CovOps
Location : Ether-Sphere Job/hobbies : Irrationality Exterminator Humor : Über Serious
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CovOps
Location : Ether-Sphere Job/hobbies : Irrationality Exterminator Humor : Über Serious
| Subject: Re: State of the Union address: Same shit, different bucket Wed Jan 26, 2011 7:26 am | |
| State of the Union 2011: So much for civility
... while lawmakers only broke from their playground brawl long enough to earn an “A” in deportment while the teacher was in the room, their offices were releasing a flurry of statements that showed the partisan warfare was lurking right below the surface.
Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.), was blunt in his Twitter feed: “Mr. President, you don’t believe in the Constitution. You believe in socialism.” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), released a statement blasting Obama while the president was still working his way down the aisle to start his speech.
Even as Obama called on Congress to rise above partisanship — “We will move forward together, or not at all, for the challenges we face are bigger than party, and bigger than politics,” he said — the political implications of the moment were inescapable.
Obama’s political brain trust — David Axelrod, David Plouffe and Valerie Jarrett — watched from an aisle on the Democratic side of the chamber. As he spoke, Boehner’s office released a torrent of rapid-response e-mails countering central parts of the speech. Within minutes of Obama’s conclusion that the state of the union is “strong,” Republican lawmakers blasted out press releases taking him to task for wanting to spend more on what he termed “investments.”
Hours before Obama arrived in the chamber at 9:05 p.m., Republicans forced a message vote on whether to cut spending for the rest of the year. In his response to the president’s address, Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the Budget Committee, chided Democrats for not bothering to put together a budget last year.
“Last year – in an unprecedented failure– Congress chose not to pass, or even propose a budget. The spending spree continued unchecked. We owe you a better choice and a different vision,” he said.
But the barrage of ill will was hardly one-way.
Senate Democrats spent much of Tuesday demonizing Ryan in advance of his star turn, casting him as the fiend who would bleed out popular entitlement programs.
“In an unsettling development for America’s seniors, ending Social Security and Medicare is now the official position of the Republican Party,” a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said.
Ryan’s official rebuttal wasn’t exactly rosy either — he painted a bleak picture of an economy on the verge of collapse if deficits don’t get under control, and he blamed Democrats for a spending binge.
“House Republicans’ answer to our nation’s fiscal challenges is Draconian budget cuts on the backs of middle class families,” New York Rep. Steve Israel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said. “It is increasingly clear that the Republican way to reduce spending is to eliminate support for middle class families and seniors while protecting spending on special interests.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0111/48203.html |
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