Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell yesterday, on the possibility (brought up by House Minority Leader John Boehner on Sunday) of giving up on extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans:

We can’t let the people who’ve been hit hardest by this recession and who we need to create the jobs that will get us out of it foot the bill for the Democrats’ two-year adventure in expanded government.

So deep in his heart, McConnell knows that those who have been hit hardest by the recession are not the ones who lost their homes, not the ones who lost their jobs and can’t get new ones, not the ones who can’t feed their families, but the wealthiest among us?

Presumably, then, the hardest hit of the hardest hit would have to be the “the richest 120,000 people in the country.” These are the richest 0.1% of Americans. The poorest members of this group “have annual incomes of more than $2 million, and the average member makes more than $7 million a year”.

These are the people to whom McConnell wants to give wants us to give a cool $300,000 each year. Because of how much they are hurting right now. And how stoically they bear that hurt.

But at least the world is back to normal. That is to say, Republicans have en masse rejected Boehner’s temporary flash of sanity.

In fact, James Oliphant and Don Lee of The Chicago Tribune are even claiming that:

By the end of the day Monday, Boehner issued a statement dropping his earlier suggestion and saying he too would fight higher taxes affecting any bracket.

Don’t see that anywhere else, though. And Oliphant and Lee offer no quotes from this alleged statement or any other details.

So even though The Los Angeles Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer carried the Oliphant-Lee story, I’m skeptical that it’s actually true.