If Obama's for it, the GOP is against it. We know that. But now, it extends even to tax cuts.
Yesterday, while Republicans in the House were voting against healthcare funding for people with 9-11 related illnesses, Republicans in the Senate were up to something arguably even more novel:
All 41 Senate Republicans yesterday filibustered a jobs package comprised largely of tax cuts.
You read that right. Republicans filibustered tax cuts.
By the GOP's own admission, the underlying legislation has broad bipartisan support. It would create a $30 billion Treasury-backed fund to help community banks issue loans to small businesses and provide entrepreneurs with $12 billion in tax cuts -- a Republican kind of bill if ever there was one.
But Republicans had been threatening for weeks to stop it, unless they were offered a chance to offer amendments on issues like border security, capping federal spending, and the estate tax -- all of which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid held to be non-germane to the issue of job creation. Many of them also objected to a provision added to the bill that would have provided disaster and agriculture relief funding.
In other words, the R's wanted to add mischief amendments that had nothing to do with jobs, just to force uncomfortable election-year votes on Democrats. Harry Reid made a gesture in their direction. He stripped out the agriculture relief funding, and he offered the GOP the chance to put in three amendments. Still no dice. They filibustered a tax cut.
Nothing is about policy or governance with Mitch McConnell. Nothing. If this one doesn't expose what these people are really up to, I don't know what does. The Democrats should really call them on it. They should offer something like the elimination of all estate taxes forever paired with a modest increase in some kind of program for poor people. In any case, they aren't even trying to govern. They are twisted humans.
