Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell needled Vice President Joe Biden on the Senate floor Wednesday for flip-flopping on the tax cut issue.
“The vice president is at a disadvantage, he can't speak, being an occupant of the chair,” McConnell said, according to
Politico. The senator was referring to the Senate’s debate over taxes.
“But in this particular instance, he is actually better not to, because he would have the dilemma of trying to explain the difference between the economic situation the country confronts today and the condition the country confronted in December of 2010 when the economy was doing better,” McConnell said. “So be grateful, I say to my friend, the vice president.”
Biden and other Democrats supported an extension of the George W. Bush era tax cuts for everyone in 2010, but now they want to extend the reductions only for households with income of less than $250,000, McConnell noted. “So we know this is not about the economy. We know this is about the election.”
The senator’s remarks sparked laughter from Republicans seated behind him, while Biden just shook his head. After the Senate’s tax votes, Biden took the rare step of speaking with reporters in the Capitol. He said there were no hard feeling between him and McConnell when the two conferred after the Senate voted. “We laughed about it,” Biden said.
The Senate passed a Democratic plan to extend the Bush tax cuts for households earning less than $250,000 – a bill that will go nowhere in the House – 51 to 48. The Senate rejected a Republican bill to continue the tax decreases for everyone 54 to 45.
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