Republicans seem to be up to their same old tricks by trying to make what Boehner called "Chickensh*t" and turning it into "Chicken salad". Publicly they support the tax cuts but in private?
But in private, Boehner seems to hold a different view. Politico reports that in a closed-door GOP meeting this morning, Boehner referred to an extension of the payroll tax holiday as “chicken-shit,” saying he wanted to tack on unrelated legislation favored by Republicans to make it palatable:
GOP leadership told its membership at a closed-door meeting Friday morning it would couple with the expiring tax provisions an easing of environmental regulations on boilers, selling broadband spectrum and paving the way for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline. [...]
Speaker John Boehner referred to the package he’s putting forward as turning “chicken-sh — into chicken salad,” according to people attending the meeting in the Capitol basement Friday morning.
Translated, he’s going to pass President Barack Obama’s preferred tax cut, but he wants some skin from Democrats for it.
Of course talk to all those families that benefit from the payroll tax cut and tell them that the extra money they get a month is "chicken shit" and see how they like it. Because right now $50 to $100 a month can mean a great deal to a family struggling to make ends meet and further shows just how painfully out of touch the GOP leadership is when it comes to the economic reality of people who still have jobs.
Rather than out and out denying the extension of and the payroll tax cuts, they are trying to tie something extremely negative to the cuts in order to keep them from going through.
And that is where the pipeline come in. The Keystone pipeline is a highly controversial project that has been protested by many (it culminated in a reported yet successful White House protests by thousands which led to the postponement of the president's decision on the pipeline until after the 2012 election) and highly criticized by environmental groups.
But that will not stop the GOP from trying to make some"chicken salad" with this little attachment in order to speed the process along and take the decision out of the Administration's hands.
The House bill would take the decision out of the administration's control, instead giving the power to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, an independent regulatory body that already oversees pipelines.
"There's less chance of foot-dragging" at FERC, said Nebraska Representative Lee Terry, the Republican drafting the bill.
"The point of this is to avoid the politics and get to the jobs," said Terry, who told reporters that Boehner said the Keystone bill would become part of the unemployment and tax holiday legislative package that the House hopes to pass this month.
Source
Of course if Republicans were really interested in avoiding the politics and "get to the jobs" they would've actually been crafting jobs bills rather than spending time with antichoice bills, in God we trust legislation, and the myriad of other nonchicken salad bills that do very little to create jobs or grow the economy. In fact, with the way our infrastructure is crumbling, you'd think there'd be a lot of red meat in that issue.
And as the Henry Waxman so perfectly states, there are better ways to create jobs than approving the Keystone pipeline, this has nothing to with job and everything to do with the false meme that we can somehow become energy independent with this highly flawed pipeline that would mean more oil for China and the open market anyway.
"There are better ways to create better, lasting jobs," said Henry Waxman, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce committee, at a hearing on the project.
"My greatest concern is that Keystone XL would make us more reliant on the dirtiest source of fuel currently available," Waxman said, referring to studies showing oil from the Canadian oilsands leads to more carbon emissions than conventional oil.
And this is the issue, The GOP is losing ground on the global warming battle, Poll: Republicans Coming Around on Global Warming. People actually care where their energy comes from and moderate and liberal Republicans are warming to climate change, they actually may not see the benefit of 20,000 temporary jobs to years of habitat damage, spill potential nightmare that comes with more carbon emissions.
The survey of 2,001 Americans was completed in early November, a few weeks after a team from the University of California at Berkeley proclaimed “global warming is real.” The results of their study found that the earth has warmed about 1° C since the 1950s.
Less than a third of conservative Republicans say there is solid evidence for global warming, but 63 percent of moderate or liberal Republicans said they believe there is solid evidence for global warming, a 22-percentage-point jump from 2009.
The poll echoes the sentiment of more moderate Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman. In August, former Utah governor Huntsman tweeted “To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming.” He recently said that the GOP should not “run from science.” In June, Romney said “I believe the world is getting warmer, and I believe that humans have contributed to that.”
Which means that Boehner and friends are moving further into tea party territory and out of moderate and mainstream Republicanism. The GOP continues to demonstrate that they have no intention of creating jobs to help the middle class unless it helps big oil and they really do not believe that a lll taxes are bad, just the ones on the top 1%.