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Republicans play with fire; get burned
To the editor:
Aug. 4, 2011, was President Obama's 50th birthday. Obama supporters across America honored the president's birthday by hosting house meetings. I hosted a meeting at my home. There were 22 guests from Blytheville, Luxora and Osceola. We talked about our cities, county and state government, and President Obama's re-election.
This new grassroots enthusiasm is focusing on improving our lives in our town, county and state government. The question came up, have you heard your representatives speak on Obama Stimulus Dollars? They all said no, they had not. You know, it would not be a meeting without bringing up the U.S. debt ceiling. The Republicans forced a debt ceiling standoff that could have ended in default and a second Great Recession. Some of the untamed Republicans were running around the country, shouting default, default and kept on bickering over the debt ceiling and not jobs, until House Speaker Boehner finally said that he got 98 percent of what he wanted.
I learned as a small child that if you play with fire you will get burned. The Republicans played too long with the debt ceiling, and we all got burned. Here is the aftermath from the bickering over the debt ceiling. S&P gave the U.S. a downgrade from AAA rating to AA+ rating. They based this AA+ rating on our government intention debt repayment capability. Running your mouth on default, default has triggered this downgrade for the first time in history.
The Republicans campaign on jobs, jobs, jobs. Since they have control of the House, jobs have not come from their mouth. There are 17 job bills held up in committees at this time. Turn those jobs loose to the American people. They said on national TV that their first priority was to bring Obama down. Jobs have never been their first priority. President Obama was their outcry. Will you ever learn, if you put Obama in the ditch and you are holding him down, you have to be in the ditch with him.
But I do want Republicans to know that all the blame is not on you, because we are not farther ahead. When Obama wanted to reform our health care, he wanted a public option plan -- that would have been a much better plan than what we have now. It was some of his own Democrats who were opposed to the public option. We had the super majority, so it was not the Republicans who stopped the public option health care plan. When the President wanted to pass the stimulus package, he wanted to do something big for the country, about $2 trillion for infrastructure that would put thousands to work. It was the Democrats who stopped this plan. He only got $800 million. He had to get two Republicans to pass this.
I want to know what are the Democrats doing to help the cause? I see the Republicans taking the credit for the stimulus money, holding up stimulus checks, but never see Democrats standing up for the projects that came from the stimulus money. Go to the press and announce that these projects came from Obama's stimulus money. There are many projects in Arkansas alone. If you don't want to talk about the state's projects, you can mention the ones in the 72370 zone.