Will McConnell withdraw his earmarks?

Today the DSCC issued this press release:

Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, would like Kentucky voters to believe that he hates earmarks. Last month, McConnell endorsed an earmark moratorium despite the fact that he’s been a prolific proponent of earmarks for years. Now, CNN is reporting that McConnell helped to put $86 million in earmarks in the 2011 Omnibus bill.

If McConnell is truly against earmarks as he would have Kentucky voters believe, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is challenging McConnell to withdraw all his earmarks from the budget bill. Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah has already done just this, and asked Senate appropriators to strip his earmarks from the bill.

“Senator McConnell is trying to pull a fast one on Kentucky voters. If Senator McConnell is truly against earmarks as he would have Kentucky voters believe, he should follow the lead of his Republican colleague Senator Hatch and ask for his earmarks to be stripped from the budget bill,” said DSCC National Press Secretary Deirdre Murphy.

President Obama's weekly address

In this week’s address, President Obama strongly urged both houses of Congress to pass the framework agreement on middle class tax cuts. This is a good deal for the American people, and they are counting on Washington to get this done. A failure to do so would not only result in tax hikes on middle class families and a loss of unemployment insurance for those hardest hit by this recession, but it would also risk weakening our economic recovery.

Governor Beshear's weekly address

Republicans play games with jobless benefits

Today's column by DeWayne Wickham highlights one example of Republican nonsense:

Shortly before the Labor Department reported the unemployment rate rose from 9.6% in October to 9.8% in November, MSNBC commentator Mike Barnicle asked [Republican John] Shadegg, a leading member of the right-wing Republican Study Committee, whether extending the unemployment payments that were about to expire would produce a more immediate benefit to the economy than extending a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans?

..."The truth is the unemployed will spend as little of (their jobless checks) as they possibly can," he said. That's right, Shadegg, who comes from a state that pays the second-lowest unemployment benefits in the nation, said that. He thinks the nearly 2 million jobless Americans who will lose their benefits by Christmas if Congress doesn't extend those payments are more likely to squirrel away that money than spend it.

I think that's nonsense. Marc Morial thinks it's "hocus pocus" economics. "The marginal propensity for the unemployed to spend their unemployment compensation is very high," the National Urban League president told me. "It's pre-K economics that people will spend unemployment compensation payments on the necessities of life."

Mitch gets fact-checked

The nonpartisan fact-checkers at FactCheck.org are calling Mitch McConnell out for his "small-business bunk":

On "Meet the Press," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell repeated a claim about the expiring tax cuts and small businesses that we’ve seen, and shot holes in, before.

McConnell: Over 700,000 small businesses pay taxes as individuals. They would be hit by raising the top rate above $250,000; 700,000 of our most productive and effective small businesses. That’s 50 percent of small business income and 25 percent of the work force in the middle of a recession.

...[The congressional Joint Committee on Taxation] says that not all of these taxpayers are entities that would be considered "small" businesses. The committee doesn’t know how many fall under that rubric; neither does McConnell.

Editorial comic roundup

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The White House's weekly address

With President Obama visiting troops in Afghanistan, Vice President Biden delivered this week’s address, in which he said Congress must extend both the middle class tax cuts and unemployment insurance this year. The combined economic blow of raising taxes on the middle class and cutting two million Americans off of unemployment insurance would wind up costing the country hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Governor Beshear's weekly address

Richie Farmer's employees get raises

The Herald-Leader has the story:

Eleven Department of Agriculture employees have received merit-based pay raises this fiscal year, a time when most of the state’s nearly 34,000 employees will receive no cost-of-living pay increase and must take six unpaid days off from work.

A review of state personnel records by the Herald-Leader showed that no other agency in state government has given merit-based pay raises in fiscal year 2011, which began July 1. In the previous fiscal year, only nine employees from across state government received such awards.

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