Lawrence O'Donnell took Mary Landrieu to task for her blatant hypocrisy which Ryan Grim wrote about here at the Huffington Post.
Mary Landrieu: 'Obama-McConnell Plan' Is 'Almost Morally Corrupt':
Sen. Mary Landrieu, a conservative Democratic from Louisiana, lashed out Tuesday at President Obama's deal with congressional Republicans that allows tax cuts for the wealthy to be extended for two years.
Extending the tax cuts for those making more than a million dollars a year is borderline immoral, Landrieu charged. "I'm going to argue forcefully for the nonsensicalness and the almost, you know, moral corruptness of that particular policy," said Landrieu, walking into a meeting with Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats. "This is beyond politics. This is about justice and doing what's right."
Landrieu was fuming about the deal. On her way into the meeting, she slammed the tax-cut extension as a needless giveaway, adding, "That's all I have to say." But it wasn't. She emerged from the meeting a few moments later to continue prosecuting her case to reporters.
"It's what I'm calling the Obama-McConnell plan. We're going to borrow $46 billion from the poor, from the middle class, from businesses of all sizes basically to give a tax cut to families in America today, that despite the recession, are making over a million dollars. I mean, this is unprecedented. Unprecedented. I want to repeat that," she said. Landrieu added, however, that she had yet to make a decision on the final package and was speaking strictly about the extension of tax cuts for the wealthy.
Go read the rest but as O'Donnell pointed out, Landrieu has been holding up appointments to try to get more off shore oil drilling in the Gulf and doing everything she can to distance herself from President Obama where he is hated in her state. She also voted for those Bush tax cuts when they first passed. And now she's calling a deal for partial extension "morally corrupt". That's something she ought to know a great deal about.
I know O'Donnell can be an Obama apologist, but that's because he's also a pragmatist and he's worked in the Congress where he understands all too well the deals that have to be made to get legislation passed and what goes on during the "sausage making" when you actually have to govern. So I can understand where he's coming from even if I don't always agree with him. And it never hurts not to forget just what Obama has had to deal with in the Congress to get anything passed, like the Mary Landrieu's of the world. Even if we had a President Bernie Sanders, he'd still be having to deal with the likes of this woman and her ilk in the Senate and the Blue Dogs in the House to get anything done.
That said, personally I'd be happier if we had someone using the bully pulpit to call them out and trying to rally public opinion to get good legislation through. O'Donnell seems to think we're getting more accomplished with the deal making. It's hard to see how that's true when the only deals we've been getting for decades now are ones that outsource jobs and move all the wealth to the upper class. And with this batch of crazy and extremely right wing Republicans we're dealing with today that are about to increase their numbers in the Congress, they need to be being marginalized, not vindicated.
I really do fear for where we're headed for the next two years. It's going to keep getting uglier and a lot worse for the working class in America before it gets better. The reason I posted this is because I do agree with O'Donnell that if you're going to get upset with Obama, then you'd damn well had better be getting upset with the Congress he's dealing with as well and be letting them hear about it. If their phone lines and inboxes remain flooded, maybe they'll start paying some attention to us... maybe.
And if that doesn't get their attention, we've got the primary process to try to get them out of there which this site has been working hard at with Blue America and trying to get better candidates elected.
