Dems negotiated with Republicans for a year on HCR, Rs simply take you hostage

A very telling story about GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell.  You'll note how McConnell is trying to pass his version of health care reform - dismantling Medicare and Medicaid - via extortion.  This is the same McConnell whose party accused President Obama of ramming through his version of health care reform, when in fact Obama negotiated with the Republicans the entire year, and then put HCR up for a vote, no hostages.  The Republicans, on the other hand, demand you accept their version of "reform" or they'll send the world into an economic depression.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told President Obama on Thursday that he must agree to cut spending on federal agencies over the next two years and make significant changes to Medicare and Medicaid as part of a deal for raising the legal limit on government borrowing.

It's unclear why the Democrats aren't making a bigger deal out of the Republican threat to send the country, and the world, into a depression. It's irresponsible. And as usually-mild-mannered Bush Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill said, it's what Al Qaeda would do. From the Hill:

"The people who are threatening not to pass the debt ceiling are our version of al Qaeda terrorists. Really," O’Neill, Treasury secretary in the Republican administration of George W. Bush, said Wednesday in an interview with Bloomberg Television's InBusiness with Margaret Brennan.

"They're really putting our whole society at risk by threatening to round up 50 percent of the members of the Congress, who are loony, who would put our credit at risk," O’Neill said.

Remember, it was the Republicans who demanded Obama accept a smaller stimulus than was needed, thus guaranteeing higher unemployment and lower GDP growth. And it is the Republicans who are demanding that we cut spending now, just in time to send growth even lower before the 2012 elections.

It's no longer just about politics. These loons, as O'Neill referred to them, need to be challenged, need to be stopped, for all of our sakes.   The White House, and Democrats in Congress, should be reiterating, day after day, how the GOP has been hurting our recovery from their first day back in power.