Page 22 - John Cornan News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

The economy? i have to say, we're some minutes into this discussion yet and we still have not heard from our colleagues what they would do differently than the bush economic agenda which got us into this mess. we're now in positive job growth. let me make this point. we have the situation right now where our republican colleagues are holding hostage an extension of middle class tax cuts. they've said we're only going to support a continuation of middle class tax cuts, those for people under $250,000 if you also extend the bush tax cuts for the very wealthy. and by the way, that's $700 billion ...

For jobs that are sitting over in the senate, but it's not the fault of the democratic leadership in the senate. frankly, john cornyn and his allies have been trying to block a whole lot of very important jobs measures. we, in fact, sent a piece of legislation over very recently that would remove these perverse tax incentives to ship jobs overseas, that give american corporations a bonus if they ship american jobs overseas. they voted against that. it's now in the senate. i hope they will join with the democrats and pass that kind of measure. so the frustration is while we've made important pr...

You. it's that kind of thing that will make it clear to the american people who kind of choice they have. >> senator? >> i wonder when they're going to take responsibility for the policies they forced down the throats of the american people, including the appeal bill that will bring costs down. the president's ratings about 36% down from independent voters. and we're seeing the independent voters fleeing the democrats coming to the republicans because they believe checks and balances are absolutely essential in 2010 because they want to restrain this unprecedented spending binge, the debt, and...

People who are willing to live within their means and to rein in this runaway spending -- >> you talk about nevada. senator reid is pulling ahead of sharon angle. he's up 44% to 37%. this comes after a time when sharron angle made extreme statements about the bp slush fund. she talked about second amendment remedies for her political opponents and the criticism is that tea party injects candidates who are too extreme to actually win re-election. is that a concern for you? >> well, let's look at what harry reid said. he called the former chairman of the federal reserve a hack. he declared the i...

Question. what are you going to get that's different? >> well, senator, what does distinguish the republican party of today from the republican party under president bush's rule with regard to spending, which is where it got out of control under republican rule, that now conservatives are so excited about? >> let's look at a few facts. thank you for the opportunity because i want to respond to what chris said. you know, in the last year that president bush was in office, 2008, the deficit was 3.2% of the gross domestic product. today it's 10%. we just hit the $13 trillion cap on national debt,...