The brilliance of the 111th United States House of Representatives with a Democratic majority is not to be denied contemporarily or in the perspective of history. This body of the 111th Congress did its job, over a locked arm phalanx of obstruction from the Republicans, to pass 400 plus bills rejecting Bush, the GOP and renewing the promise of America that had been grievously undermined by Republicans. The U.S. Senate, hidebound by old boy club chair rules and a grotesquely over empowered Republican minority, barely even passed wind in two years.
The Republicans in the House and Senate both ascribed to a two year plan to prevent anything from being done to benefit the country, even now, down to the START treaty. Every single effort to assuage or temper the impact of the Republican Greatest Recession on the people was blunted and turned away by a GOP callous and indifferent to "promoting the public welfare," an act in multiple parts unprecedented since the Great Depression.
Now, in the last days of the Great GOP and Bush Rejection of 2006-08, the Republicans still have the one bargaining piece that has been used and reused with merciless and contemptuous forethought for two years. That bargaining piece is to hold the poorest Americans and those who were damaged most by their regressive policies hostage to their agenda of retaking government. They, to a man, refused to "promote the general welfare" in even the slightest way, in order to extinguish in the American people the last hope that government would or could do anything to "promote the general welfare." They have vacated the "welfare" clause and forsaken their oath to do what is right, in favor of doing what most benefits themselves. In the 112th, Republicans bode to comport themselves no better.
Now through Dec. 31st is the last act of the resolute 111th Congress. With a President who has acceded to Republican control of a Senate through which no measure can be passed that unambiguously benefits the public, it is up to the House, that body closest to the people, to lend an ear and hear what it is the people are driven in desperation to proclaim in a majority voice.
The voice of the majority is clear and its message is succinct. We can no longer be quieted by the crumbs from the table of the rich.
More, given a choice that the rich should further feast so that we can have more crumbs or starve, we would, in what is our last vestige of pride and courage, rather starve.
For we know full well that the rich never have enough and hoard even the drippings of fat from their orgy of greed. We know that they will not share even as much as the opportunity for us to make our own way.
We are tithed not by government but by the greed of those who have perverted our government with money to erect monopolies and immunities from prosecution for wrong doing.
We are done with the rich.
We need them no more and they and all their wealth be damned!
All the math says we are right to damn the rich anyway. If ALL the Bush tax cuts expire for everyone it affects the lower and most desperate HALF of Americans hardly at all. It's the price of a pair of shoes or a dinner out until your income bracket reaches $100 thousand anyway. For a lousy $100 a month we're to be obeisant to a Republican party and its rich patrons who are indifferent and even hostile to lower and middle class Americans getting ahead and getting a raise at all. To leverage, through government, low wages and poor benefits and working conditions for wage earners is the raison d'être of the GOP. They do so to the detriment of the public, the economy and the country. They do so for sole benefit to the personal wealth of a few short sighted traitors to the egalitarian creed of America.
We realize or sense that the economy will not improve if left to the Republicans. It never has, not ever for the middle class. We know that the economy is in decline and that the only way out of that decline is for the working class to make more money and so we reject the trickle down politics of the GOP. We just do not seem to have faith, anymore, that the Democrats are any different than the GOP.
You, the House of Representatives of the 111th Congress, have the power to restore national confidence in Democrats as the party of the people. We will accept a shared sacrifice to save the country. We will not accept further sacrifice from ourselves to give money to freeloading bastards that run and ruin our economy, destroy our jobs for profit, or fire us in order to hire cheaper labor off shore. It is our country and we will sacrifice for it if we know that sacrifice has some hope of restoring America to prosperity and pride.
Vote down the Obama/McConnell tax compromise and then pass a bill condemning the extortion of Congress by a Republican minority which holds the lives and "general welfare" of Americans in contempt and hostage for the benefit of its minority of the lard assed rich. Then pray that we may find the spark of decency that will give comfort to those unfortunate unemployed that have been so viciously exploited by the vermin Republicans that visited this calamity on our land.