Tag Archives: House Republicans

October 15, 2011 · 11:40 AM

White House To Boehner On Jobs Plan: Did We Hit A Nerve?

TPMDC 

The White House is holding fast to its claim that Republicans are running a do-nothing Congress, and, unlike President Obama, have yet to put forth a jobs bill — or at least a real one.

Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) press office Thursday evening pointedly released a summary of a private phone call he and Obama had earlier that day, in which Boehner took serious issue with Obama’s claims during that morning’s press conference that he has yet to see a GOP plan for job creation. (Obama had called Boehner to congratulate him on the passage of trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama).

Boehner reminded Obama that House Republicans put forth a “Plan for America’s Job Creators” in May, and noted that he and other members of the GOP leadership team have spoken with the President and his staff about the plan and referenced it on numerous occasions, in letters and elsewhere.

The GOP plan consists of repealing government regulations on businesses, reducing taxes on individuals to 25 percent, allowing businesses to reinvest their overseas profits in the U.S. without having to pay a tax penalty, passing the three trade agreements, maximizing U.S. energy production and paying down the debt by slashing government spending.

But the White House argues that most of those policies — minus the trade agreements (which he strongly supported) — won’t do anything to create jobs immediately, and so Obama and his team don’t consider the proposal a real Jobs plan and they haven’t been shy about saying so.

Continue reading here…

Related articles

Comments Off

Filed under Unemployment

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

July 22, 2011 · 12:01 AM

Credit agencies warn GOP of ‘death spiral’

“No one is as deaf as the man who will not listen.” ~ Jewish Proverb

Politico

House Republicans were cautioned Thursday in a closed door meeting with credit rating agency officials that a “death spiral” in the bond market was one of the possible outcomes in the event of default.

One official warned of a worst-case scenario in which a default on the nation’s credit could result in a rapid drop in bond values, sparking chaos in the markets — a dramatic warning asWashington worked on a possible deal on deficit reduction and an increase in the debt limit.

Members who attended the meeting later countered that the tone of the discussion was not nearly as apocalyptic as the phrase initially made it sound. According to sources inside the room, the “death spiral” term was also used in reference to the collapse of Lehmann Brothers in September 2008 as a historical example.

Rep. Nan Hayworth, a freshman Republican from New York, hosted this off-the-record meeting with GOP House lawmakers Thursday afternoon. Hayworth called the meeting a “dispassionate and objective” discussion about the potentially disastrous consequences of not raising the debt ceiling by the August deadline. But Republicans said they were also told that unless the government undertook a serious deficit reduction program, the credit ratings could still assign a negative outlook to the nation’s debt anyway.

“If we do nothing, if we simply raise the debt ceiling, without a change in America’s spending trajectory then the markets will react negatively as well. That’s certainly the message I took away,” said Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.).

Read more…

Related articles

Comments Off

Filed under Republican Politics, Tea Party Agenda

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

May 18, 2011 · 12:24 AM

House Republicans Face Backlash At Home Over Medicare Vote

What planet are these  “Tea Baggers” from?

Huffington Post

House Republicans returning to their districts on Monday faced harsh criticism for voting to turn Medicare, the federal health care program for retirees, into a voucher system. GOP lawmakers faced this same constituent iremere weeks ago when they first voted to support House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) budget plan, which would lower tax rates for corporations and the wealthy while replacing Medicare with private-insurance subsidies for those under 55.

Speaking in his home state of Arizona Monday night, freshman Rep. Ben Quayle (R), son of former vice president Dan Quayle, took heat from constituents who demanded to know why he supported turning Medicare over to private insurers.

Quayle isn’t the only lawmaker who, after voting in favor of Ryan’s plan, faced anger at home this week. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.) faced a similarly boisterous crowd at her first Vancouver town hall, while Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) weathered disapproving audiences in Worcester County.

A town hall meeting held by freshman Allen West (R-Fla.) on Monday night degenerated into a shouting match, with one person having to be removed from the meeting by police.

A recent speech by Ryan, meanwhile, was met with dozens of protesters marching outside a hotel in downtown Chicago and carrying signs that read: “Hands off my Medicare” and “Paul Ryan plan: Let them eat cat food.”

The most recent round of backlash comes just days after former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican presidential candidate, called the Republican plan to end Medicare too “radical” and “too big a jump” for Americans. He also referred to it as “right-wing social engineering.”

Related articles

1 Comment

Filed under GOP Budget Cuts, GOP Cluelessness, GOP Hubris, GOP Hypocrisy, Medicare, Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

February 25, 2011 · 1:48 AM

Town Hall Attendee Asks GA Republican When Someone Is Going To Shoot Obama

There are crazies, and then there are the craziest!

TPMMuckraker

An audience member at a town hall hosted by Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) on Tuesday asked the Tea Party congressman who was going to shoot President Barack Obama.

The unidentified town hall attendee’s question got a big laugh from the audience, reports Blake Aued of the Athens Banner-Herald.

But Broun didn’t exactly condemn the remark, according to the newspaper report.

“The thing is, I know there’s a lot of frustration with this president. We’re going to have an election next year,” Broun said in response to the question. “Hopefully, we’ll elect somebody that’s going to be a conservative, limited-government president that will take a smaller, who will sign a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare.”

Broun had asked the audience who had driven the farthest to be at the meeting and let the winner ask the first question, according to the newspaper. The reporter couldn’t hear the question himself, but Broun’s press secretary confirmed that the question was about when someone was going to shoot the President.

“Obviously, the question was inappropriate, so Congressman Broun moved on,” Broun’s press secretary Jessica Morris told Aued.

You may remember Broun as the member of Congress who skipped the State of the Union Address in favor of live Tweeting about Obama’s “socialism” from his office.

Related Articles

Comments Off

Filed under Rep. Paul Broun

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 17, 2010 · 2:30 PM

It’s A Done Deal!

Tax Bill Headed To President’s Desk After Passage In House

Huffington Post

A coalition of Republicans and conservative Democrats combined to push the Obama-GOP tax-cut deal through the House by a vote of 277-148 in Friday’s early morning hours. The bill slashes the estate tax, extends all the Bush tax cuts and reauthorizes unemployment insurance for 13 months. The bill will now go to the president for his signature.

The crucial vote was not on final passage of the tax cuts, but on the vote before, to reduce the generosity of the estate tax cut. Had it been included in the final measure, the bill would have gone back to the Senate. An identical version of that amendment passed in December 2009 with 225 votes, but it failed this time 233-194, with 60 Democrats voting against tightening the estate tax.   More…

Related Articles

Comments Off

Filed under President Barack Obama, Senate Dems, Senate Republicans, Tax Cuts For The Wealthy

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

November 24, 2010 · 6:32 PM

Tom DeLay Guilty of Money Laudering

Tom Delay

Image via Wikipedia

The “Hammer” has been hammered by a jury of his peers in Austin, Texas…

Huffington Post

Former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay – once one of the most powerful and feared Republicans in Congress – was convicted Wednesday on charges he illegally funneled corporate money to Texas candidates in 2002.

Jurors deliberated for 19 hours before returning guilty verdicts against DeLay on charges of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering. He faces up to life in prison on the money laundering charge.

Prosecutors said DeLay, who once held the No. 2 job in the House of Representatives and whose heavy-handed style earned him the nickname “the Hammer,” used his political action committee to illegally channel $190,000 in corporate donations into 2002 Texas legislative races through a money swap.

DeLay and his attorneys maintained the former Houston-area congressman did nothing wrong as no corporate funds went to Texas candidates and the money swap was legal.

The verdict came after a three-week trial in which prosecutors presented more than 30 witnesses and volumes of e-mails and other documents. DeLay’s attorneys presented five witnesses.

Prosecutors said DeLay conspired with two associates, John Colyandro and Jim Ellis, to use his Texas-based PAC to send $190,000 in corporate money to an arm of the Washington-based Republican National Committee, or RNC. The RNC then sent the same amount to seven Texas House candidates. Under Texas law, corporate money can’t go directly to political campaigns.

Prosecutors claim the money helped Republicans take control of the Texas House. That enabled the GOP majority to push through a Delay-engineered congressional redistricting plan that sent more Texas Republicans to Congress in 2004 – and strengthened DeLay’s political power.

DeLay’s attorneys argued the money swap resulted in the seven candidates getting donations from individuals, which they could legally use in Texas.

They also said DeLay only lent his name to the PAC and had little involvement in how it was run. Prosecutors, who presented mostly circumstantial evidence, didn’t prove he committed a crime, they said.

Continue reading here…

Comments Off

Filed under GOP, GOP Corruption, GOP Greed, GOP Hubris, Tom Delay

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

November 16, 2010 · 12:42 AM

Poll Finds Midterm Elections Were NOT A GOP Mandate

I wonder how long will it take for this information to sink into the very thick skulls of the GOP “leaders”?

Huffington Post

Americans overwhelmingly say that the midterm election results that gave Republicans control of the House represented a rejection of the Democrats and not a mandate for the GOP, according to a CNN/Opinion Research poll conducted Nov. 11-14. (Story; Poll data).

Seventy percent of those surveyed said the results were a rejection of Democratic rule in the House while 17 percent called it a mandate for Republicans. Eight percent answered “neither” and 5 percent had no opinion.

Read the whole story: Politics Daily

 Related Articles

Comments Off

Filed under GOP, GOP Agenda, GOP Cluelessness, GOP Hubris

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,