Press Staff Blog

Are Republicans finally ready to stop holding our economy hostage to their ideological agenda? They’ve done it twice this Congress (CR and debt limit, anybody?) which caused significant uncertainty for businesses and the markets. But in a memo to House Republicans yesterday, Leader Cantor admitted that while that’s been their tactic thus far, it’s now time to stop the brinkmanship and get to work on FY 2012 spending bills:

With No Plan Of Their Own, GOP Walks Away From POTUS Job Ideas Before They Even Hear Them Those who don’t have a plan, criticize:

Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor haven’t seen a draft of President Barack Obama’s upcoming jobs speech, but they took a swipe at it Wednesday anyway.

Those who do have a plan, will help put more Americans back to work:

Wanted to be sure you saw this Washington Post article today highlighting the Republicans’ agenda since taking the House majority eight months ago. You’ll notice the article says little about action they’ve taken to support job creation. That’s because Republicans have been focused on passing bills that have more to do with their ideological agenda than creating jobs.

Today’s op-ed by Speaker Boehner and Leader Cantor is pretty remarkable for several reasons. First, they’re already taking revenues off the table before the Joint Committee has even begun its work. And second, they’re completely incorrect in suggesting that Democrats agree that we should tackle entitlement reform while leaving revenues off the table:

Wanted to be sure you saw this NY Times article highlighting Republican economists’ support for a balanced approach to deficit reduction that includes both spending cuts and revenues.

House Republicans have walked away from deficit reduction talks multiple times, but will they walk away from the Joint Committee before Congressional leaders have even appointed members to the Committee? While Democrats want to work together on a balanced approach to reduce the deficit, GOP leaders are already drawing lines in the sand – suggesting that both revenues and entitlements should be off the table:

House Republicans have walked away from deficit reduction talks multiple times, but will they walk away from the Joint Committee before Congressional leaders have even appointed members to the Committee? While Democrats want to work together on a balanced approach to reduce the deficit, GOP leaders are already drawing lines in the sand – suggesting that both revenues and entitlements should be off the table:

Last week Republicans returned to their districts and were “shocked” to hear that job creation was the dominant issue constituents wanted to discuss. Since taking the House majority, Republicans have said that job creation would be a top priority. Unfortunately they’ve taken little action on jobs.