In the latest example of partisan political gridlock and gamesmanship in Congress, the Biggest Losers stand to be millions of out of work and middle class Americans.
As President Obama and most Democrats push for “clean” congressional approval of extended unemployment benefits and middle class payroll tax cuts that will otherwise expire on December 31st, the Opposition Party is playing political poker - with a stacked deck.
The House Republican majority last night passed what they call “The Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act“. It has no chance of Senate passage or presidential signing, but it does reveal the GOP mindset these days. The bill includes:
- Fast-track approval of the controversial, environmentally risky "Keystone" oil pipeline running from Canada to the Gulf Coast of Texas
- No tax increase whatsoever on million-plus incomes
- Unemployment extension cut by 40-percent
- Salary freeze, pay cuts, job losses for federal employees
- Medicare premium increases and cuts to health care reform
The Republican Party claims that addition of the oil pipeline to the bill would lead to major "job creation", although the facts have come out now and the total number of jobs to be created are estimated only be in the range of 5,000.
This is the same Republican Party that recently blocked President Obama’s American Jobs Act initiative, the one that would save jobs of firefighters, police officers and teachers nationwide, while putting millions of unemployed people back to work rebuilding the country’s crumbling roads, bridges, tunnels and more.
So, first the GOP blocks a sensible approach to employing millions of citizens by rebuilding the national infrastructure. Now, they block efforts to extend unemployment benefits for many of those still-out-of-work people. And they threaten to increase middle class tax bills by a thousand dollars per household.
All to avoid even a tiny tax hike on people making more than a million dollars a year.
Make no mistake. The momentary game of throwing the Keystone pipeline oil industry giveaway into a "Job Creation" bill that only creates 5,000 jobs - it's a con, a bait and switch, a bluff. Republican leaders like Senator McConnell and Representative Boehner think that by playing this game, they can acheive their core objective of not letting taxes be raised one penny on their covertly core constituency - the very richest one tenth of one percent of Americans.
The question is, how can the rest of the GOP's constituency continue to put up with this?
Republicans in Congress aren’t just using a stacked deck and dealing a crooked hand here. They’re knowingly using Main Street Americans as their betting chips, putting us all at risk so they can protect the vast fortunes of the super-rich folks that bankroll their seats at the table.
Here in Florida, we all know people - or are people - who have something to lose if the GOP continues on its present path. So it’s time to put politics and party aside for a bit, time to start thinking like a member of a community, like a resident of a long-suffering state…and like an independent thinker.
Every single Republican member of Florida’s U.S. House of Representatives contingent voted for the GOP's big bluff of a bill, “The Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act“.
This would be a good time to call or email them, let them know it's time to stop gambling with our lives, time to stop using us as chips in their rigged game of political poker.
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