Natalie Gonnella
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Minority Leader Mitch McConnell took to the Senate floor today using this morning's opening remarks to respond to President Obama's "shovel ready" jokes about economic recovery.
Citing the President's recent quip over the lack of progress, McConnell took aim at the administration's two and half year record of pushing policies that have done little to actually address unemployment and fiscal uncertainty.
Reminding his Democratic colleagues of the 14 million Americans currently looking for jobs, here's a quick look at what the Kentucky Senator had to say:
Amid the onslaught of bad news last week, President Obama’s message was that we’d hit some bumps in the road and that people need to be patient in the face of what called economic `headwinds’. He even joked about the wildly mistaken predictions he and others at the White House made a couple years back about the job-creating potential of the Stimulus.
Well, I don’t think the 14 million Americans who are looking for jobs right now and can’t find them find any of this very funny. I don’t think that the 23 percent of Americans who now owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth are laughing about their predicament. I don’t think recent college graduates out there who are burdened with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt and who can’t find a job are amused that the Stimulus bill turned out to be a failure.
In fact, I think Americans are deeply troubled by the fact that an administration which claims to be concerned about creating jobs has spent the better part of the past two and a half years pushing policies that seem like they were designed to destroy them. Indeed, I think there’s a growing consensus out there that far from improving the economy, the President has made it worse....
When it comes to policy, the President is fond of dividing the world into two camps. In his view, those who disagree with him are on the wrong side of history. Those who agree are on the right side. Well, at this point, I think most Americans would agree that if this is the right side of history, they’re not interested. They’d rather have their jobs back.
Senator McConnell's full remarks are available to view here.
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