After a weekend filled with chaperoning high-school kids and flipping burgers at a camp out to help the poor, as we come back to work this week, the actions of political leaders in Washington, DC are more of a cold slap in face to us than the current weather.
To say Republican leaders like Mitch McConnell are acting like anything other than hypocritical, whiney, spoiled babies is being needlessly kind to them.
To say President Obama and his administration have been incompetent in using their political playbook with Congressional Republicans is to say Husker Offensive Coordinator Shawn Watson is the Einstein of college football.
In short, the idiots and cowards are running the asylum in DC right now, especially on the topic of the expiring Bush Tax Cuts.
In case you weren't doing so over the weekend, we've kept up with the news, and are well aware of the now-admitted fact that twisted members of the Bush Administration set a political trap for the current occupant of the White House, by setting their tax cuts to disappear at the end of 2010. You may also have missed the votes in the Senate this weekend where Republican Senators voted firmly AGAINST tax cuts for all Americans - only because those cuts wouldn't have given wealthy Americans an even bigger tax break (which, as we've pointed our previously, they don't need).
What growing numbers of Americans haven't missed is the continual dueling claims by so-called political leaders on both sides.
On the Right, Republican leaders constantly claim they're more fiscally responsible. However, the most fiscally responsible thing to do regarding taxes would be to simply let the Bush Tax Cuts expire. America simply can't afford to lose $4 Trillion in revenue over the next decade. The second most fiscally responsible thing would be to agree to let the tax cuts for the rich expire - as $60 billion dollars could fill many of the other needs Republican leaders facetiously claim to care about. Still, McConnell and other Republicans continue to hold the entire government hostage with their hypocrisy, on everything from national and international security interests to help for the poor during the holidays. Until they get their pacifier of tax cuts for the rich, their fake wailing about fiscal conservatism is sadly sure to continue.
Likewise, President Obama has claimed for most of the last three years - even on the campaign trail - that we can not, in any way, allow the fiscally unsound tax cuts for the top 2% to continue. But now all signs point to him now agreeing to some sort of arrangement with Congressional Republicans where the rich will keep their unnecessary cushion, even temporarily. Regardless of what the White House is leaking, if past history is any measuring stick, the deal will likely come with NO hard guarantee by Republicans that unemployment benefit extensions (a provably better way to stimulate the economy) or even the Federal budget for next year will be passed.
We know what we're wishing for this holiday season, and we're also aware that we're not likely to get much - if any - of those things for ourselves or our country that we'd like to have. The least we figure we should be able to ask for from our elected officials is a bit more honesty.
Unfortunately this year, judging by the way our "leaders" are acting, we may just have a better shot at getting those toys we asked Santa for when we were kids.
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