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After Claiming To Support Infrastructure Investments, House GOP Blocks Infrastructure Investment Plan

Despite their recent exclamations of support for improving American infrastructure, House Republicans circulated a memo this weekend informing members that the caucus would oppose the majority of President Obama’s jobs plan, particularly the proposed infrastructure bank that would make large investments into the nation’s crumbling roads, bridges, and other forms of infrastructure.

In the memo, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) laid out opposition to Obama’s proposed $30 billion to keep teachers and law enforcement officers in their jobs, rejected money for school construction, and again claimed Republicans supported spending on infrastructure. But Boehner wrote that the GOP opposed the way Obama’s plan would make those investments, as Republicans continue to base their opposition to new stimulus plans on the misguided, false belief that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act didn’t work, as The Hill reported:

Rather than adding more money to a broken system,” Boehner and his deputies wrote, “Congress and the president should spend the next few months working out a multi-year transportation authorization bill that fixes these problems.”

Despite those claims, there is little evidence that Republicans actually support spending the money necessary to bring the nation’s infrastructure up to date. In fact, this is the third major infrastructure investment plan Republicans have opposed since Obama took office in 2009, after it lobbied to reduce the amount of infrastructure-centered spending in the Recovery Act and derailed Democrats’ infrastructure spending plan in 2010.

As ThinkProgress reported last week, roads and bridges in the states and districts represented by GOP leadership are rated “structurally deficient” or “fundamentally obsolete” at rates that outpace the national average. Even knowing that, Republicans continue to make their priorities clear when it comes to creating jobs by fixing America’s infrastructure, as they have again chosen to do nothing while millions of American workers remain unemployed and ready to work on the roads and bridges that are crumbling around them.

Take action and tell Congress it’s time to rebuild America.

Bachmann Claims Wall Street Reform Is ‘Killing The Banking Industry’ As Banks Post Record Profits

Three years ago this week, the financial crisis began in earnest with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the $85 billion bailout of mega-insurer American International Group. However, during Monday night’s GOP presidential primary debate, the candidates proved that they have no interest in learning the lessons of that crisis, as they called for the repeal of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law in order to “free up” Wall Street.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) bragged that night about being the lead author of the Dodd-Frank repeal legislation. And during a campaign stop in southern California yesterday, Bachmann explained her rationale:

And not only repealing Obamacare, also repealing Dodd-Frank, which is killing the banking industry. I’ve got the bill to repeal both of them.

Watch it:

Some banks would be surprised to learn that they are on the verge of death, as they keep on reporting record profits. As ThinkProgress’ Alex Seitz-Wald noted when Newt Gingrich claimed that the banking industry was being killed by Dodd-Frank, “‘bank profits rose substantially‘ in the first quarter of the year, with banks showing the biggest profits since before the recession. Things were sunny in the second quarter as well”:

– Profits at JPMorgan Chase, the nation’s second largest bank, were up 13 percent.

– Third-largest Citigroup’s profits soared 23 percent.

– Fourth-largest Wells Fargo’s profits shot up 29 percent.

– Fifth-largest Goldman Sachs, meanwhile, “disappointed investors” when it merely “more than doubled its profits.”

–Sixth-largest Morgan Stanley’s profits were up an impressive 17 percent.

JP Morgan Chase, in fact, is posting record profits. But three years after Wall Street caused the financial crisis, and with banks back to reaping profits, Bachmann and the GOP feel that its financial reform that merits doing away with.

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