Their Economic Policies Haven’t Changed, So They Won’t Bring the Change We Need

Later today, House Minority Leader John Boehner is slated to give a speech at the City Club of Cleveland laying out the major planks of his party’s economic agenda.  Unfortunately, families in Ohio and across the country don’t need to wait until the speech to learn about these economic policies because they’ve been living with the impact of many of these same old policies for years.  Today, Ohioans will hear an argument for a return to the economic policies that turned a surplus into record deficits and helped create the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

While the rhetoric today may be new, the ideas remain the same: out-of-control deficits, decreased oversight of the big Wall Street banks that helped create the financial crisis and putting special interests first by maintaining tax loopholes for corporations that ship American jobs overseas.  Ohioans are also likely to hear a case for extending the Bush high income tax cuts, which provide an average of $100,000 to households making more than $1 million per year while providing nothing for the middle class.  This tired approach to cutting taxes for the richest is the poorest way to support our economy, according to the independent CBO (PDF), and it adds more than $700 billion to our deficits.  At the same time, Rep. Boehner has repeatedly voted against efforts to cut taxes and extend credit to America's small businesses - putting partisanship above what our economy and our small business owners really need. 

And American families haven’t forgotten that after years of economic policies that lined the pockets of the special interests while leaving middle class families out in the cold, it was Rep. Boehner who said earlier this summer that the reform bill strengthening oversight on Wall Street was , “killing an ant with a nuclear weapon.”  Americans who felt the impact of a financial crisis that led to the loss of nearly 8 million jobs and cost people their homes and their life savings considered it more than an “ant.”  


Today, Ohioans will hear the Minority Leader’s support for the same old failed economic policies that steered our economy into the ditch that we’re just now beginning to climb out of.  We cannot afford a return to the past. These failed economic policies haven’t changed, and they won’t bring the change American families need.

Instead, after 22 straight months of job loss, we have now seen our economy create private sector jobs for seven months in a row.  We are cutting government spending, and reducing the deficit by more than $1 trillion over the next ten years; putting ordinary Americans at the front of the line; cutting taxes for and extending credit to America’s small businesses; and investing smartly in our children’s future with a better education and a stronger economic foundation.