‘ANGRY’ BOEHNER HAS ODD PRIORITIES…. In his speech on jobs earlier today, President Obama took a moment to acknowledge how far we’ve come from a year ago, but emphasized how much further we have to go. “[E]ven though we have reduced the deluge of job losses to a relative trickle, we are not yet creating jobs at a pace to help all those families who have been swept up in the flood,” the president said. “There are more than 7 million fewer Americans with jobs today than when this recession began. That’s a staggering figure and one that reflects not only the depths of the hole from which we must ascend, but also a continuing human tragedy. And it speaks to an urgent need to accelerate job growth in the short term while laying a new foundation for lasting economic growth.”
The House Republican leader doesn’t quite see it that way.
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) called the administration’s idea to spend money returned from bailed out banks “repulsive.”
The top-ranking GOP lawmaker told reporters that money repaid from failing banks bailed out by the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was never intended to fund new programs. […]
“This makes me so angry! I was there — I know all about TARP. First it was never intended that all this money was going to be spent. But any money that wasn’t spent was going to go to the deficit. The idea of taking this money and spending it is repulsive,” the Ohio lawmaker told reporters on Tuesday.
Now, Boehner is in the unique position of having never been right about economic growth at any point in his political career, so the fact that he finds the idea of a new jobs bill “repulsive” is necessarily a good sign.
But Boehner’s disgust about spending money on job creation that was supposed to go to the bailout should be a tough sell. He claims to know “all about TARP.” He should — Boehner was in on the negotiations, voted for the bailout, and encouraged his caucus to do the same.
The program ended up costing a lot less than expected, to the delight of everyone, but the question is the best use of the $200 billion or so unused through TARP. Here’s what voters should understand: Boehner was fine with that $200 billion being available for Wall Street. He’s fine with that $200 billion being applied to the deficit that Boehner helped create. But Boehner thinks it’s “repulsive” to allocate those resources on job creation, small business tax breaks, and continued aid to the unemployed.
Doesn’t sound like “Speaker of the House” material to me.
