Tag: Congressional Republicans
Republicans Kill Bill That Would End Tax Advantages for Shipping U.S. Jobs Overseas
Republicans in Congress prove once again that they are in power to push the interests of their corporate sponsors and billionaire benefactors, not their unemployed, about-to-be-foreclosed-upon constituents:
Senate Republicans on Thursday killed a measure backed by President Barack Obama that would encourage companies to bring overseas jobs back to the United States.
The measure being pressed by Obama’s Democratic allies is rich with political symbolism, but whether it would have had much practical impact on decisions by companies to “outsource” jobs to lower-wage countries is open to question.
Democrats brought the measure to the Senate floor in concert with political attacks on Mitt Romney, whose private equity firm, Bain Capital, promoted the practice of outsourcing jobs to countries like China and India.
The bill would forbid companies from deducting the expenses of moving workers or operations overseas from the U.S., and would offer a 20 percent credit for the costs of shifting workers back home.
GOP ‘Party of No’ Gambit Backfires — Voter Approval of Republicans at an All-Time Low
From the moment Pres. Obama took office, Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) and the rest of the GOP leadership in Congress have engaged in a high-risk, gridlock-on-steroids strategy — a level of obstructionism that is unparalleled in U.S. history, particularly including a record-breaking number of filibusters in the Senate.
How bad is it for congressional Republicans? They’re even lagging behind Sarah Palin, whose approval rate is just 29 percent.
Their “party of no” strategy has been effective in two ways. First, they have used obstructionism to weaken legislation to protect the profits of their corporate donors. They have done this by sucker-punching the president and the Democrats on every major bill — first by threatening to vote no unless the particulars of the legislation were changed to benefit corporations and then by voting resoundingly against the bill anyway, despite getting everything they demanded.
That second part — the lockstep voting, gridlock-on-steroids tactic — was intended to slow things down unnecessarily as a way to frustrate voters who, more than anything, wanted to see progress in solving the multiple crises the country is facing. This was an especially neat trick because attentive voters were surely aware that the crises were caused by these same Republican senators and House members rubberstamping the Bush anti-regulatory, anti middle-class agenda when they controlled Congress the last time.
Frustrating voters with gridlock is a tried-and-true tactic the party out of power can use to drive up the negatives of the party in power. It has always worked as a zero-sum game in our calcified two-party system. When voters’ approval of one party goes down, approval of the other party goes up.
But it hasn’t worked out that way this time. While the Republicans’ “party of no” strategy has been effective in poisoning the well — the Democrats’ negatives are way up — according to the new NBC/Wall St. Journal poll, the GOP’s uber-obstructionism appears to have backfired. Big time:
