REPUBLICANS SCRAMBLE FOR CREDIT ON THE ECONOMY.... Time will tell whether 2011 is a good year for the U.S. economy. There are some optimistic projections available, and we can all hope they're correct, but the recovery is, at best, fragile at this point.
But Republicans have begun to see some economic improvements -- gains the GOP insisted were impossible in light of the Obama White House's policies -- and want to figure out a way to get credit for them.
Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), for example, argued last week that the recent good news -- private-sector job growth, big corporate profits, major gains in the major Wall Street indexes -- that occurred throughout 2010 were the result of
Republican tax policies. As
Kyl sees it, business leaders in early 2010 predicted the tax policy agreement crafted in late 2010, and started growing the economy based on their future-predicting abilities.
On Fox News today, House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.)
offered a related argument.
"(Congressional Republicans) are determined to ensure that with a market-oriented approach we can have the kind of chance for people to have access to insurance and we can get our economy growing.
"And we've gotten some positive numbers. I think it's in large part because we won our majority and we're pursuing pro-growth policies."
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So to review, Republicans in the Bush era brought the global economy to the brink of catastrophic collapse; Obama and congressional Dems helped turn things around; and now those same Republicans whose policies failed want credit for Democratic successes.
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