BOEHNER…. In the first weekly Republican radio address under the new administration, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) touted the GOP’s vision for an economic recovery.
“Our plan is rooted in the philosophy that we cannot borrow and spend our way back to prosperity,” Boehner stated.
The minority leader said the package authored by congressional Democrats was “chock-full of government programs and projects,” noting a Congressional Budget Office report that projected less than half of the $355 billion that House Democrats would spend to create jobs through infrastructure programs and other efforts is likely to be used before the end of fiscal 2010.
Let’s see, where to start. First, the CBO report Boehner is so fond of doesn’t really exist. Second, Boehner has supported nothing but “borrow and spend” policies since the moment he arrived in Congress, which helps explain his votes in support of budgets that produced the largest deficits in American history.
Third, if the administration and the congressional majority listened to Boehner and relied on weak-stimulus tax cuts to improve the economy, isn’t that necessarily a “borrow and spend” policy? And if tax cuts were the magic bullet, and Bush and Boehner cut taxes over the last eight years, shouldn’t the economy be in great shape? (Indeed, it’s this thinking that led the National Republican Congressional Committee to argue, as recently as yesterday, “Thanks to Republican economic policies, the U.S. economy is robust and job creation is strong.”)
And fourth, of course the Democratic plan is “chock-full of government programs and projects.” That’s the point.
