Misc Commentary On The Stimulus Debacle

09 Feb, 2009 by John Hawkins

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* This stimulus bill is huge, so disastrous, and so harmful to our country that even though Obama has been in office for less than a month, I think it’s already fair to label him as one of the worst Presidents in American history.

* Where’s the leadership from Mitch McConnell on this stimulus bill? I know he opposes it, but I thought he was supposed to be this phenomenal Field Marshall whom we just had to have back as our leader in the Senate so he could filibuster nightmares like this stimulus package?

Originally, I thought it was a bridge too far to expect a filibuster of this bill, but with the House Republicans voting against it in a block and the public turning on it, this should have been an easy bill to filibuster.

Had the GOP blocked it, the Democrats would have at least had to shave a couple of hundred billion dollars off of it to get it back through. So, the GOP could have accomplished a great deal by throwing a little sand in the gears, even if the RINOs eventually caved.

Yet and still, even with the momentum and the public on our side, McConnell couldn’t hold the GOP together. That’s an ill omen for the next four years.

* When people like David Frum, Kathleen Parker, David Brooks, etc., say that they want a “more moderate” Republican Party, in real world terms, what they want is for the GOP in DC to be more like Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Arlen Specter — the Republicans who appear likely to cave on this stimulus package. Does anyone really think the Republican Party can succeed like that? For that matter, does anyone think the country can thrive with a Republican Party made up of people like that?

* My pal Ericka Andersen posted this on Twitter.

question: how come the stimulus bill isn’t based more on what economists think instead of what politicians think? Just curious.

Here’s my answer to that question.

“Because the stimulus bill is about politics, not economics =D”

* Where’s the bipartisanship Barack Obama promised during the campaign? He hasn’t made any real effort to bring Republicans on board with the stimulus. He also promised unity. Anybody see any unity? What about Obama’s promise to govern from the center? So far, he’s as far to the left as Lenin. How about Obama’s promise to change the way government works? Does this sound like someone who’s going to do that?

Some critics, (Obama) said at Thursday’s retreat, contend the bill “is full of pet projects. When was the last time that we saw a bill of this magnitude move out with no earmarks in it? Not one.”

Ratcheting up the sarcasm, the president said: “So then you get the argument, ‘well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill.’ What do you think a stimulus is?”

“That’s the whole point,” he said, as the audience hooted and applauded.

Obama warned Republicans not to “come to the table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create this crisis.” Americans, he said, “did not vote for the false theories of the past, and they didn’t vote for phony arguments and petty politics.”

“They sent us here to bring change,” he said.

That’s change? It’s sounds nasty, stupid, hyper-partisan, economically illiterate, and incredibly wasteful.

Update #1:

“In stimulus package language, if Congress taxes to hand out money, one person is stimulated at the expense of another, who pays the tax and is unstimulated. A visual representation of the stimulus package is: Imagine you see a person at work taking buckets of water from the deep end of a swimming pool and dumping them into the shallow end in an attempt to make it deeper. You would deem him stupid. That scenario is equivalent to what Congress and the new President proposes for the economy.” — Walter Williams