President Obama this morning will suggest that Congressional Republicans are obstructionists and hypocrites, stepping up his criticism on an issue that’s languished for weeks. In a statement to the press in the Rose Garden at 10:30 a.m., Obama will highlight the pending measure to extend unemployment insurance and say that Republicans are “denying millions of people who are out work and trying to find a job the needed relief.”
A White House official told TPM that Obama also will say that Republicans want tax cuts for the wealthy but are filibustering this bill to help the unemployed. The official said Obama “will tell the stories of Americans in need of the extension and he will have strong words for Republicans who have previously supported unemployment extensions under Republican Presidents but refuse to offer relief to middle class families today.”
The statement comes after a weekend where Obama got more aggressive with his criticism of the GOP on this topic. During his weekly address Saturday morning, the president said that, “too often, the Republican leadership in the United States Senate chooses to filibuster our recovery and obstruct our progress. And that has very real consequences.”
“Some Republican leaders actually treat this unemployment insurance as if it’s a form of welfare,” Obama said in the address. He added:
They say we shouldn’t provide unemployment insurance because it costs money. So after years of championing policies that turned a record surplus into a massive deficit, including a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, they’ve finally decided to make their stand on the backs of the unemployed.
They’ve got no problem spending money on tax breaks for folks at the top who don’t need them and didn’t even ask for them; but they object to helping folks laid off in this recession who really do need help.
The White House also used their official email list to forward the video, with Obama’s senior political adviser David Axelrod telling subscribers the GOP is “filibustering recovery.”
