Charles Ellison
+ FollowBREAKING NEWS: House Minority Leader Demands Firing of White House Economic Team
Kicking off the Republican Congressional mid-term election strategy, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) today outlined pieces of a new economic agenda for the GOP and demanded the firing of President Obama’s Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner and chief economic advisor Larry Summers. The full text of his speech is found here on the Minority Leader’s website. You can also watch the speech in its entirety here at C-SPAN.
In a speech before the City Club in Cleveland, OH, Rep. Boehner struck a combative and populist tone against the White House, pointing out the President’s recent attendance at “… a political fundraiser in downtown Columbus [while] just a few blocks away, hundreds of Ohioans were waiting in line at a job fair where they would learn yet again that companies aren’t hiring right now.”
Angered over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) rare interruption of the Congressional summer recess earlier this month in a successful push for a $26 billion jobs and state aid stimulus package, Boehner accused Democrats of “ … talking about wanting to create jobs as a ploy to get themselves re-elected while doing everything possible to prevent jobs from being created.”
Biting a few scripts from the 1994 Republican Contract With America agenda that helped engineer a historic GOP takeover of Congress, Boehner laid out “five actions President Obama should take immediately to break this economic uncertainty:” tax reductions; repealing the new health care law’s ‘1099 mandate;’ and forcing the President to submit an “aggressive spending reduction package” to Congress.
“Lastly – employers and small business owners are rightly frustrated by the fact that no one in the White House is listening to them,” said Boehner. “President Obama should ask for the resignations of the remaining members of his economic team.”
Boehner’s suggestion comes weeks after White House Council of Economic Advisers Chair Christina Romer announced her resignation. Democrats immediately seized on Boehner’s comments as shortsighted and a return to the Bush Administration’s economic policies.
“It’s an effort to obscure the lack of a Republican stand,” House Ways and Means Chairman Sander Levin (D-MI) observed in an interview with POLITICO shortly after Boehner’s speech, accusing the GOP of acting as “a blockade” to economic progress.
“The ‘fire-Geitner-and-Summers’ rhetoric is in direct line with the ‘fire Pelosi’ rhetoric,” said Republican commentator and author Lenny McAllister in comments to Politic365.com. “It’s an illustration of the fact that the Democrats’ orchestrated program for economic recovery has failed miserably.”
Still, McAllister is cautious about GOP plans. “Congressman Boehner and the GOP must make sure that extending Bush tax cuts and other proposals are directly tied to job creation. Otherwise, it’s useless. Anything less resembles 2006 rather than 1994.”
“Clearly, Boehner is trying to change the narrative,” says Jordan Lieberman, former Publisher of Politics Magazine and Vice President of Campaign Grid in an interview with Politic365.com. “The GOP wants to persuade voters that it’s Obama’s incompetence that’s led to the stalled recovery.”
“But, it’s a tough proposition because whatever you think of the current President, you can’t deny that he’s doing much more than the last one. The GOP should really think twice before taking easy, no-brainer shots at the President.”
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