Sen. Mitch McConnell: GOP Opposes “Buy American” Clause
Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican minority leader in the chamber, urged President Barack Obama to get rid of the so-called “Buy American” clause in his economic stimulus plan. McConnell’s words came shortly after key allies responded with outrage to the Democratic proposal.
Canada warned earlier Monday that US protectionism “can only trigger retaliatory action.” Like McConnell, Canada Trade Minister Stockwell Day urged Obama to fight the provision.
“I don’t think we ought to use a measure that is supposed to be timely, temporary, and targeted to set off trade wars when the entire world is experiencing a downturn in the economy,” Senator McConnell said.
He added that the President and Democratic leaders in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have to take Republicans serious and accept at least some of their plans. “I hope he can get through to them that the way to build this package is, indeed, to do it on a bipartisan basis, which doesn’t mean just talking to us, but including ideas that we think would work,” he said.
McConnell also said that the government didn’t receive a blank cheque for an economic package. There’s a limit to what it’s allowed to cost, he explained.
Lastly, Republicans don’t plan to put up a fight for the sake of it. They’re willing to vote for a package, as long as costs are kept as low as possible and their requests are taken serious. They’ve asked to cut the lowest two tax brackets; from 15% to 10% and from 10% to 5%. Like all other Republican ideas, however, this tax cut was dismissed by Democrats.
McConnell is clearly willing to work with Democrats in the Senate and with President Obama, but only if his party is taken serious. If Obama was serious about bipartisanship (which I don’t think he was), he’ll have to reach out to Republicans and give them something in return for supporting the economic stimulus plan.
Having said that, considering the high costs of the bill, and the attitude of Democrats towards Republicans, it’s unlikely that the latter’s plans will be put into the plan. Obama will have to break with his Democratic friends in order for the plan to be somewhat acceptable to Republicans. He will have to force his party to accept many tax cuts, and cut estimated spending significantly (perhaps with as much as 50%). Since this is out of the question, Republicans have to present an alternative plan of their own, and to simply refuse to vote for an expensive bill that does little to nothing to revive the economy.
lets think of all the revenue that could go to pay down the US deficit if we had tariffs (import taxes) on all imported goods, the Americans are the biggest consumers in the world and will still buy foreign goods, but with a tax on them to offset the cheap labor of not making it here, with this fix alone would get us out of the recession because it would be the same price to buy American or buy cheap foreign goods for the same price and put Americans back to work and end the recession.
Sailing – that’s not accurate in any possible way. What you propose would plunge us deeper than we’ve ever seen.
Interested, why not explain why you say that?
Since when is “buy American” not a good idea for American’s. Or are you one of the globalist big wigs getting all the funnel money..
JJ- Protectionism isn’t a good idea because if we insist on it then other countries will follow suit and refuse to buy from us, making our trade deficit even worse.
If you don’t get that, then go back and read about how those protectionist policies deepened the Great Depression.
JJ, CS is quite correct.
It’s one of those moves that typically we enter with lots of emotion and very little thought. Each and every single time in our nations history that we engaged in protectionism just resulted in worse economic conditions for our workers.
It’s the classic snowball effect. And it’d be far from a smart move.