Mitch McConnell World

Today's Courier-Journal includes this must-read editorial:

What the public is getting now from Sen. McConnell is warmed-over campaign trail bombast about the “left-wing agenda” of the Democrats. He and other GOP congressional leaders prattle on, for example, that an overwhelming majority of the American people want this year's health care reform bill repealed. Actually, public opinion surveys show the country almost evenly divided on that point. Given that Democrats can easily block repeal in the next Congress, the question becomes whether voters two years from now will genuinely want to return their health care coverage back to the tender mercies of the insurance companies. Whatever the answer at that time, the country will not be well served now during continuing economic misery by a distracting argument over an issue that has already been addressed and cannot in the short term be undone.

The first showdown, beginning with the convening next week of a lame-duck congressional session, will be over the Bush-era tax cuts. Republicans benefited in the most recent election from voters' unease over rising deficits, a serious long-range challenge but not the most urgent economic issue at the moment. Yet, the Republicans want to make the tax cuts permanent, which would cost a ruinous sum of almost $4 trillion — that's trillion — over the next 10 years, with no conceivable source of spending cuts to offset such recklessness. A far saner approach would be to end the cuts for the top 2 percent of American households now — saving $700 billion — and to extend the middle-class cuts for just one year or three (but not two years, which would put this political football into play in the next federal election year) in order to pump more money now into an ailing retail economy.

By insisting on permanent cuts for even the wealthiest taxpayers, the Republicans, and Sen. McConnell, make clear whose interests they are really in Washington to serve. The issue now becomes whether Mr. Obama and the Democrats have the will and political courage — using offices American voters entrusted to them — to fight back.