Congressman John Boehner, the second most powerful Republican in the House of Representatives, expected his trip to Cortland, New York to be a walk in the park. He’d come in, give a talk about the virtue of Republican policies to the friendly crowd at the Chamber of Commerce, hold his Republicans-with-checks-only fundraiser for right wing congressional candidate Ray Meier, and then fly away.

John Boehner didn’t count on a crowd of angry Cortland residents holding a rally across the street. The Central New York residents gathered to protest John Boehner’s promise to push George W. Bush’s scheme to destroy Social Security down the throats of the American people again this next January. They came to speak out against Ray Meier’s complicity in the Republican plans to wreck Social Security as we know it.

So, John Boehner left Central New York today on the defensive, and Ray Meier ended up with a lot of slick donations from big business fat cats, but a lot of questions about why he wants to break the promise that Bush made years ago that he would never raid the Social Security lock box. People throughout the region now see what John Boehner, Ray Meier and the Republican Congress really stand for: Special tax loopholes for millionaires like Paris Hilton, and nothing but broken promises for the rest of us.