Obama Visits The Republican Congressional Caucus-- As Well As Real Americans-- In Baltimore

Earlier today I saw some of the more partisan and extremist of the GOP obstructionists furiously twittering away about their hatred for President Obama, particularly two noisy closet queens, Aaron Schock (R-IL) and Patrick McHenry (R-NC) who seemed to be operating in tandem, like two giggly little girls.


Oh, of course, Pence and Issa and some of the other hard core haters were doing the same. And then I realized that the big pow-wow between the president and the obstructionists was today-- and in Baltimore, not in Hawai'i. The exotic, luxurious Hawai'i GOP retreat where they're trying to come up with a purity or litmus test that even Mike Castle, Charlie Crist, Joseph Cao, Mark Kirk and Michael Steele can pass, is an RNC meeting and that this one in Baltimore is the one where Obama was hoping to reason with the Republicans about working in a bipartisan manner for the good of the whole country. Judging by the nasty tweets, it didn't work.

As Think Progress pointed out this morning, Obama was there-- at John Boehner's invitation-- to make good on his promise of bipartisan outreach and, as he offered in the State of the Union speech, to welcome ideas from the Republicans. It would be impolite to point out that they have no ideas other than the ones that drove the economy into a ditch and the ones they've hatched to ratfuck America so they can regain power. Wall Street shill Paul Ryan (R-WI) wrote about a so-called GOP road map for America's future (appropriately enough, on the radical right editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. It's actually a road map for the corporations and their wealthy management class to continue exploiting ordinary American working families. But that wasn't something Obama was there to say.

He did, however, point out to them that, for all their obstructionism of the Stimulus package-- every single one of them, without exception, voted "no"-- several dozen of them (68 to be precise) had gone out of their way to try to take credit for the infrastructure spending in their districts that the Stimulus is paying for. Most economists agree that the Stimulus is working and the only dissenters say it should have been much bigger, something the Republicans have hysterically opposed.

In his introduction, Obama gave a strong defense of the stimulus package-- which most economists agree has worked-- saying, “there’s not a single person in here” would who would not be “going home to more laid off teachers,” firefighters, and police officers. Obama also chided Republicans for taking credit for the benefits while also bashing it:

And then the last portion of it was infrastructure, which as I’ve said, a lot of you have gone to appear at ribbon cuttings for the same projects that you voted against. Now I say all this not to re-litigate past, but it’s simply to state that the component parts of the stimulus are consistent with what many of you say are important things to do-- rebuilding our infrastructure, tax cuts for families and businesses, and making sure that we were providing states and individuals some support when the roof was caving in.

If you watched the SOTU address this week, you saw them there, all sullen and pissed off, sitting on their hands when the president talked about creating jobs and educational opportunities for working families. If they weren't such a bunch of pathetic jokesters he might have felt like Daniel going into the lion's den. But he didn't waste his whole visit to Baltimore on these clowns. He also visited the Chesapeake Machine Company where he announced details of the Small Business Jobs and Wages Tax Cut, one of his new proposals to create good jobs and bring relief to small businesses. Obama:

“Today, I am proposing what I believe is the best way to promote hiring by small businesses: through a tax credit for companies that add workers and increase salaries this year. Now is the perfect time for this kind of incentive. The economy is growing, but job growth is lagging. This is only one part of our larger jobs package, but it will be a key element to spur hiring and give all small businesses that participate significant tax relief.”