Republican Leaders Love America, Hate Americans

Are you an American construction worker who needs a job? Or an unemployed American first-responder? What about an out-of-work American teacher? How about a laid-off American factory laborer? And what if you’re an exploited American consumer or an underpaid American woman? Well, we don’t give a damn about you … if by “we,” I mean Congressional Republicans.

Senate Republicans, conspirators in the Party of Hell No!, recently said just that to President Barack Obama’s $447 billion jobs initiative that included a $60 billion proposal to hire construction workers to repair bridges (like Philly’s decaying Market Street bridge), roads, railways, airports, and other deteriorating infrastructure. Of that, $50 billion was to be expended specifically to fix the country’s shabby traffic routes while at the same time assisting the nation’s construction workers who have been in desperate need of jobs ever since the housing market went down the toilet in 2007—yes, during a Republican presidential administration.

Despite the fact that this proposal would have created 800,000 jobs for Americans without adding to the deficit, and would have been fully paid for with a mere .7 percent surtax on millionaires and billionaires who represent just .2 percent of this country’s population, the GOP rejected all of this because the project would be paid for, in part, by tax increases on the poverty-stricken homeless. My bad. I meant on the rich. Actually, the very rich. In other words, those one-percent-kinda folks.

Of course, the Obama tax increase would have been the largest in world history. Nope. That’s wrong. Well, at least in U.S. history. Nope. That’s wrong, too. Well, what’s right then? Actually, it would have been even less than the tax rate imposed by the Clinton administration when the rich paid their fair share and the economy boomed. Oh. I see. I thought the Republicans were saving us from that Obama socialism. But they were really saving the millionaires and billionaires from fairness.

All those Senate Republicans also said no to the Small Business Jobs Act, but it was signed into law by the President on September 10th despite them. With the exception of two, they said no to the extended unemployment benefits for pink-slipped citizens trying to keep up with extravagant luxuries like food and housing. But it was signed into law on July 10th despite them.

And it’s not just the Senate Republicans who despise Americans. It’s those House Republicans, as well. I betcha didn’t know that not some of them but all of them opposed the historic health care reform legislation regardless of the nearly 50 million uninsured American men, women and children. You also weren’t aware that each one of the House Republicans opposed the stimulus bill to revive the nation’s economy through employment and other incentives. And you didn’t know that all but three Republican House members voted against Wall Street reform that provided at least a modicum of protection to consumers, and voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act that has begun to close the wage disparity between women and men. Despite these GOPers, each of these bills was ultimately signed into law.

Now you might argue that I’m just some bleeding-heart liberal Democrat (or pan-African socialist), and you might be right. And if I chose to say these Republicans were “our version of al Qaeda terrorists. Really. They … (were) really putting our whole society at risk by threatening to round up 50 percent of the members of the Congress, who are loony, who would put our credit at risk,” you’d argue that I definitely was one of them no-good bleeding hearts or socialists. But I didn’t say it. George W. Bush’s Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil said it. Those are his words, not mine.

And speaking of prominent Republicans, in the famous words of President Ronald Reagan, “There you go again” with that tax-and-spend bullshit, Michael. (Well, he didn’t say the bullshit part or the Michael part. But don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.) In response to that, I’d say reasonable taxing and spending are exactly what the public wants. Then you’d say I’m crazy. Yet, as recently as last month, a CNN poll indicated that 75 percent of the public supports Obama’s plan for federal dollars to be spent on first responders and teachers, 72 percent support such funds being spent on roads, bridges and schools, and 60 percent support tax revenues being used for unemployed workers. A whopping 76 percent agree that taxes should be raised on incomes over $1 million.

We all know that Obama pledged that if he gets a second term, he’ll raise taxes a total of 11 times between his first swearing in and the end of his next term. Oh, did I say Obama? I should have said Reagan. Reagan? Yes, Reagan! During his two terms from 1981 through 1989, Reagan raised taxes 11 times. And as extrapolated to today’s dollars by the Treasury Department, that equals $300 billion annually. That’s much more than what Obama has proposed. Where are the Tea Baggers when you really need them?

Do the Republican national leaders care that more than 14 million Americans are unemployed? Don’t ask me. Just look at their votes. Do they want to promote workplace safety? Don’t ask me. Just look at their votes. Do they want to protect the environment? Don’t ask me. Just look at their votes. Although their real hatred is for Obama, that malice directly affects and severely wounds every single American man, woman, boy and girl. As Nobel Laureate and economics professor Paul Krugman pointed out, “If Obama called for endorsing motherhood, the Republicans … would oppose it.”

On November 4, 2010, Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky proudly proclaimed that “the single most important thing we (Republican congresspersons) want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” What he meant is that if the citizens suffer miserably in the process, then eff ’em. They’re just collateral damage. We hate ’em all anyway—if not all of ’em, at least the 99 percent.