MAYBE THEY’LL GET TO JOBS EVENTUALLY…. John Boehner, back when he was the House Minority Leader, had a special fondness for asking, “Where are the jobs?” It was effective because it was easily the top issue on the minds of Americans.
Not surprisingly, job creation has been the dominant issue in recent years, and was largely responsible for Republican gains in the 2010 midterms. GOP leaders assured the country, vote for them, and they’ll get to work on improving the economy.
What Republicans neglected to mention is that they have a few unrelated items they want to tackle first.
The initial priority for the new House GOP majority was, of course, gutting the health care system, despite the fact that their legislation has no chance at passing, and despite the fact that their proposal would hurt job creation. With that vote out of the way, Republicans are now moving on to their second major initiative.
House Republicans have introduced the first of, probably, many small pieces of legislation designed to pull apart the Affordable Care Act. This morning it was Rep. Chris Smith’s (R-NJ) “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” HR3, a bill that pro-life Democrats have told me they can support.
“[The American people] spoke about this issue on America Speaking Out,” said Speaker of the House John Boehner, explaining why the GOP was moving ahead on this part of the health care fight. “They spoke on this issue loudly and clearly.”
This prompted the obvious questions: Wait, weren’t you promising to focus on job creation?
Well, they were. Now that Boehner & Co. have some power, though, they prefer to focus on some of their other priorities, like abortion. What does abortion have to do with job creation? Nothing, but GOP priorities are apparently a little more fluid than they’d led voters to believe.
They’re bound to start thinking about jobs eventually, right?
In March, Boehner asked, “When are we going to address the number one issue on the minds of our fellow citizens? When are we going to focus on the economy and getting people back to work?”
Funny, someone might want to ask Boehner the same thing.
