Repugs Vote to Kill 900,000 Jobs - Dems Save the Day

Are you a police officer, firefighter, teacher or any other essential public servant in Kentucky? Brett Guthrie, Geoff Davis, Hal Rogers and Ed Whitfield think you should be fired.

Yes, all four repug congress critters from Kentucky voted against the aid to states bill that will save 900,000 critical jobs nationwide. All but two repugs voted against the bill.

Steve Benen:

The public is probably pretty accustomed to Republican lawmakers balking at every piece of legislation, and this jobs bill fit into the larger pattern -- 98.8% of House Republicans opposed the measure, as did 95% of Senate Republicans.

And while it's relatively easy for the GOP to spin near-unanimous opposition to contentious measures like health care reform and fixing a broken student loan system, the votes on the state-aid package are far harder for the public to stomach.

We're talking about a common-sense package -- which lowered, not raised, the deficit -- to save middle-class jobs. Voters can be fickle and unpredictable at times, but most folks tend to like school teachers, firefighters, and police officers.

For reasons that are hard to explain, congressional Republicans labeled them "special interests," unworthy of rescue. The same GOP leaders who concluded that Wall Street deserved a bailout at a time of crisis, decided teachers and cops didn't.

Digby noted yesterday, "I do hope the Democrats are paying close attention to this because it might just save their bacon if they play their cards right."

I'm telling you, this is where the vulnerable underbelly of their "just say no" campaign. They are voting against nice, white, suburban middle class Americans this time (along with nice brown and black suburban middle class Americans) with this crusade. And going after teachers, cops and firefighters is a very, very dangerous thing to do. And as I wrote before, the Democrats should throw it right in their face.

If they don't, they're missing an opportunity.

SNIP

It's not every day the two parties' approaches to government get spelled out so clearly, giving the public a stark choice between two very different ideologies.

Tell everybody you know, everybody you meet on the street: The Democratic Congress just stopped Republicans from killing almost 1 million jobs. The Democratic Congress stopped Republicans from firing 900,000 police officers, firefighters and teachers. The Democratic Congress is saving and creating jobs; repugs are killing jobs.