Paul Giorgio: McConnell Pulls a Romney
Wednesday, September 03, 2014
The Nation Magazine recently obtained a copy of McConnell’s remarks, and for most Americans, it wasn’t pretty. McConnell pledged to basically shut down government and gut several programs.
McConnell has already been leading efforts to shut down government. In 2012 alone, he led 67 filibusters. To put that in perspective in the years from 1917 to 1970, in those 54 years there were a total of 58 filibusters.
Among the filibusters, McConnell has led are ones to block raising the minimum wage to $10 per hour and to extend unemployment benefits to out of work Americans.
What would be on McConnell’s target list to eliminate, if he was to become Majority Leader and control; the Senate agenda? His first target would be the Environmental Protection Agency, a program put into place by Richard Nixon. That is not surprising, since McConnell represent the Commonwealth of Kentucky, one of the country’s largest coal producing states.
McConnell Will Help Wall Street
What else would be on the McConnell agenda? He pledged to the group of billionaires to go after the Dodd-Frank bill which created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was championed by Elizabeth Warren and was put into place after the recent banking crises. The legislation protects consumers from predatory lending by financial institutions. McConnell is also an opponent of another one of Senator Warren’s pet issues, which is reform of student loans. Currently, the children of the middle class are being crushed by student loan debt, a ticking time bomb in the US economy. The bill would simply allow people to refinance their loans at current rates, which happen to be lower. Wall Street interests were the largest contributors to McConnell in the last 5 years.
Mitch McConnell agenda may be in tune with the Koch Brothers and their fellow billionaires and millionaires, but it is out of touch with the average American. We have gone through a tough stretch in this country since the Great Recession of 2007. Average Americans lost their homes, homes that should not have bought in the first place because they could not afford them. Americans lost their jobs because of the mortgage crisis. But the economy is back.
But to stimulate the economy further, we do need the programs that McConnell wants to gut. Why is he opposed to students negotiating their loans down from 8 and 9 percent to something more reasonable? Banks are only paying depositors a half percent. If those former students saved money on the loans, they would pump it back into the economy. If we extended unemployment 3 months, those on it would pump the money back into the economy and if we gave people a living wage, they too would pump it back into the economy. This would create more jobs.
The problem is that McConnell has no use for the average American. He represents big coal and big business.
McConnell Could Ensure a Democratic Victory in 2016
The unintended result of McConnell becoming the Majority Leader is that much like 1994, when the Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress; Bill Clinton was a happy man, because on that November night in 1994, he knew he would be reelected.
That is the rule of unintended consequences. If the Republicans gain control; of the Senate and start shutting down the government the Democrats will most likely win the presidency in 2016.
Paul Giorgio is a longtime Democratic Party Activist who has worked on numerous campaigns. He was a Lead Advance Person for President Clinton & Vice President Gore. He was Deputy Director of Special Events for President Clinton’s first Inauguration. He has been elected a delegate to numerous Democratic National Conventions and recently served as one of President Obama’s representatives on the Platform Committee. In 2013 he was chosen as a Presidential Elector. He is the President of Pagio, Inc., publishers of Pulse Magazine, Vitality Magazine and Worcester Medicine.
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