• Claire McCaskill,  Michael J. Fox

    Mo-Sen GAFFE: Sen. Claire McCaskill Now Joking About the Recession

    Senator Claire McCaskill (D-Missouri) discusses the recession’s “silver lining” with Georgetown University College Democrats on March 28, 2011.

    As if the Senators private airplane problems weren’t enough.

    Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) has been in the news lately for her failure to pay taxes on an airplane. McCaskill is not known as the most congenial member of the Senate. And every now and then her lack of tact comes out in public. A GOP operative passes on this clip of her speaking to a Georgetown Law School audience:

    Well, it’s not “really good news” but just a “silver lining” that the recession has brought down emissions.

    Aside from that gaffe (which she realizes along the way), there is something significant here. What she is saying that the recession did an even “better” job of bringing down emissions than cap-and-trade would have. Um, isn’t that the problem with cap-and-trade? Critics complain its’s going to increase costs and thereby suppress economic activity, and those emissions in the process. Now, McCaskill seems to agree.

    I guess Senator McCaskill should call Michael J. Fox for some help.