Republican Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) blasted President Obama for not doing more to resolve the standoff in Washington over extending a payroll tax cut.
Speaking on CNN’s “American Morning” on Thursday, McCain said the deadlock over extending the tax holiday “requires presidential leadership.”
He said “previous presidents I’ve served under … would be calling them over to the White House, looking them in the eye and telling them, ‘We need to fix this,’ ” said McCain.
McCain added that prior presidents “exerted a lot more leadership than going shopping,” a reference to Obama’s holiday outing on Wednesday.
Obama who has seen his poll numbers rise during the debate over the payroll tax, went on an afternoon Christmas shopping trip Wednesday, purchasing gifts for his family and speaking with voters.
Earlier in the day, Obama had called House Speaker John Boehner and urged him to pass a Senate bill that would extend the payroll tax cut for two months.
McCain suggested on Thursday that the House Republicans take up the Senate bill and “pass the exact same thing in the House but make it a year instead of two months. We could do that,” said McCain.
McCain has been a strong critic of the House GOP stance. “Republicans are losing this fight. We need to get back on track,” he reiterated.
Lawmakers are deadlocked over extending the tax cut, which will expire at the end of the year.
Senators overwhelmingly passed a two-month extension on Saturday, but House Republicans rejected the bill and moved to call a conference committee to reconcile the Senate bill with a yearlong extension passed earlier by the House.
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6 Responses
It looks like there is a little burqa child next to Obama.
I agree that “going shopping” is not leadership. It’s what President Obama’s predecessor advised the American public to do at the start of the Iraq war, a war which he assured us would be paid for by Iraqi oil and would end in about 6 months. Well, his successor just ended that war – a good example of leadership – and the party of President Obama’s predecessor is using the deficit created, in part, by the cost of the war as a political football to support their assault on Medicare, Social Security and other popular programs.
President Obama has said what needs to be said about the need to extend the payroll tax cut that Mr. McCain talked about. Mr. McCain is overlooking the insidious brinksmanship that his fellow-travellers in the House are playing with the take-home pay of about 160 million Americans.
Senator McCain’s leadership credentials are somewhat weakened by his membership in the Keating 5 and his selection of a patently unqualified running mate when he ran for president. Even extraordinarily courageous war heros can have their post-combat flaws.
McCain has been much more vocal lately…Hmmm, I wonder…with the current gridlock on frontrunner status for the Republican nomination, is he setting himself up as a possible alternative so America has an opportunity to correct its mistake in the last Presidential election…Stay Tuned.
I am reading this off my phone & thus can’t see entire message at one time. That being said, after reading two or three sentences of comment #1, I knew which socialist uber democrat was making that comment.
#2 – While it’s true the Iraq war didn’t help the deficit, and in hindsight maybe shouldn’t have begun. (Iran is the real danger and without Saddam there to counterbalance them.) Nevertheless, everyone seems to forget that the biggest deficit buildup in President George W.’s presidency was in his last two years of his presidency, when there was a Democratic controlled Congress!
No. 4: Can you ever get your facts right? Comment No. 1 has only one sentence. So who is this “socialist uber democrat” you are talking about?