The way Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) sees it, recent good news on the American economy is directly linked to the fact that there’s a new Republican majority in Congress.
“After so many years of sluggish growth, we’re finally starting to see some economic data that can provide a glimmer of hope; the uptick appears to coincide with the biggest political change of the Obama administration’s long tenure in Washington: the expectation of a new Republican Congress,” McConnell said on Wednesday. “So this is precisely the right time to advance a positive, pro-growth agenda.”
The comment provoked snide chuckles from Democrats. The Democratic National Committee emailed out a statement with the subject line “DNC to McConnell: Hahahahahahahahahahaha.”
Here’s the statement from DNC Communications Director Mo Elleithee:
Hahahahahahahahahahaha. That Mitch McConnell is one funny guy. He likes to remind people all the time that he’s not a scientist. Now we know he’s not a mathematician or an economist either. The fact is, under President Obama we’ve had 57 straight months of private sector job growth leading to nearly 11 million jobs added. All Republicans have given us is a government shutdown that cost the economy $24 billion. I get why he wants to take credit for the economic recovery. But maybe he should first do something to help contribute to it.
Some Democrats lately have been eager to highlight that the unemployment rate has fallen below 6 percent. Obama himself highlighted some of the economic recovery at his end of year press conference in December (that is, before Republicans took control of the Senate). He said that “the steps that we took early on to rescue our economy and rebuild it on a new foundation helped make 2014 the strongest year for job growth since the 1990s.”
So the economy gets better when you do nothing?
Why do you even have a job, then?
Pathetic. Shall we replay the infrastructure footage when Obama asked you to fund the ailing bridge between Cincinnati OH and the airport in KY?
For most of what is left of the American Middle Class the economy is still in recession. Senator Turtle Neck must be talking about his 1% pay masters.
It would have been nice if the Democrats had pointed all of this out in the election instead of running around shrieking “we don’t like Obama much either!”
Unless the economy predicted a Republican-owned Congress several years ago, the statement is obviously pure politics. Just giving credit to Joe Six-Pack that his vote turned the country around. Fact is, the Bush/Obama stimulus after Wall Street attempted to crater the economy is why things are doing better. A much bigger stimulus would’ve have brought it around sooner.