(March 24, 2010 - Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America)
House Minority Leader John Boehner took the Obama economic team, plan, strategy, and ideology to task Tuesday morning in a speech at the City Club in Cleveland, Ohio. Boehner pulled no punches calling for the resignation of President Obama’s economic team as the fifth prong of a five-part proposal. He told the gathered audience “We’ve tried 19 months of government-as-community organizer. It hasn’t worked. Our fresh start needs to begin now.” He went on to say that “It’s time to put grown-ups in charge. It’s time for people willing to accept responsibility. It’s time to do what we say we’re going to do.”
Boehner, in his typical call’em like he sees’em fashion, laid out what he sees as the underlying cause of continued economic uncertainty – government interference.
You watch them start a family, you lend an ear when they’re trying to find a house in a good school district, you run over to the hospital when someone’s sick.
These are bonds that can’t be measured in statistics and spreadsheets coming from this bureau or that bureaucracy. But intangible as these bonds are, they have been frayed by the struggling economy.
Right now, America’s employers are afraid to invest in an economy stalled by ‘stimulus’ spending and hamstrung by uncertainty. The prospect of higher taxes, stricter rules, and more regulations has employers sitting on their hands. And after the pummeling they’ve taken from Washington over the last 18 months, who can blame them?”
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BOEHNER’S PROPOSAL
Today I am proposing five actions President Obama should take immediately to break this economic uncertainty and help more Americans find an honest day’s work:
First, President Obama should announce he will not carry out his plan to impose job-killing tax hikes on families and small businesses.
Second, President Obama should announce that he will veto any job-killing bills sent to his desk by a lame-duck Congress – including ‘card check,’ a national energy tax, and any other tax increases on families and small businesses.
(August 16, 2010 - Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images North America)
Third, President Obama should call on Democratic Leaders in Congress to stop obstructing Republicans’ attempts to repeal the new health care law’s job-killing ‘1099 mandate.’
Fourth, President Obama should submit to Congress for its immediate consideration an aggressive spending reduction package.
President Obama should ask for – and accept – the resignations of the remaining members of his economic team, starting with Secretary Geithner and Larry Summers, the head of the National Economic Council.
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Brilliant stuff from the Minority Leader here folks. Common sense solutions to 19 months of misguided brilliance and unwarranted arrogance. Save for the complex simplicity of the matter of 1099 mandates, this speech could have been heard at any barber shop, grocery store, or workplace water cooler any day for much of the last two years.
Government is not, cannot, and never will be the solution to this or any economic downturn. We have given “government” 19 months under this administration and 6 under the last to solve this problem… Maybe now its time to take another approach.
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Full Text of the Speech is here… since – as Michelle Malkin points out - there was no media coverage of the speech – so sorry, no video. Instead the MSM was rope-a-doped into a press conference with Shirley Sherrod.
Boehner makes a lot of sense, although I don’t see it happening. One thing though. Can you explain what the 1099 mandate is?
The 1099 is yet another piece of brilliance slipped into the health care bill. Check out the link below for a quick snapshot of the problem the change in the tax code has caused. I was happy to hear Boehner mention it because I actually had someone contact me last week looking for free legal advice on the matter and was shocked when I looked into it. Yet another sign that these folks have not the slightest clue what their actions really mean for real Americans.
From Cato @ Liberty –
Basically, businesses will have to issue 1099s whenever they do more than $600 of business with another entity in a year. For the $14 trillion U.S. economy, that’s a hell of a lot of 1099s. When a business buys a $1,000 used car, it will have to gather information on the seller and mail 1099s to the seller and the IRS. When a small shop owner pays her rent, she will have to send a 1099 to the landlord and IRS. Recipients of the vast flood of these forms will have to match them with existing accounting records. There will be huge numbers of errors and mismatches, which will probably generate many costly battles with the IRS.
Thanks for the clarification. I have read the article at Cato and from what it sounds like to me, Congress is doing everything they can to get every dime they can from everyone they can for the IRS.
I understand there is tax fraud in America, but with these kinds of mandates, is it any wonder that business and individuals alike want to skirt the IRS and it’s regulations at every turn? They have one hand out all the time and in the other is a very big stick.
Yes indeed. Somewhat ironic that an administration full of tax cheats would tack on a multi-billion dollar clerical rider in a health care bill to make sure that small business owners aren’t skimming off the top of their pre-tax dollars.
Yes indeed, it is more than somewhat ironic. The fox is guarding the hens, seems to me.
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