Frank: GOP thinks Obama inauguration ranks with 9/11 as national tragedy

Republicans act as if President Obama's inauguration ranks with Pearl Harbor and 9/11 as a national tragedy, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said this week.

"Now here is what apparently happened on Jan. 21, 2009 [sic], if you listen to the Republicans: It was, after Pearl Harbor Day or 9/11 of 2001, the worst day in American history," Frank said at a local Democratic Party event in California last weekend.

He went on to lambast the GOP for thinking that the nation's problems began with the 44th president, and not under his predecessor, President George W. Bush.

Frank's comments come as Democrats and Republicans have ramped up their rhetoric heading into the midterm elections.

According to OC Weekly, which released the video of Frank on Thursday, the Massachusetts Democrat was campaigning for Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) when he attended the meeting.

Frank said that Republicans have forgotten that problems such as unemployment, war, large deficits and the credit crisis began under Bush, not Obama.

"All of these bad things, according to them, happened the day Barack Obama took office," he said. "[Since then], a little-known, widespread outbreak of disease [occurred]: Massive amnesia took hold of the entire Republican Party."

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