In the USATODAY piece, Sen. Sherrod Brown, says the following:
...No one should be surprised over what has happened in the last 18 months:
•We passed health care reform, so the insurance companies are coming after us at election time.
•We enacted consumer protections for homeowners and credit card users, so Wall Street is spending millions to defeat us.
•We worked to end tax breaks for corporations that ship jobs overseas, and now large multinational corporations are doing everything possible to beat us....
Sen. Brown wrote that under the two terms of President Bill Clinton, our nation "....added more than 22 million private sector jobs...." Then George W. Bush became President and those sizable tax cuts for the rich were pushed. What happened then? Under Bush "....only 1 million jobs were added, incomes stagnated or plummeted for most Americans, and we were left with record budget deficits...."
Republicans, conservatives, and their Tea Party cohorts are offering a return to those days of the Bush policies that had poor job creation, layoffs, Wall Street greed, but tax cuts for the rich.
Here in Ohio, we have two Wall Street types running for office. Republican John Kasich, a former investment banker with the now bankrupt Lehman Brothers, spent nearly a decade with Lehman pushing their investments. In central Ohio, Republican Steve Stivers, a former bank lobbyist (with Bank One, now part of Chase) and stockbroker (with The Ohio Company), is running against U.S. Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy (OH-15). Stivers is being bankrolled by major financial PACs, bank lobbyists, individual bankers, insurance executives/PACs, and groups/individuals/lobbyists associated with oil/gas/mining.
Both Kasich and Stivers are against the progress we've made and wish to cut regulations to help their Wall Street and financial/utility/insurance friends make more profits and bonuses. Kasich and Stivers aren't progressives - - - they think backwards. Kasich talks about Reagan. Stivers talks about repealing parts of the U.S. Constitution!!!!!
(Steve Stivers, if elected to the House of Representatives, wants to
1. Repeal the health care reform bill,
2. Repeal the 16th Amendment to the Constitution,
3. Repeal the 17th Amendment to the Constitution,
4. Eliminate the Department of Agriculture,
5. Eliminate the Department of Education,
5. Eliminate the Department of Education,
6. Eliminate the Department of the Interior,
7. Eliminate the Department of Housing of and Urban Development,
8. Eliminate the Department of Transportation,
9. Eliminate the Department of Energy,
10. Repeal Wall Street Reform,
11. Eliminate the Department of Veterans Affairs.
(source for Stivers @ http://912ohio.com/mtc/pdf/912Survey-Stivers.pdf)
Sen. Sherrod Brown is correct. We can choose to continue to move forward with Democrats or be forgotten once the Republicans, conservatives, Tea Party-types, and Wall Street types take control. In a Republican controlled House and Senate, you and your rights are less important than those of millionaires and corporations. Are you interested in moving toward a better future with Progressives and Democrats? Do you want to revisit the financial policies, health insurance discrimination, poor job growth, and tax cuts for the rich that created this recession?
