Washington, D.C.– U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell made the following remarks on the Senate floor today regarding the President’s failed economic policies and his call for a tax hike on small businesses and families in the midst of a struggling economy:

“Last Friday morning, the American people woke up to the news that the economy’s on life support.  And the first response of the President of the United States was that we’re heading in the right direction.

“Now just think about that for a second: The President’s first reaction to the news that more Americans signed up for disability last month than got jobs was to flash a thumbs up and head back to the campaign trail. Just like his first reaction to a question about the economy at a recent White House press conference was to say that the private sector is doing just fine.

“Well, obviously answers like that just aren’t going to cut it. The President’s advisors must be telling him that much.

“So yesterday the President — the man at the wheel — changed his tune by doing his Washington best to change the subject.

“For three and a half years, this White House has shown an utter lack of imagination when it comes to jobs and the economy: if the solution doesn’t involve more government, they’re not interested. That’s all they’ve got. 

“So yesterday, the President went back to the same well one more time. After three and a half years of more government, more debt, more spending, more taxes, more regulations, he demanded more.

“Yesterday, the President issued an ultimatum: raise taxes on about a million business owners to fund more government, and I won’t raise taxes on the rest of you.

“That was his considered response to this crisis.

“Now, let’s leave aside for a second the complete and total absurdity of raising taxes on job creators in the middle of what some are calling the slowest recovery ever. Leave that aside and ask yourself a more fundamental question: Whose money is this in the first place?

“I mean, why should small businesses be put on the defensive about keeping money they’ve worked for and earned?

“It seems like every day for the past three and a half years, we’ve woken up to stories about waste and abuse in government. Whether it’s bankrupt solar companies, or the $800,000 party some government agency threw for itself, or this week’s report that we overspent on unemployment benefits by about $14 billion. 

“As far as I’m concerned, there shouldn’t even be a debate here–– government doesn’t need any more money. It’s government that should be answering to us for the tax dollars it’s wasted and misdirected.

“It’s the President who should be on the defensive.

“He’s the one who pledged he’d cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term, but doubled it instead.

“He’s the one who spent the first three and a half years of his administration shattering spending records.

“And now he wants us to believe that he’ll direct new tax revenue to tackling the deficit?

“Look: Yesterday’s announcement was many things. But let’s be honest: it wasn’t a plan for deficit reduction. And it sure wasn’t a plan for job creation.

“First and foremost, it was a distraction.

“By any standard, the President has a nightmarish economic record. By demanding higher taxes on the few he’s trying to deflect attention from it.

“Second, it’s ideological. The President has already admitted that the last thing you want to do in the middle of a recession is raise taxes. He knows yesterday’s proposal would only make the economy worse.

“His goal isn’t jobs; it’s income distribution. It’s his idea of fairness — which means you earn, he takes.

“And third, it’s political. The President’s top priority for the past year hasn’t been creating jobs; it’s been saving his own. And his advisors seem to think that if they create enough scapegoats, he’ll slip by in November.

“That’s why he’s spent the past year trying to convince the public that somehow his predecessor is more responsible for the economic failures of the past three and a half years than he is.

“That all the bailouts and the trillions in borrowed money and the government takeover of health care and the onslaught of bureaucratic red tape and regulations are somehow irrelevant to the fact that we’re mired in the slowest economic recovery in modern times

“That we’re just one more stimulus away from an economic boom; that the fact that we’ve had unemployment above eight percent for 41 straight months has nothing to do with the policies he put in place in his first two years in office.

“That all these massive pieces of legislation he touted were somehow hugely historic, and yet at the same time completely unrelated to the joblessness, uncertainty, and decline we’ve seen almost every day since.

“It’s this kind of economic thinking that leads to the kind of proposal the President announced yesterday, which says that a tax hike is harmful to middle income earners but somehow meaningless for the 940,000 business owners who will get slammed by this tax hike, as well as all the other tax hikes the President has in store for them at the end of the year.

“The sad truth is, the President isn’t just ignoring the economic problems we face, he’s exacerbating them. And he’s running us headlong into the cliff that’s fast approaching in January.

“Frankly, it’s hard to imagine a president deliberately doing all these things he knows will only make things worse. But that’s where we are. And now it’s incumbent on the rest of us to outline a better path.

“And that’s what we support: common-sense pro-growth policies that liberate the private sector. It starts by repealing a health care law that’s stifling businesses, by ending the senseless regulations that are crushing businesses, by ending the threats of tax hikes on businesses that can’t afford them, and by putting our faith in free enterprise over the dictates of a centralized government.

“In the Obama economy, we need policies that are designed to create jobs, not to destroy them.

“No one should see an income tax hike next year—not families, not small businesses, no one. We should extend all the income tax rates while we make progress on fundamental tax reform.

“It’s time to put the failed policies of the past three and half years aside and try something else.

“Washington has done enough damage to the economy already.

“Let’s focus on the kind of pro-growth jobs proposals the Republican-led House has already passed. And let’s do no harm.

“It’s time to give the private sector, and the innovators and workers who drive it a chance.”