dollar to plummet, and the economy to crash, he seems quite okay with that. I am convinced, and I'm not the first to say it, that McConnell, Boehner, and other Republican leaders are so obsessed with making President Obama a one term President, that they have done all they can to slow down the economic recovery and are doing all they can to forestall a debt limit increase. They are playing with fire.

The fact of the matter is Americans are not with the GOP. Poll after poll after poll shows that the majority of Americans want Republicans to cooperate with Democrats by increasing taxes on the top 2% of Americans and ending tax subsidies and loopholes on large corporations. Democrats have shown time and time again that they are willing to reach across the aisle and make concessions to Republican demands. But the GOP's leaders will not relent. They absolutely will not raise taxes on their wealthy friends and campaign donors. Since Barack Obama was inaugurated, Republicans have worked diligently against any measure that will help the economic recovery, the poor and middle class. Their whole agenda has been to cut taxes for the "job creators" (the rich) and large corporations. While I agree that we as a nation do need to cut spending, it should not be cut from Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. The working class paid into these programs and the Republicans want to cut them to bail out the wealthy again in the form of lower taxes for the wealthy.

Here's a history lesson, Bush cut taxes for the wealthy in 2001 and 2003, and from that time until the Recovery Act, jobs were not created but were lost, by the millions. Many of those jobs were eliminated by those wealthy who benefited from the tax cuts and were shipped overseas where they could be performed in much cheaper labor markets.

Republicans need to invest in a calculator. They are really inexpensive these days. Heck, I might raise some money to send them each one. Spending cuts alone will not pay down the debt. There must be increases in revenue. The poor and middle class have nothing left to give up, and yet the GOP is still trying to make that group and the elderly and disabled pay for the mistakes of Bush and the Bush era Congress. Why do Republicans completely ignore the will of the American people and stubbornly refuse to bend on increasing taxes on the top 1-2% of Americans and close tax loopholes on corporations? Why should everyone in America except the wealthiest and largest corporations participate in the recovery. Why do Republicans protect these people from giving one red Lincoln of their vast fortunes to the government that has been so good to them these last 30 years? When will the American people hold these Republicans accountable for their actions against the poor and middle class over these last 3 years? I hope this will all be remembered on Election Day in November 2012 that it is the Republicans who refused to work for the best interest of all Americans, but only for the interest of the elite few.