No one has ever seen this amount of obstruction from an American political party
As we hit the first summer break of President Barack Obama’s second term, we see Republican obstructionism in the House and Senate remains the order of the day in Washington. It’s as if the Republican Party took Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” anti-drug slogan of the 1980’s and applied it to politics.
When Obama was first elected in 2008, Mitch McConnell now famously said “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”
Now that Obama’s been re-elected and we see the GOP resorting to the same old tactics, it’s clear the only thing they’ve ever cared about was making Barack Obama a complete failure. When you set out with the explicit intent on seeing your president fail, you’re going to see your country suffer as a result.
Nowhere is that suffering more apparent than in the unemployment lines. While Americans are better off compared to the peak of the great recession, unemployment is still high at 7.6% and the U-6 rate is over 14%.
Obama hasn’t been able to do much about it. In fact, no jobs bill has crossed his desk in the last couple years. All attempts to pass a jobs bill has been filibustered by republicans in the senate. The job bills created by the Republican majority in the House of Representatives have been none starters and do more harm than good.
Not only has the GOP blocked every attempt at creating jobs, they have laid off three quarters of a million public workers at the state, local and federal levels. Despite Republican obstructionism, private sector growth has stayed constant for the last few years, but it’s not enough.
Either way, jobs are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Republican obstruction. We all know about the filibustering of Obama’s judicial nominees and executive appointees. No president in history has had more judicial nominees blocked from confirmation than Obama.
The same goes for top presidentially appointed positions. At one point earlier this year, 68 positions remained vacant, including 43 that had been vacant for more than a year. A government with this many vacant leadership positions is sure to slow down the government as a whole, just what republicans want to see.
The GOP, not satisfied with merely trying to slow down the economy and handicapping the federal government have blocked all sorts of democratic legislation, hundreds of them in fact, many of them repeatedly.
They blocked a minimum wage increase late last year which would have seen the national minimum wage rise to $10.00/hr, up from its current $7.25/hr. They blocked campaign finance transparency which would have let the public know who is donating money to super PACs.
Republicans blocked the Buffett Rule, effectively blocking millionaires from paying a minimum tax rate. They blocked the Employment Non-Discrimination Act which would have made it illegal to discriminate against hiring gays.
They blocked The Paycheck Fairness Act twice, equal pay for women isn’t a GOP concern and neither are the disabled. That’s right, Republicans bothered to block the U.N. treaty to protect the equal rights of the disabled, how nice of them.
I could go on, but I’m starting to sound like a broken record. Oh what the hell. They blocked the closing of Guantanamo Bay Prison, a tax on companies that ship jobs overseas, more benefits for homeless veterans, health care for the 9/11 first responders, increased oil spill liability (just about everything related to protecting the environment), etc, etc, etc.
The way I see it, these Republicans were hired to work for the American people, but instead they’re working against them. Imagine what it would be like to go to work every day and constantly “just say no” to your boss while you play windows solitaire for eight hours a day. And Republicans think the poor are lazy!
Well, unfortunately not all republicans are that lazy, like I said they are working against the people. Just ask House Speaker John Boehner who said a couple weeks ago; Congress “ought to be judged on how many laws we repeal” and “not be judged by how many new laws we create.” I guess we should stop calling them lawmakers.
Of course if we judge Republicans by the laws they repeal they would earn an epic fail in that department as well. They’ve tried to repeal Obamacare 40 times and haven’t succeeded once. As a matter of fact, they have never successfully repealed anything. They may as well keep playing solitaire.
Republican obstructionism in the House and Senate isn’t going to go away anytime soon, it’s all they know. The only way things are going to change is if liberals and progressives convince the people on the right who hired these do nothing bozos to vote them out next year. I even have a slogan for them; “Just Say No to Republican Obstruction”. At least it contains a word they understand.
It seems like investment is the new “job.” Even my son, a Starbucks employee, has made two years salary in purchasing their stock and has more money in savings than me!
The American government obviously wants to keep Americans impoverished. It’s disgusting how out of touch most of these over-privileged politicians are with reality. Politicians do not care at all about their constituents at all, except of course at election time.
greed and self interest have taken the place of governance. Sad times.