Politics

Dem congressman: GOP intentionally sabotaging economy to ‘defeat Barack Obama in 2012’

Jeff Poor Media Reporter
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This is the sort of cynical notion you might expect from one of the talking heads that appear nightly on MSNBC, but it might be a bit of a surprise coming from a sitting member of Congress.

During the 6 p.m. broadcast hour on MSNBC hosted by Cenk Uygur, Washington Democratic Rep. Jim McDermott endorsed a theory from Uygur that the House GOP leadership is set upon sabotaging the American economy in order to defeat President Barack Obama in the 2012 election by remaining steadfast on cutting government spending.

“Well, Cenk, you’ve pulled curtain away from what their hidden agenda is,” McDermott said. “You have to remember one thing, if you just remember this for the next 24 months you will understand what’s going on. They want to defeat Barack Obama in 2012. Everything they do is directed at that and what’s happening right now is their worst nightmare. Here we’ve got more jobs, and they say the only thing we should be doing is cutting spending. And everybody says, ‘No, no that is the wrong thing. You’ll lose 700,000 jobs.’ Goldman Sachs is saying it’s a bad idea. They simply only have one note and that note is beat Barack Obama in 2012. If it costs the economy, if it costs the taxpayers, if it costs the workers – we don’t care, as long as we beat him 2012.”

However, there was one flaw in that logic according to Uygur: Why are Obama and other congressional Democrats also advancing the idea of spending cuts? According to McDermott, Democrats want spending cuts as well, but that’s further down the road. The game now according to the Washington state Democrat is too create an economy in chaos.

“We’re caught in a situation where they’re running the government two weeks at a time on the Republican side,” McDermott said. “They want to keep chaos in this country for the next 10-12 months if they can do it. And our attempt is to say, ‘Alright, let’s make some cuts because the president is talking about cuts.’ Everybody knows ultimately in the long-term we’ll make cuts. Let’s make some and give a continuing resolution, let this thing run until next September. The Republicans will not allow the economy to settle down. They want chaos on a daily basis.”

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