John Boehner's economic speech yesterday offered a golden opportunity for Democrats to ridicule, rebut, and remind everyone about who is really responsible for this shaky economy.
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In what could possibly be one of the best speech edits ever, Ed Schultz lays out exactly what Boehner said: Nothing. Well, Boehner did tell everyone what he thought the President should do, and he said something about putting the adults in charge, too. My retort to that would be to suggest that he get out of the bars and the golf courses long enough to think straight, but that's just me.
The CBO had its own retort to this:
All this 'stimulus' spending has gotten us nowhere.
CBO says, "OhReally?"
First, as a real-world matter, economic growth was pretty slow in the second quarter (April to June), but the CBO report makes clear that without the stimulus, it wouldn't have grown at all. In other words, a stimulus helped lead to tepid growth -- the absence of a stimulus would have been significant economic contraction.
Second, this CBO data, like reports from the Council of Economic Advisors and the Office of Management and Budget, should effectively end the debate about whether the Recovery Act did what it set out to do. The stimulus effort was too small -- criticism from conservative Republicans is completely backwards -- but as designed, it was intended to give the economy a significant boost, and save and create millions of jobs. It did exactly that. Anyone who argues otherwise is either not paying attention or is being willfully dishonest.
What? TanMan dishonest? Say it isn't so!
Everyone sing along now:
The stimulus worked.
It really, really worked.
It could have worked better
If it was bigger,
But it still really
Worked.
Meanwhile, Boehner should be watching his back right now, because Eric Cantor hasn't made any secret out of his heart's desire to replace Nancy Pelosi, even while murmuring soft whispers of support for his orange counterpart. While Boehner may be today's minority leader, the Club for Growth is not all that happy with him (or Cantor, for that matter).
Of course, Club for Growth funds candidates like hand-picked Rove choice Tim Griffin, Rand Paul, Pat Toomey and Marco Rubio, so give their disapproval of Boehner and Cantor the full weight it deserves. Then consider helping Justin Coussoule send Boehner to the golf course for good?
