WASHINGTON - Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus has released the following statement concerning the continuing and dangerous deterioration of the U.S. economy:
"The latest news from Wall Street is still more evidence of the utter failure of the Obama administration's economic policies. Wednesday's 519-point drop in the Dow Jones industrial average demonstrates yet again that America has lost all confidence in Barack Obama and his economic team. They're the ones who deserve a downgrade.
"Instead of working cooperatively with Republican congressional leaders to solve our nation's worsening problems, the Obama team is only interested in trying to blame others for its many failures. The American people have firmly rejected this administration's far-left agenda of higher taxes and more regulations, and have called on Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to take their boots off the neck of America's job creators.
"Wednesday's plunge in the stock market is only the latest indictment of this president and his 'advisers.' On Monday, the Dow Jones fell by 634 points, while last Thursday, the Dow Jones fell by another 512 points. There's only one cause for these alarming developments: the public's total lack of confidence in Democrat economic policies.
"On the other hand, the market's 429-point rise on Tuesday was clearly due to the public's appreciation of the Republicans' strong pro-growth agenda. In fact, any future gains in the market will also be due to the public's appreciation of Republican policies, while any future drops in the market will be the direct result of the Obama administration's record of incompetence.
"Even if the market goes up for just a few hours on a given day and then falls once again, those 'up' hours will be the exact hours when the public is focused on Republican pro-growth solutions. The 'down' hours, of course, will coincide with the public remembering that the Democrats are still in charge in Washington and are totally responsible for all our problems, including the sovereign-debt crisis in Greece, potential bank failures throughout the Eurozone, drought conditions in the Southwest, and a particularly bad case of lumbago for Miss Viola Comstock of Pokahootchee, Ga.
"The Obama administration's only answer? Playing the blame game -- and higher taxes.
"Republicans understand that a confident private sector is essential to job growth. How can our struggling business leaders be expected to invest the few billions remaining in their bank accounts, let alone share any of those billions with ordinary working people, when the Obama administration keeps threatening to impose new job-killing taxes on them?
"When CEOs worry, we should all worry. When CEOs feel threatened, that threatens all of us, from the hedge-fund manager out on the golf course to the unemployed factory worker who, frankly, never worked all that hard even when he had a job.
"What Barack Obama and the Democrat leaders offer America is more of the same -- more speeches, more complicated bureaucratic regulations, more job-killing taxes.
"Republicans offer a different approach: a simple approach, for a simple nation."
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Rick Horowitz is a syndicated columnist. You can write to him at rickhoro@execpc.com.