Sen McConnell Unloads On Obama Over Jobs Bill -- 'There's No Education In The 2nd Kick Of a Mule'

QUESTION: President Obama on this bus trip is mocking Republicans (inaudible) sponsored a job plan. Can you react to that?

McCONNELL: You know, the -- the President I think has become convinced that the economy is not likely to be much better a year from now. So he has started the campaign 13 months early and he's trying to convince the American people that it's anybody else's fault but his that we're where we are.

It must be the fault of those Republicans in Congress. It must be the fault of those rich people. It must be the fault of those people on Wall Street. I don't think the American people are going to fall for it. He's been President now for three years -- for three years. We've run the debt up, the national debt up 35 percent as he's tried to prime the pump and borrow and spend our way into prosperity.

I think complaints about Congress fall on deaf ears. He owned the Congress for the first two years. They did everything he wanted -- everything. The only thing they forgot to do, I don't why they overlooked this, they forgot to raise taxes. But they did everything else. They borrowed. They spent. They overregulated. And all of those policies are in place, and you can see how much it's done for the economy: 1.5 million jobs lost since the first stimulus. Now, he's coming back and asking us to do it again. You all have heard this before 'cause it's one of my favorite sayings. At home we say there's no education the second kick of a mule. We've already done this. We've tried it. It failed.

So I know he's desperately interested in trying to blame anybody else, but he's the president of the United States, he set the agenda, he got everything he wanted, and it didn't work. And so I think next year the American people will have to decide whether they want more of the same or whether they want to go in a different direction.

Thanks a lot

Other Than That ...

Laura lays it down ...

I agree with much of this reader’s take on the sorry state of the debt-ceiling talks:

I’ve been watching the debt negotiations play out with a bit of a sinking feeling–Obama’s strategy of offering $3 trillion in imaginary cuts in exchange for $1 trillion in tax increases was genius.  The offer isn’t genuine–nobody knows where the $3 trillion comes from, other than that it doesn’t include real structural entitlement reform.  But because the press hasn’t called him out on this, he’s able to come off looking pretty reasonable–i.e., asking for $1 dollar of new taxes for every $3 of spending cuts.  Grover Norquist may not like it, but that’s where most of the country is (especially independents who decide elections), and it isn’t such a bad deal for Republicans–especially if the new revenue came from closing loopholes rather than raising marginal rates.  The problem, of course, is that Obama isn’t really offering a 3 for 1 deal; he’s promising fake cuts in exchange for real tax increases that are designed to permanently finance the massive expansion of government he has sponsored over the past 2 and a half years.  But the reasons why the President’s “cuts” are fake are difficult to convey (especially during the summer when no one is paying attention).
At the end of the day, a retreat along the lines that McConnell is proposing might be the best option.  It would be hard for Obama to veto, and perhaps Republicans could offer it as a way to avoid default, but still continue to negotiate a deficit reduction package, so it won’t look like they are giving up. 

I was particularly struck by the way the reader calls the McConnell’s Contingency “a retreat” in the course of defending it, since the plan’s biggest haters are keen on calling it a “surrender.” But not all retreats are capitulations, are they? I’m not personally in love with the McConnell plan, but I do know the senator is probably the Republicans’ best political tactician on the Hill — it’s not for nothing that one top Dem staffer called the plan a work of “evil genius.”