Republicans Filibuster Everything, Romney Blames Obama for Not Working With Congress 25OKT12

QUARTERLY economic growth figures released last Friday 26OKT12 and the jobs numbers just released today show the American economy is recovering in spite of the obstructionism of the repiglicans and tea-baggers in Congress of anything and everything Pres Obama and his administration tries to do, on anything. mitt robme romney and lyin' paul ryan rant and rave about the Obama administration not doing anything about the recession and unemployment, misleading and deceiving American voters with a propaganda campaign in an attempt to win this election for their corporate and wealthy owners.  Be sure to read the list of legislation blocked by the gop / tea-bagger obstructionist in Congress, it is proof they have stopped programs for 9/11 responders, Vets, against terrorism, immigration, small business tax relief, job creation just to name a few. This from HuffPost, and see my post on the latest economic reports at Unemployment Rate Ticked Up To 7.9 Percent; 171,000 Jobs Added & Economic Growth Picked Up Slightly In Third Quarter & US economy adds 171,000 jobs in October, unemployment rate ticks up to 7.9 percent & US recovery remains tepid as economy expands at 2 percent pace, too slow to stir much hiring 2NOV&26SEP12
The Romney campaign released a shockingly Orwellian commercial over the weekend, which perpetuates something Romney himself has been saying for months now. Honestly, there's a book-length analysis to be written here, but I'll keep it as brief as possible given the depth and breadth of what the Republicans have been able to accomplish on this front.
The new ad blames President Obama for not reaching out and working with congressional Republicans to get things done. Yes, really. It also ballyhoos Mitt Romney's claim that he was able to work with a Massachusetts legislature that was 85 percent Democratic.
I don't know whether to be brutally outraged about this or to congratulate the Republicans on an outstanding execution of political obstruction and subsequent projection. For now, let's go with brutally outraged.

It's important to review exactly what's led us to this point. From the very beginning, congressional Republicans fell into lockstep with Rush Limbaugh and the collective wish for the Obama presidency to fail. Limbaugh set the table several days before the inauguration by telling his audience:

So I'm thinking of replying to the guy, "Okay, I'll send you a response, but I don't need 400 words, I need four: I hope he fails." (interruption) What are you laughing at? See, here's the point. Everybody thinks it's outrageous to say. Look, even my staff, "Oh, you can't do that." Why not? Why is it any different, what's new, what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails? Liberalism is our problem. Liberalism is what's gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here. Why do I want more of it? I don't care what the Drive-By story is. I would be honored if the Drive-By Media headlined me all day long: "Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails." Somebody's gotta say it.

The prevailing worry here was that America faced a worsening crisis, with a failing economy and a financial meltdown, and if liberal policies succeeded in resolving the crisis, liberalism would become further entrenched as the best means of stewarding the economy. Subsequently, if the president's center-left policies succeeded, he'd be re-elected and the Republicans would have to wait until 2016 for another stab at the White House. The only way to prevent this eventuality was to stonewall the president's legislative agenda. All of it. Such an objective is nearly unprecedented. Usually an opposition party is driven to occasionally work with the majority party on the off-chance the majority party's legislation succeeds. This way, the opposition party can claim partial credit for the achievement. Not this time. Instead, the Republicans banked on their mighty bumper-sticker marketeering machine whereby, irrespective of Democratic successes, the Republicans would simply tell voters that those successes were actually failures and that it was President Obama who stubbornly refused to reach across the aisle. Up is down, white is black. Opposite Day politics. With the execution of this "everything has failed" strategy, they were freed up to vote against everything that came down the pike.
And so the Republicans proceeded to rack up the highest number of filibusters in American history. During the president's first two years in office, the 111th Congress, there were 137 cloture motions filed to end Republican filibusters. During the president's second two years, the 112th Congress, there were 109 motions filed to end Republican filibusters and we still have a few more months to go. 246 total cloture motions. Compare this to George W. Bush's first term when there were a total of 133 cloture motions filed. Not even a handful of "sensible" Republicans had the guts to break ranks and vote with the Democrats. Meanwhile, on the House side, the Republican majority has voted in near-lockstep against almost everything.
What bills have the Republicans filibustered? To name a few:
H.R. 12 - Paycheck Fairness Act
H.R. 448 -- Elder Abuse Victims Act
H.R. 466 - Wounded Veteran Job Security Act
H.R. 515 - Radioactive Import Deterrence Act
H.R. 549 -- National Bombing Prevention Act
H.R. 577 - Vision Care for Kids Act
H.R. 626 - Federal Employees Paid Parental Leave Act
H.R. 1029 - Alien Smuggling and Terrorism Prevention Act
H.R. 1168 -- Veterans Retraining Act
H.R. 1171 - Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program Reauthorization
H.R. 1293 -- Disabled Veterans Home Improvement and Structural Alteration Grant Increase Act
H.R. 1429 -- Stop AIDS in Prison Act
H.R.5281 -- DREAM Act
S.3985 -- Emergency Senior Citizens Relief Act
S.3816 -- Creating American Jobs and Ending Offshoring Act
S.3369 -- A bill to provide for additional disclosure requirements for corporations, labor organizations, Super PACs and other entities
S.2237 -- Small Business Jobs and Tax Relief Act
S.2343 -- Stop the Student Loan Interest Rate Hike Act
S.1660 -- American Jobs Act of 2011
S.3457 -- Veterans Jobs Corps Act
What else?
Here's an astonishing one. The Republicans filibustered the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act -- basically, healthcare for 9/11 heroes. Every Republican senator voted to filibuster this bill. I suppose the Republicans are only interested in 9/11 heroes when they're used as political props.
On the House side, every single Republican, including Paul Ryan, voted against the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act, which forces Congress to pay for new legislation through either budget cuts or revenue increases.
You'd think that by helping to pass these bills, Republicans could boast a solid record on fiscal responsibility, job creation, veterans affairs, anti-terrorism, senior citizens and, hell, 9/11 workers. Instead, they blocked all of it. Jobs for military veterans, tax cuts for small businesses -- you name it. Why? So President Obama and the Democrats could be accused of failure.
And it's working.
Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell famously told the National Journal, "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." Not economic growth, jobs, healthcare or military strength. A failed Obama presidency was the primary -- and I would argue the only goal of the last two Republican congresses.
The Romney campaign is busily playing the endgame on this strategy by projecting Republican obstructionism onto the president and accusing him of refusing to work with Congress, even though the president and the Democrats have dished out heaping piles of legislation that Republicans could reasonably get behind. Not only that, but the president has gone out of his way to incorporate Republican ideas into his major agenda items. The individual mandate is a Republican idea devised and supported by people like Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole and Chuck Grassley. The Affordable Care Act is more or less modeled after Mitt Romney's healthcare law in Massachusetts. Many marquee aspects of the ACA ("Obamacare") were jettisoned in an effort to gain Republican votes, including the public option. Cap-and-trade is a Republican idea. The president even sided with Republicans on extending the Bush tax cuts -- a move that angered many liberals, along with the signing of the NDAA.
But if you take Romney's word for it, the president is a lazy, do-nothing chief executive who's been stonewalling the Republicans. Not the other way around. I'm not sure how he doesn't pull a muscle or dislocate a shoulder by twisting himself into a pretzel like this, but it's an amazing feat of through-the-looking-glass deception. The reason Romney was able to get anything done in Massachusetts was because the Democrats in the state legislature weren't anywhere near as obstructionist as today's congressional Republicans. And, if he's elected, the only way Romney will be able to pursue his agenda is if the Democrats are less motivated to obstruct and filibuster than the Republicans.
Cross-posted at The Daily Banter.
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Repeat After Me: Obama Cut the Deficit and Slowed Spending to Lowest Level in 50 Years 10OKT12

mitt robme romney, lyin' paul ryan and their host of repiglican and tea-bagger acolytes keep repeating lies about the Obama administration, government spending and the deficit. It is a constant drum beat in their presidential propaganda campaign, but the facts are the opposite of what they are telling the American people. From HuffPost.....
Illustrative of his contempt for the truth, Mitt Romney's campaign website continues to host the following statement: "Since President Obama assumed office three years ago, federal spending has accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history."
On Friday, we discovered yet another reason why this is a super-colossal lie.
With the end of fiscal year 2012, the Congressional Budget Office announced the 2012 federal budget deficit: $1.1 trillion. Taken purely at face value, this number is enormous. Yet every Democrat, and especially the Obama campaign, ought to be telling anyone who will listen: Not only has the president cut the deficit by $312 billion during his first term (so far), but he's cut the deficit by $200 billion in the past year alone. And the CBO projected that the 2013 Obama budget, if enacted as is, would shrink the deficit to $977 billion -- a four year total of nearly $500 billion in deficit reduction.
Okay, yeah, I get it. It's risky to mention the deficit, but not when you couch it in math and the facts.
As I've documented before, the CBO reported in January, 2009 that the federal budget deficit for that fiscal year, which began on October 1, 2008, was already $1.2 trillion. President Obama's additional '09 spending added another $200 billion to the deficit, bringing the total to $1.412 trillion. Unprecedented and huge, but given the enormity of the financial crisis and the depth of the recession, there weren't many other options on the table. Add two wars into the mix and there you go.
But since then, deficit spending has dropped precipitously. Why? Chiefly because President Obama signed the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act in February, 2010, which mandates that new spending be offset with spending cuts or new revenue. Yes, a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress passed this legislation. Guess how many congressional Republicans voted for the law. Zero. Not one. Perhaps during this week's debate, Vice President Biden could ask Rep. Paul Ryan who voted against the bill.
Consequently, the president is responsible for the lowest government spending growth in 60 years, according to the Wall Street Journal's Market Watch.

Once again, Mitt Romney's website still contains the words: "Since President Obama assumed office three years ago, federal spending has accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history." Pants on fire times a thousand.
Fact: the president's record is exactly the opposite of what Romney says. And how long ago was this statistic released by the Wall Street Journal and subsequently affirmed by fact checkers? Five months ago. On September 26, when asked about his record of mendacious claims, Mitt Romney told CNN's Jim Acosta, "We've been absolutely spot on. And any time there's been anything that's been amiss, we correct it or remove it." Oh yeah? Well, Mr. Romney, you missed a whopper.
Another whopper: during Romney's "winning" debate against the president last week, he claimed, "The president said he'd cut the deficit in half. Unfortunately, he doubled it." Another lie. Yes, the president said he'd cut the deficit in half -- but he absolutely did not double it. As I've outlined here, he's cut the deficit by 22 percent so far -- 35 percent by the end of 2013.
Furthermore, I can name two Democratic presidents who've cut the deficit through the duration of their presidencies: Clinton and Obama. And what about Republican presidents? Bush 43? He turned a $200 billion surplus into a $400 billion deficit by the end of his first term, and a $1.2 trillion deficit by the end of his second term. Bush 41? No. Reagan? No. Ford? No. Nixon? No. The last Republican president who cut the deficit was Eisenhower. By the way, I'm sick of hearing the farcical line about Congress "controlling the purse strings." Any six-year-old child who's watched a Schoolhouse Rock cartoon knows the president signs all legislation before it becomes law, including appropriations bills. The House can't magically spend money without a presidential signature. Besides, if the president is to be blamed for the size of the deficit -- and the Republicans have been merciless on the president in this area in spite of reality, and their own party's record -- it's only fair that he should get credit when the deficit is reduced.
Yet without objections, the Romney campaign and the Republicans continue to champion their status as "fiscal hawks" even though the facts prove that to correlate "fiscal responsibility" and "Republican Party" is absurd on its face. Even though Romney's plan for the deficit and the economy is as shifty, murky and ambiguous as he is, there appears to be nothing -- absolutely nothing -- about the Romney plan that's any different from every Republican presidential plan in recent history, but we're supposed to believe that Romney will cut the deficit anyway. In fact, as we all know by now, Romney is proposing $5 trillion in un-funded tax cuts, as well as massive increases in military spending, and, if Romney wins, you can bet the Republicans will jettison their deficit and debt hawkery into the next nearest memory hole to be forgotten until another Democrat enters the White House.
If the Obama campaign and the Democrats can talk about the deficit in these terms, it undercuts one of the leading Republican attacks and becomes a winning issue for the president. Plus it helps to cement the reality of Mitt Romney The Pathological Liar.
Cross-posted at The Daily Banter.
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