(Washington, D.C., February 26 2011). Larry Klayman, the founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, today issued the following statement on the failure of Republicans to extract large budget cuts from the Democrats and Obama administration, instead settling for only $4 billion in exchange for a stop gap emergency bill allowing the government to stay in operation.
“The past is a prologue. Fearful that President Obama and the Democrats will feed Republicans their lunch if the government is shut down — as the President Bill Clinton did with then House Speaker Newt Gingrich in the 1990s — the current Republican House Speaker Boehner caved and agreed to only $4 billion in budget cuts, most of which had been previously proposed by Obama, to temporarily keep the government operating.
This latest ‘compromise’ by Republicans, who have claimed that they are more ‘principled,’ signals to the Obama administration and the Democrats that the Republican Party can be ‘rolled,’ and will never use the threat seriously of a government shut down to push through needed serious budget cutting.
One of the reasons that Obama was elected president is a perception by the American people that the Republican Party likes to play games, but is not serious. This act, prolonging the day of reckoning on the budget, reinforces this perception. But regrettably it was totally predictable. House Speaker John Boehner, his boyish sidekick, Eric Cantor, and their minions, have no ‘balls’ and it is now clear that little has changed in Congress. The American people again come last to the Republican Party’s cowardess and political calculations and machinations.
With the rising price of oil due to events in the Middle East, the economy is worse than teetering; it could easily go into free fall. The spineless acts of the Republican establishment leadership will worsen our depressed economy, as investors and others will see that the huge budget deficits will continue. “
For an interview with Mr. Klayman, email leklayman@yahoo.com.