That would be – redistributing the wealth to the top 1%.

White House White Board: CEA Chair Austan Goolsbee Explains the Tax Cut Fight

Posted by Jesse Lee on September 30, 2010 at 06:30 AM EDT

…Austan Goolsbee, the new Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers here at the White House, tackles the tax cut fight and what it means that Congressional Republicans are “holding middle class tax cuts hostage” as the President has said…

*  Under President Obama’s plan,  all Americans would receive a tax cut on the first $250,000 of their income.  Every middle class family would receive the immediate certainty and comfort of knowing their tax cuts were permanently extended. Every American making more than $250,000 per year they would receive a tax cut on the first $250,000 of their income.

   * Instead of working to give middle class families this immediate certainty and comfort, Congressional Republicans are continuing to hold that relief hostage in order to have our nation borrow $700 billion that we can’t afford to provide an average tax cut of $100,000 to millionaires and billionaires.

   * We simply can’t afford to give the wealthiest Americans these big tax cuts that would add to our deficit and, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, be just about the least effective way to grow our economy and help create jobs.

The transcript:

Austan Goolsbee, Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers: You may have been following, we’ve got a big back and forth going about the tax cuts. What I wanted to do today is just break it down real simple so you can understand exactly what the debate is about.

President George Bush passed tax cuts that will expire at the end of this year.

And what I’ve done here, is we got a ruler and measured out the size of the tax cut is how big the circle is by your income which is listed at the top from low incomes up to people make more than a million dollars a year.

Obama would preserve couple thousand dollars a year in tax cuts for virtually all Americans. And even for people make a lot, they’d get to keep the tax cut on the first two hundred fifty thousand dollars of their income.

Under the Republican plan, however, people making more than a million dollars a year, they’re gonna be getting a tax cut of more than one hundred thousand dollars.

That’s expensive. Giving these big red eggs to the very high income people would cost seven hundred billion dollars that we would have to borrow to give to them.

If you ask objective economists and analysts across the country about what is effective, you will find that everyone agrees that these giant tax cuts for very high income people are the least effective thing that we can do to get the economy growing.

And so what’s happening in Congress is that the people that want this [big tax breaks for the wealthiest] are saying nobody here [lower incomes] can get any of these tax cuts unless we agree to give this big red goose egg to the people making more than a million dollars a year. It doesn’t make any sense, it costs too much money, and we know it doesn’t work.

So simple and straightforward anyone who isn’t a Kool-aide drinker or Roy Blunt (r-lobbyists) can understand it.

Via Think Progress we learn that vandals struck a St. Louis Mosque – for the second time in the two weeks.  (And why didn’t I learn this in the Post-Dispatch?) A pentagram and the slogan “Worship Satan” were spraypainted on the Mosque wall.

The response from the Mosque officials:

In an interview with local news station KMOV, mosque spokesman Tim Kaminski said the mosque is not interested in pursuing charges against the vandal or vandals. “What we would like is for this person to come forward and come clean,” said Kaminski. “We have no rancor, no anger. We want to talk to this person. Explain to them what Islam is, that we worship the same God as the Christian and Jewish traditions do.”

Aren’t Christians supposed to be the ones who turn the other cheek? One comment brought up the new survey from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, and it occurred to me that this event certainly helps put into perspective its finding that even atheists know more about the Christian religion than most self-professed Christians.

Another comment voiced a much darker concern:

It’s a short step from vandalism against property to attacks on people.

I was in Detroit just after 9/11, and I remember an incident reported in the local papers in which a mechanic attacked and injured an innocent Muslim man with a crowbar. As I remember it, the victim had done nothing other than enter his shop seeking service. The moral is that there are more than a few murderous fools with poor impulse control hiding in the woodwork, and, unfortunately, there are also lots of cynical demagogues who ought to know better, but who are hell-bent on using raging zenophobia as a political tool.

Good question.

When it comes to immigration reform, this one?:

May 22, 2008, 3:51 pm

McCain Says Immigration Reform Should Be Top Priority

By MICHAEL LUO

….When Mr. McCain’s presidential bid stalled last summer, many blamed his advocacy for the immigration reform bill in the Senate, which included a pathway to citizenship for the illegal immigrants already here in the country….

Or this one?:

Arizona Senator John McCain supports immigration reform that would deport illegal immigrants

BY Aliyah Shahid

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Tuesday, July 6th 2010, 1:09 PM

Arizona Sen. John McCain has a message for illegal residents of his state: Go back where you came from.

McCain, who has been veering right to try and win his Republican Senate primary against conservative former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, said on Tuesday that he supports immigration reform that would deport those living in the country illegally.

“No amnesty. Many of them need to be sent back,” McCain said…

Or on TARP, this one?:

McCain on TARP back in ’08

….And here’s the statement McCain released on Oct. 3, 2008, after the House passed TARP: “I commend the House of Representatives for coming together to pass the economic rescue bill today. I’m glad I suspended my campaign to go back to Washington to help bring the House Republicans to the table. I believe that the taxpayer protections that have been added have improved the bill. This rescue bill is not perfect, and it is an outrage that it’s even necessary. But we must stop the damage to our economy done by corrupt and incompetent practices on Wall Street and in Washington….”

Or this one?:

Sen. John McCain: I was misled on bailout

by Dan Nowicki – Feb. 22, 2010 12:00 AM

The Arizona Republic

Under growing pressure from conservatives and “tea party” activists, Sen. John McCain of Arizona is having to defend his record of supporting the government’s massive bailout of the financial system.

In response to criticism from opponents seeking to defeat him in the Aug. 24 Republican primary, the four-term senator says he was misled by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. McCain said the pair assured him that the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program would focus on what was seen as the cause of the financial crisis, the housing meltdown….

Or on gay marriage, this one?:

McCain: Same-sex marriage ban is un-Republican

Wednesday, July 14, 2004 Posted: 4:29 PM EDT (2029 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona broke forcefully with President Bush and the Senate GOP leadership Tuesday evening over the issue of same-sex marriage, taking to the Senate floor to call a constitutional amendment that would effectively ban the practice unnecessary — and un-Republican….

Or this one?:

McCain Woos the Right, Makes Peace With Falwell

Possible 2008 Presidential Contender Makes Inroads With GOP Base

By TEDDY DAVIS

March 28, 2006

….But McCain “reconfirmed” to Falwell that he would support a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman if a federal court were to strike down state constitutional bans on gay marriage….

On government wiretapping, this one?:

John McCain Q&A

By Charlie Savage

Globe Staff / December 20, 2007

….There are some areas where the statutes don’t apply, such as in the surveillance of overseas communications. Where they do apply, however, I think that presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is….

Or this one?:

Adviser Says McCain Backs Bush Wiretaps

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

Published: June 6, 2008

WASHINGTON – A top adviser to Senator John McCain says Mr. McCain believes that President Bush’s program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team….

We could go on and on. Think Progress can and does.

Basketball is a game of artistry and creativity. Nothing epitomizes this more than the game of Horse. At its core it is a game of one upmanship, where difficult and sometime next to impossible shots are used to eliminate the competition from play.

Sometimes, I really, really wanna take my ball and go home. Lots of my team-mates are already packing up and heading off. Why?

— They worked hard to get Claire McCaskill into the game; now she plays the odds and mostly comes out for the reddish-purple team.

— They watch Robin Carnahan try to play the odds just like her soul-sister, Claire.

— They worked their tails off for Obama and he turned out to like to play in the center (just like he claimed in the campaign).

— The age of Aquarius never dawned and we have to hustle hard for every little win.

— Somebody told us that if we pack it in, the rest of the team’ll be so sorry they’ll play just the way we want them to in the future (and I got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you).

So why is anyone still hanging around, bouncing balls off the garage door?

— We see little twerps like Ed Martin consistently fouling with no penalties leveled.

— We’ve read Roy Blunt’s game plan as expressed in the corporate wish list he calls his jobs plan.

— We’ve heard climate change denier Blaine Luetkemeyer make a fool of himself and Missouri while playing on Merry King Coal’s team.

— We don’t think we ought to have to play according to Todd Akin’s Christian Sharia rulebook either.

— We’ve seen the rest of the Missouri GOP team synchronize their play to the beat called out by the Tea Party-whipped GOP leadership.

Time and new battles have diminished our memory of how bruised we got playing against the rule-bending George Walker Bush bullies, but if we lose this new game by default, the same kind of pols will be calling the shots in Washington once again not just stalling the action. And it’ll hurt just that much more when they privatize Social Security, slash Medicare, defund the really good parts of the Affordable Care Act, stop government by initiating hearings and issuing subpoenas over ACORN, birtherism, you name it, while letting Big Money referee the game.  

GOP candidates have been running their mouths a lot about jobs, mostly in relation to lower taxes for their favored, well-off constituencies. Roy Blunt’s campaign for Senate, for instance, has produced a “Jobs Plan,” that is long on GOP boiler-plate (and equally long on “solutions” that seem designed to play well with the energy and telecom industries who support his political ambitions so generously). Rhetoric aside, what does the current GOP record actually look like when proposals that would really have an impact on employment are put on the table?

A rarely discussed structural problem that contributes to the current jobless recovery is that many of the good-paying, manufacturing jobs have been outsourced over the past decade – good for corporations that can exploit the poor in third world countries with impunity, bad for the U.S. employment picture. Roy Blunt doesn’t even mention this problem in his jobs plan. GOP Senate team-player, Kit Bond, voted just this week to keep a bill from coming up for a vote that would have imposed tax penalties on companies that outsource their production. Claire McCaskill, on the other hand, voted to end debate and permit a vote on the legislation.

Small business owners often cite tight credit that discourages expansion to explain their failure to hire new workers. However, Republicans, who talk endlessly about the importance of small businesses for recovery, have for months stonewalled legislation designed to address just that issue.

The long-stalled small business lending legislation was passed in the Senate only recently with the help of two Republican Senators who plan to retire at the end of their current terms, which means that they no longer need fear repercussions from the NO party’s leadership or its Tea Party-addled base. However, Missouri’s retiring Republican Senator, Kit Bond, good GOP soldier that he is, kept faith and continued to march in lockstep with the Party of NO (jobs).

On the House side, Roy Blunt was so busy out on the campaign trail running his mouth about jobs creation that he couldn’t manage to even vote on the Small Business Lending Fund Act of 2010. But Blaine Luetkemeyer, Jo Ann Emerson, Sam Graves, and Todd Akin made up for Roy’s indisposition, and handily voted against the interests of the small businesses they love to talk up as the real job creators. You want to know how Missouri Democratic Reps. Carnahan, Cleaver, Clay, and Skelton voted? If you even have to ask, just click on their names and learn who really stands with the middle class.

There are lots of clichés that reflect how strongly Americans feel abut personal integrity: walking the walk, talking out of both sides of your mouth, putting up or shutting up – you can probably supply many more. Today’s question is, when it comes to jobs for ordinary, middle class Americans, as opposed to more moolah for the GOP’s corporate sugar daddies, how many Republicans can you point to who walk the walk, talk straight, and put up when push comes to shove. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see too many in our Missouri GOP congressional delegation.

It’s always an interesting enterprise when one peruses the information on contributions over $5000.00 which are required to be reported within forty-eight hours of receipt to the Missouri Ethics Commission:

CONTRIBUTION OF MORE THAN $5,000.00 RECEIVED BY ANY COMMITTEE FROM ANY SINGLE DONOR – TO BE FILED WITHIN 48 HOURS OF RECEIVING THE CONTRIBUTION

C031160 FRIENDS OF TILLEY [pdf] 9/24/2010

REX AND JEANNE SINQUEFIELD

WESTPHALIA MO

RETIRED

9/24/2010

$100,000.00

[emphasis added]

Really, for Air Tilley?

Somehow, the line in the film Inception (2010) comes to mind:

“I bought the airline…It seemed neater.”

And with the big to do over a small town film festival we almost missed this one from a little over a week ago:

CONTRIBUTION OF MORE THAN $5,000.00 RECEIVED BY ANY COMMITTEE FROM ANY SINGLE DONOR – TO BE FILED WITHIN 48 HOURS OF RECEIVING THE CONTRIBUTION

C081024 CITIZENS FOR HOSKINS [pdf] 9/19/2010

Missouri CPA PAC

St. Louis, MO

9/18/2010

$5,000.00

[emphasis added]

What, nothing from the Directors Guild of America? That’s disappointing, but not surprising. After all, Represenative Hoskins (r-noun, verb, CPA) doesn’t appear to be a fan of the cinema.

And those Missouri rock stars continue to get large contributions:

CONTRIBUTION OF MORE THAN $5,000.00 RECEIVED BY ANY COMMITTEE FROM ANY SINGLE DONOR – TO BE FILED WITHIN 48 HOURS OF RECEIVING THE CONTRIBUTION

C091153 SCHWEICH FOR AUDITOR [pdf] 9/25/2010

Steven L. Trulaske, Sr.

O’Fallon, MO

True Manufacturing Company

9/24/2010

$10,000.00

[emphasis added]

CONTRIBUTION OF MORE THAN $5,000.00 RECEIVED BY ANY COMMITTEE FROM ANY SINGLE DONOR – TO BE FILED WITHIN 48 HOURS OF RECEIVING THE CONTRIBUTION

C091153 SCHWEICH FOR AUDITOR [pdf] 9/23/2010

Hager Companies

St. Louis, MO

9/23/2010

$10,000.00

[emphasis added]

CONTRIBUTION OF MORE THAN $5,000.00 RECEIVED BY ANY COMMITTEE FROM ANY SINGLE DONOR – TO BE FILED WITHIN 48 HOURS OF RECEIVING THE CONTRIBUTION

C091153 SCHWEICH FOR AUDITOR [pdf] 9/22/2010

Stephen Ditman

Godfrey, IL

Pricewaterhouse Coopers

9/22/2010

$10,000.00

[emphasis added]

CONTRIBUTION OF MORE THAN $5,000.00 RECEIVED BY ANY COMMITTEE FROM ANY SINGLE DONOR – TO BE FILED WITHIN 48 HOURS OF RECEIVING THE CONTRIBUTION

C091153 SCHWEICH FOR AUDITOR [pdf] 9/20/2010

Robert R. Hermann

St. Louis, MO

Retired

9/20/2010

$10,000.00

Steve and Robin Roodman

Marion, IL

Anesthesiologist

9/20/2010

$10,000.00

[emphasis added]

CONTRIBUTION OF MORE THAN $5,000.00 RECEIVED BY ANY COMMITTEE FROM ANY SINGLE DONOR – TO BE FILED WITHIN 48 HOURS OF RECEIVING THE CONTRIBUTION

C091153 SCHWEICH FOR AUDITOR [pdf] 9/8/2010

Lewis & Clark Regional Leadership Fund

St. Charles, MO

9/7/2010

$10,000.00

[emphasis added]

Nice round numbers. And they’re all the same. They know we know and they don’t care.

And who’d be auditing?

At the Sunday evening debate between Russ Carnahan and Ed Martin, Martin was in his element–or should I say among his element? 250-300 people crowded the Arnold Recreation Center in Jefferson County, and nine out of ten of them supported Martin. I couldn’t attend the Friday debate at Forest Park Community College, which is the northern tip of Carnahan’s district, so I can’t speak to the proportion of each man’s supporters that night. But Jefferson County, at the southern tip of the district, has a boatload of white conservatives.

Fortunately, they were–by Tea Party standards anyway–calm and civil. But that’s only Tea Party standards. I know what the far right is like at its toxic worst. In August of 2009, I attended McCaskill’s town hall in Hillsboro, and the hate and anger pressed down on me like a huge, sooty fist that day. I’ll never forget it. By contrast, Sunday night’s crowd was merry, though always at Carnahan’s expense. Give Ed Martin this much: he has a knack for belittling another person. No matter how logically Carnahan presented his viewpoint, Martin mocked him. He played to the crowd, and they ate it up.

Carnahan can speak clearly, but he’s not inspirational. In the following clip, he answers two separate questions about health care reform, and each time, Martin begins his response by flattening Carnahan.

When the candidates explained whether they support repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, Carnahan said that the military needs talented people, whether they’re gay or straight, so he supports repeal. Martin translated that for the crowd as “Congressman Carnahan supports gay marriage. He doesn’t care what Missourians think….” That response was far enough away from any attempt to answer the question that Martin drew a mild rebuke from the moderator. But he was too high on the crowd’s adulation to show any compunction.

The audience laughed and hooted as Martin put words in Carnahan’s mouth. For instance, Carnahan said, speaking about abortion, that women should be allowed to choose for themselves. Martin “translated” again: “He’s for abortion.” The audience occasionally booed, like when Carnahan called Martin out for the Eckersley scandal or when he said we should wean ourselves off of oil dependence. But on the whole, they had a great time watching their man of the hour walk all over that mean, nasty liberal elite, that “member of the ruling class.”

You know. The one who wants them to have affordable health care. What an ogre.

The saga of a small town film festival, a desperate republican politician, teabaggers and the stimulus continues.

Remember this, from Representative Denny Hoskins’ (r-noun, verb, CPA) September 20, 2010 Capitol Report?:

…My own questions were based on those I received from constituents concerning the film festival.  As you can see, I did not request funding be withheld or rescinded.  I simply asked how people who need assistance would be helped by the film festival.  Since the film festival was held, I have received even more questions from constituents.  The idea of a film festival or similar event to shine a spotlight on the Warrensburg community is not in itself a bad idea.  How to pay for this event is what concerns me…

[emphasis added]

In today’s Warrensburg Daily Star-Journal, front page, above the fold:

9/28/2010 1:44:00 PM

Spotlight still shines on film fest

Jack Miles

Editor

….Rep. Denny Hoskins took partial credit for the withdrawal of funds in a Sept. 10 release labeled, “Rep. Denny Hoskins helps recover Social Services funding inappropriately used….”

Apparently it’s really convenient to immediately claim credit when teabaggers have been complaining and it’s also really convenient to walk it all back when more rational constituents wonder what the big to do was all about. Read the article.

You’d think that someone who was ostensibly interested in economic development and promoting job creation would think twice about doing anything to diminish an event, long planned by people in their community, which was designed to do exactly that. You’d think.

But, the damage was already done:

….[MVCAA Executive Director Pam] LaFrenz said the festival drew about 150 guests – less than a third of the more than 500 organizers expected to draw in the first year of what they hoped would become an annual event. She said the controversy, a few hours before the festival started, hurt attendance.

“Absolutely,” LaFrenz said. “There was a lot of confusion at the last moment about whether or not it was even going to happen. … I had a couple of calls from regular people asking whether the film festival was going to happen….”

Adding insult to injury:

….We received word that Representative Hoskins (r) did not contact MVCAA before or during the film festival, but he did contact them on Monday afternoon (September 13th)….

You’d think someone who was concerned about getting the full story on the film festival might try to contact the people running it before intervening and doing a happy dance about the result via an opportunistic press release the day before the festival opened. You’d think. You know, possibly a simple question along the lines of, “Could you explain what you all are doing?” I’d suppose that most people living in the 121st Legislative District get the fundamental fairness of extending the folks at the Missouri Valley Community Action Agency that common courtesy.

Previously:

Suppose you held a film festival and right wingnuts didn’t want anyone to attend (September 10, 2010)

The show must go on (September 10, 2010)

Rep. Denny Hoskins (r) and Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder (r): The review is in – two thumbs down (September 14, 2010)

Veto Session Reviews for Rep. Denny Hoskins (r): great potental for a Razzie (September 15, 2010)

Rep. Denny Hoskins (r) and the Film Festival: because the arts never generate economic activity? (September 17, 2010)

Rep. Denny Hoskins (r) and the Film Festival: demagoguery, not oversight (September 18, 2010)

Rep. Denny Hoskins (r) and the Film Festival: that was then, this is now (September 20, 2010)

Rep. Denny Hoskins (r) and the Film Festival: no one knew about it… (September 21, 2010)

A short film about a film festival… (September 22, 2010)

Ky Dickens, the film festival, the Chicago Reader, and teabaggers (September 23, 2010)

We get film festival hate mail (September 28, 2010)

The Republican party, mindful of its role as a supplicant before the voting public, issued a “Pledge to America.” Not to be outdone, the presumably more militant St. Louis and Jefferson County Tea Party groups are offering potential allies a “Treaty,” which, one assumes, affirms the Tea Party’s deepest, most profound principles. Needless to say, it’s a very simple document.

The first of the three provisions, calling for the repeal of The Affordable Care Act (ACA), is the most specific, which is not surprising since the Tea Party’s first raison d’etre was squashing health care reform:

1) I believe that the Health Care Reform bill (Affordable Care Act) should be immediately repealed as an un-Constitutional extension of governmental powers according to Article I of the US Constitution, and thus a burden on the people’s rights as recognized by the 9th Amendment.

While we are all sick and tired of pointing out that attacking the ACA on constitutional grounds is spurious, the Tea Party is not likely to cease and desist anytime soon. Such claims lend a veneer of legitimacy to the whole corporate-orchestrated cacophony. Besides, who knows whether or not the efforts of the Roberts Court to, as TAP puts it, “repeal the 20th century” may yet bear the intended rotten fruit.

The language of the provision, though, is not especially artful. To say that extending health insurance to millions of people is a “burden” on our constitutional rights is akin to saying that dying untreated because one lacks the means to pay is an inalienable right.

Just why are these crusaders so worked up about the ACA? The answer is easy – they’ve got that old time pocketbook religion – which brings us to the second provision:

2) I believe the government should reduce taxes and cut spending, as a rejection of the Keynesian model of economics.  Government should be fiscally responsible with the people’s dime.

A quasi-religious manifesto, which is what the “Treaty” is, need not justify assumptions shared by those to whom it is directed. So, if you ask why we should reject Keynesian economics, which have arguably served us well during the past century, expect to get uncomprehending stares and a few indignant, conservative economic cliches, along with lots of poorly-digested babble about “freedom.”

The concept of “fiscally responsible,”  though, really does need to be reclaimed by the linguistically responsible. It does not necessarily mean gutting progressive taxation and cutting social spending. It could just as eaily mean right-sizing taxes and spending in order to meet goals approved by the majority. And by majority I don’t mean the loudest, which would be the Tea Party, but the plurality that voted for Obama, the same majority that, for example, either aproves of the ACA, or disapproves because  it hasn’t gone far enough.

The final provision brings up the last article of faith in the trinitarian Tea Party theology:

3) I believe that we should reduce the federal bureaucracy.  The size and scope of federal regulation endangers all liberty, and hinders accountability to the public.

Does this mean repealing regulations that affect food safety? Or drilling regulations that, if they had been place, would have prevented the Gulf oil spill?  How about financial regulations that would have prevented the crisis in 2007? There are endless examples of beneficial regulation; what kind of fool signs a blanket proviso to scrap them? If you answer seriously deluded industry dupe, you might be on to something. And, while we’re on the topic, do the authors of this document even know what “accountability” means?

In short, which it mercifully is, the “Treaty” confirms the suspicion that the Tea Party is nothing more than lots of “sound and furry, signifying nothing.” However, the propensity of the media to treat their antics with a civility that Tea Partiers themselves rarely exhibit might help boost an essentially empty exercise into a useful tool for rallying the dessicated (as in middle aged and older) right arm of the GOP. We’ll learn in November just how effective gimmicks like the “Treaty” have been.

Tommy Sowers: I’m Tommy Sowers. This is my truck. And this is a ton of horse manure that’s been dumped on me by Jo Ann Emerson.

Emerson took money from special interests to make up lies about me because she doesn’t want to talk about bad trade deals that sent our jobs over to Mexico and China. She doesn’t want to talk about that she’s an insurance lobbyist that voted for the big bank bailouts. Jo Ann Emerson has been in Washington too long. She’s part of the problem.

I’m Tommy Sowers and I approved this message.

The Sowers campaign sent out the following release:

Tommy Sowers releases “Horse Manure” ad

“She can dump all the horse manure she wants.

The voters aren’t buying it.”

[….]

….Campaign Manager Jonathan Feifs issued the following statement:

“The ads that Congresswoman Emerson has been running are horse manure. Instead of making up lies to scare voters, Emerson should answer for her ties to lobbyists, her vote for the Wall Street bailout, and her continual support of foreign trade deals that have devastated the economy of Southeast Missouri.”

Tommy Sowers commented:

“Congresswoman Emerson has been in Washington too long. She’s part of the problem, not the solution. She can dump all the horse manure she wants. The voters aren’t buying it. They know it’s time for new blood and they’re ready to retire Congresswoman Emerson this November.”

###

And there may be some movement in the polling, to boot:

…But those numbers aren’t quite as good as an April poll by the same firm that showed Emerson leading 71 percent to 18 percent, suggesting Sowers has made inroads…