This week Republicans made a Pledge to America in a bid to win votes in the mid-term elections. The GOP promised to indulge the rich with tax breaks and penalize the middle class with rescinded health care benefits and eliminated regulations protecting workers. When Republicans ran Herbert Hoover, they pledged a “chicken in every pot.” They gave the U.S. the Great Depression instead. The most recent Republican president gave the U.S. the Great Recession, and the GOP has responded by downsizing its promise to America. This time it’s just an egg — a rotten egg hurled at the middle class.

These days, good-paying industrial jobs need not exact untimely deaths from pollution. In fact, development of clean renewable energy generators – the likes of wind turbines, solar cells, biomass – would create and support good industrial jobs in America. Blue collar union workers and green collar environmentalists are pressing lawmakers to pass comprehensive climate change legislation. The BlueGreens told audiences in August the choice for lawmakers is leaving a legacy of environmental hell or bequeathing climate unchanged.

James K. Galbraith’s short piece in The Washington Post Outlook section proposed that we ought to toss the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). I couldn’t agree more. This post is a commentary intended to amplify the argument.

Jamie begins with:

”The forecasts of the Congressional Budget Office are holy writ in Washington, and they fuel scary headlines about an impending federal debt disaster. This is a shame, because the CBO’s projections are indefensible, internally inconsistent and economically impossible.”

If there’s a social program left standing in the moonscape Obama’s Hamilton Project masters inflicted on America, Greenstone and the Project are there to ensure Obama nukes it.

If someone you care deeply about depends on Social Security – or will depend on Social Security – call them up today and tell them you love them. Because Team Obama has targeted Social Security…and your loved ones are just the MOTU’s version of collateral damage.

Deaths you can believe in, right?

Every historic moment in this country compelled Americans to assess their values and choose sides. President Barack Obama’s signing of the landmark health insurance reform bill created such a moment. Now Americans must choose whether to side with the rich and the hate mongers or to align themselves with working people and hope.

This is the week we’ve been waiting for.

This is the week when Democrats in Congress can prove that it is still possible for our political institutions to stand with the American people in a time of crisis.

By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium Blogger

President Barack Obama’s February 25 health care summit, where he will appear on TV with Republican leaders, has been hailed and assailed as yet another gesture towards bipartisanship. But the summit is really a delaying tactic. It’s a decoy, something shiny to keep the chattering classes entertained while Congressional Democrats wheel and deal furiously behind the scenes.

Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-PA) is serving his eighth term in the U.S. House of Representatives and is a member of the influential and powerful Appropriations Committee.

The day following the Massachusetts Special Election, he spoke with me about the ramifications the election last Tuesday will have for Democrats and the necessity for Democrats to push forward with the mandate he believes President Obama received from the electorate a year ago.

Here we go again. James Inhofe, the most prominent climate change denier in the United States Senate, has concocted a new and innovative strategy to thwart the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act. To wit, he and his Republican colleagues on the Environment and Public Works Committee have worked up a plan to simply not show up for next week’s markup:

But Boxer cannot hold the markup unless at least two Republicans show up, and EPW ranking member James Inhofe (R-Okla.) signaled that he has unanimous support among the panel’s minority members to boycott the session until they get more data on the legislation from U.S. EPA and the Congressional Budget Office.

Inhofe said he will wait for Boxer to file an official notice of the markup — expected today — before responding with his own declaration of the GOP’s markup strategy.

“As soon as we find out what her announcement is and what she wants to do, we’ll have our response,” Inhofe told E&E last night. “We’ll have our unanimous expression ready.”

Sadly, this is a continuation of the GOP’s longstanding strategy of delaying clean energy legislation…

Today, Representative Ed Markey pushed this story back to the forefront with a Huffington Post piece. After setting the record straight on Romney’s falsehood and explaining the urgency of clean energy legislation, Markey finishes strong:

So the next time you hear Mitt Romney or other opponents of clean energy and climate legislation railing about the costs of action, you should multiply your suspicion by whatever number they are attempting to sell. Odds are, it is far from even-handed.

While this is a solid piece, and Representative Markey makes his case well, he barely mentions the other Republican politicians who have repeated this lie. I understand the value of pegging this on a potential 2012 Presidential candidate, but there are over a dozen current elected officials in the Republican party who have repeated this lie as well.

Since I last updated the count a few weeks ago, eight additional Republican politicians and party organizations have repeated the lie, bringing the total to 20.