To: Interested Parties
From: Brendan Daly
Re: The Republican Problem
Date: January 29, 2009

The House Republican Leadership put its Members in another politically untenable position yesterday: trying to reclaim the mantle of lower taxes and small government — at the exact time when economists of every ideological stripe agree that government investments are the only way to get our economy moving again and make us competitive for the long term.

So yesterday, while we are facing the greatest economic crisis in decades, Republican House Members ended up voting unanimously against:

* Jobs in their own communities

* Tax cuts for 95 percent of American workers

* Long overdue investments that will transform and grow their economies to compete globally

* Critical services in their own communities, such as police officers, teachers, and health care

Instead, their substitute did not create as many jobs and it increased the number of people subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax.

The hypocrisy of the Republicans complaining about the process does not obscure the record of recent Republican leadership:

* 2.6 million American jobs were lost in 2008 alone.

* The national debt has almost doubled in the last eight years; the debt borrowed from foreign countries has tripled.

* The Clinton Administration left a record budget surplus. President Bush turned it into the worst deficit in American history.

* We face an economic recession unrivaled since the Great Depression, as a result of years of failure to invest in our own global competitiveness, failures to bring common sense to Wall Street and our housing market, and tax policies that favored massive corporations and most affluent individuals.

This is not the first time the Republicans in the House have unanimously voted against a needed economic package. The last time, in 1993, when Democrats voted for tough action to clean up after Republican economic mess, not a single Republican voted for the legislation that produced record surpluses and a balanced budget.

Once again this week, as another Democratic President and Democratic Congress worked to address historic deficits and recession brought on by Republican mismanagement of the economy, not a single Republican voted for the legislation. There's a pattern here of Republican economic mismanagement and Democrats stepping up to do what's needed for the good of the country while Republicans acted in a partisan and irresponsible manner.