Right-Wing Extremist Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) Insists Obama Has No Mandate-- Lies About Election Results

Jeb Hensarling, who Boehner just appointed chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, forgot to stick to Fox News yesterday and wandered over to CNN for an interview. Soledad O'Brien is nothing like one of the empty-headed Fox bimbos and she asked him actual journalist questions... which he either couldn't or wouldn't answer. When she wanted to know why the GOP won't follow Oklahoma Republican Tom Cole's suggestion and just vote to allow tax breaks for the first $250,000 of everyone's income, the closest Hensarling came to an answer was to lie about President Obama's vote total in the election! Hen:

The President won 51-49. He has an electoral college victory. It’s good enough to get him re-elected but not enough to give him a mandate.

That's a typical Fox News distortion. Yes Obama won an electoral college victory-- 332-206-- a very big one. He won every battleground state but North Carolina, and won Paul Ryan's home state 53-46%. In terms of the popular vote, Obama is closing in on a 5 million vote margin, which is pretty massive. And where Hensarling was most blatant in his lie was when he claimed Romney won 49% of the vote. Right now, as more official returns come in, Romney is firmly in 47% territory (47.31% to be exact) although he could possibly slip into the 46% area. Does that mean Hensarling and his obstructionist cohorts will sign the discharge petition to allow a simple up or down vote on preserving the middle class tax cuts? Not if Miss McConnell's filibustering his own proposal this morning is any indication of how low the Republicans have sunk since the election.

And since Hensarling brought it up, let me also mention that the states where Obama got over 60% of the vote includes states with big, populations, while the states where Romney got over 60% are primarily states with small populations, which means Romney's already measly 206 electoral votes would be considered way too high in a democracy that didn't bend over backwards to negate majority rule.

Obama's states with 60% or more:

• California (population: 37,341,989) 60.0%
• Hawaii (population: 1,366,862) 70.5%
• Massachusetts (population: 6,559,644) 60.7%
• Maryland (population: 5,789,929) 62.0%
• New York (population: 19,421,055) 62.6%
• Rhode Island (population: 1,055,247) 62.7%
• Vermont (population: 630,337) 66.6%

Romney's states with 60% or more:

• Alabama (population: 4,802,982) 60.7%
• Arkansas (population: 2,926,229) 60.6%
• Idaho (population: 1,573,499) 64.5%
• Nebraska (population: 1,831,825) 60.4%
• Oklahoma (population: 3,764,882) 66.8%
• Utah (population: 2,770,765) 72.8%
• West Virginia (population: 1,859,815) 62.3%
• Wyoming (population: 568,300) 68.6%

So Wyoming's 568,300 people are given 2 extra electors, just like California's 37,341,989 people and New York's 19,421,055 people. I'm sure you've also noticed that the pro-Obama states are socially advanced and educated while the Romney states are backward states, filled with ignorant superstitious people... like the dishonest Rep. Hensarling.

Hensarling’s invocation of Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) proposal is not only not an answer to O’Brien’s question-- as it doesn’t explain what’s wrong with the simple solution O’Brien poses-- but it’s also not anything close to balanced. While Boehner’s plan contains an array of draconian spending cuts, it doesn’t propose any actual increased revenue, relying instead on the same voodoo as the Romney tax plan.

As if to answer Hensarling, one of the beneficiaries of the misguided GOP tax policy of forcing burdens onto the middle class while redistributing wealth upwards, FedEx chairman and CEO Fred Smith, a Republican, laughed at Hensarling's and Boehner's desperate assertions that tax hikes on the wealthy kind jobs. He called it the way more and more Americans are seeing it: mythology. Smith told CNN this week that "there's a lot of mythology in Washington, such as it's small business that creates all of the jobs in the United States and if you raise the rates on the top 2 percent, you'll kill jobs. The reality is the vast majority of jobs in the United States are produced by capital investment in equipment and software that's not done by small business. It's done by big business and the so-called 'gazelles,' the emerging companies like the new fracking oil and gas operations. It is capital investment and equipment and software that's the solution to our economic problems, not the marginal tax rates of individuals." Yesterday he was at a meeting of the Business Roundtable with President Obama.

The Business Roundtable, a group of CEOs of major U.S. corporations with more than 16 million employees, has embarked on a campaign-- "It's Time to Act"-- to persuade Congress to resolve the year-end fiscal deadlines and avert automatic tax increases and huge spending cuts. Obama spoke at its quarterly meeting.

The White House said before the meeting that the president would "make the case that our nation's businesses need the certainty that middle class families won't see their taxes go up at the end of the year.

"The President will highlight why it would hurt our economy and our nation's businesses if we do not find a solution to avoid another debt ceiling crisis, and will ask the business leaders for their help in supporting an approach that resolves the debt limit without drama or delay," the statement said.

The event was closed to the press but it would appear the president received a receptive audience. A pool report from a McClatchy Newspapers correspondent indicated the president's remarks were "plagued at times by audio difficulties," but that he told the executives that he was "struck" by the number of CEOs who have told him privately they were willing to pay slightly higher taxes.

Smith was an advisor to McCain's presidential bid in 2008 and over the last few years has personally donated over $150,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, while his FedEx PAC spent $3,249,204 this year alone, most of it on Republicans. Ryan Grimm reports that Smith is by no means the only Republican high roller urging the GOP to just raise the taxes on the rich and get it over with.

[O]n Monday, a gathering of the nation's top defense executives took a surprising turn when they endorsed tax rate increases on the wealthy and cuts of up to $150 billion to the Pentagon's budget. Top executives from Northrop Grumman, Pratt & Whitney, TASC and RTI International Metals appeared at the National Press Club at an event organized by the Aerospace Industries Association, the top defense contractor lobbyist.

David Langstaff, CEO of TASC, said that the executives were speaking out because so far leaders of the defense industry were "talking a good game, but are still unwilling to park short-term self-interest." After the event, he told a defense reporter for Politico that tax rates need to go up.

“In the near term, [income tax rates] need to go up some,” Langstaff said. "This is a fairness issue-- there needs to be recognition that we’re not collecting enough revenue. In the last decade we’ve fought two wars without raising taxes. So I think it does need to go up.”

David Hess, head of Pratt & Whitney, said his parent company, United Technologies Corp, believed personal income tax rates should be on the table; Dawne Hickton, CEO of RTI, said he would back a rate hike if it led to a deal.

The CEOs join other high-profile executives who are willing to chip in more. Following a meeting with President Barack Obama last week at the White House, executives emerged to endorse higher rates. "There needs to be some revenue element to this, and [Obama] started with rates," said Joe Echeverria, CEO of Deloitte LLP. "And he started with rates on what we would define [as] the upper two percent … that we have to pay our fair share. And I think everybody was in agreement with that notion."

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, who was also at the meeting, said in a statement that a deal "will require a compromise involving an increase in both tax rates and revenue."

Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein, meanwhile, told CNN after the meeting that "if we had to lift up the marginal rate, I would do that."

Meanwhile, I'm delighted to report that the DCCC is doing something useful for a change. They have a new anti-Hostagetakers website targeting 40 vulnerable Republicans and demanding they sign the discharge petition and back a vote for middle class tax cuts. And aside from the usual targets where they have Blue Dogs and New Dems running, they've included-- first time ever-- senior GOP policy-makers Buck McKeon (CA-25), Peter King (NY-02), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL-27), each of whom has been fiercely protected in the past by the corrupt DCCC hierarchy. Also nice to see Tom Reed (NY-23) on the list. I had to chuckle seeing that they're on schedule to go after David McKinley (WV-01) now that Steve Israel is busily recruiting a Blue Dog for the seat they ignored this cycle (when progressive Sue Thorn was running).