John Boehner has been measuring the drapes in the Speaker’s office for a few months now. The latest polling however shows the GOP surge may be fading a bit now that people are getting a look at some of their candidates. So the Republicans have released their “new” plan called “A Pledge to America.”
It contains a lot of feel-good stuff (I like the part about fixing the economy), then we get to this eyebrow-raiser:
We pledge to honor the Constitution as constructed by its framers and honor the original intent of those precepts that have been consistently ignored – particularly the Tenth Amendment, which grants that all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
In case anyone thought Republicans were softening in their position on same-sex marriage there is this part:
We pledge to honor families, traditional marriage, life, and the private and faith-based organizations that form the core of our American values.
So what are these new ideas? Cut spending and magically cut the deficit by reducing taxes for the wealthy. Also repeal & replace the health care law. The most overused words in the document “common sense.” The White House had a pretty good response:
Tonight, we learned more details about the Congressional Republican agenda – their “Pledge to America.” With this plan, they have made clear that they want to take America back to the same failed economic policies that caused this recession. Instead of charting a new course, Congressional Republicans doubled down on the same ideas that hurt America’s middle class.
Here’s what they made clear:
– Tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires by borrowing $700 billion we can’t afford;
– Tax hikes for 110 million middle-class families and millions of small businesses;
– Cutting rules and oversight for special interests like big oil, big insurance, credit card and mortgage companies and Wall Street banks;
– Doing nothing to stop the outsourcing of American jobs or to end tax breaks that are given to companies that ship jobs overseas;
All while adding trillions to our nation’s deficit.Their plan is also notable for what it doesn’t talk about: protecting Social Security and Medicare from privatization schemes; investing in high-quality education for our nation’s children; growing key industries like clean energy and manufacturing; and rebuilding our crumbling roads, rails and runways.
This is the same agenda that caused the deepest recession since the Great Depression, costing 8 million jobs, wiping out trillions in family wealth and setting middle-class families back. Instead of a pledge to the American people, Congressional Republicans made a pledge to the big special interests to restore the same economic ideas that benefited them at the expense of middle-class families.