You've probably noticed that the debate swirling around the president's recovery bill has reached new levels of mortal terror and chaos. Even a casual excursion around the liberal tubes and you'll find posts that read like the worst parts of the Bible. There's a palpable vibe in many progressive circles that the president is on the brink of an epic fail.
After all, this is one of those do-or-die moments in American history and the panic level is rightly proportional.
But while urgency is appropriate, we're losing the initiative.
We all have our own ideas about what the recovery bill is supposed to look like. The Republicans are threatening to filibuster, and we can't trust Harry Reid to stop them. Rush Limbaugh, the very serious leader of the Republican Party and alleged sex tourist, has ordered his dittoheads to blitz the Democrats with angry phone calls. Concurrently, Democrats, liberals and progressives, for all we've learned in the last eight years, are losing the framing battle -- "stimulus package" sounds like a weird service offered at a porn store and, in that context, a trillion dollar "stimulus package" sounds, you know, painful. Meanwhile, centrist Democrats like Ben Nelson appear to be ransacking the bill. Other Democrats have bugged out of Washington entirely.
We're looking at fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Forty years of darkness. The dead rising from the grave! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!
Come to think of it, some of that Ghostbusters stuff might actually come true if a beefy and expensive recovery bill isn't passed, and right soon.
So how do we get there?
The first step in getting a handle on all of this mayhem is to understand that this is unprecedented in terms of size, scope and strategy -- only rivaled by the New Deal. Then again, for all of the obstacles he faced, FDR didn't have to negotiate his way through cable news, a hostile press, far-right talk radio, the blogotubes and an army of dittoheads taking their orders from an impotent burnout whose stated goal is the failure of the economy. In other words, while there are very smart economic solutions being pitched by Paul Krugman and others, the price tag, politics, optics, media and discourse are all brand new.
This is massive, this is complicated, this is unlike anything we've ever seen.
Nevertheless, the president hasn't faded, which is good considering the Herculean enormity of what's confronting him. President Obama, as we witnessed throughout the campaign, has a narrative build and a cadence in his speech-making that's almost perfectly duplicated in how he leads and how he manages a crisis. And based on his public appearances this week, he's actually gaining strength -- amplifying his voice and fortifying his position.
The second step is the big one. The progressive netroots have yet to seriously blitz Congress on this thing. The central reason for this lack of activism was summarized by Chris Bowers and Atrios who are asking: If we blitz Congress, what the hell do we support exactly? There are so many ideas in terms of what the recovery bill should look like, which iteration do we get behind?
There are obviously no easy answers. But regardless of the differing ideas about the details of the recovery bill, there's one thing that most of us can agree about: the Republicans can't be trusted on the economy and they can't be trusted to meddle with the recovery bill.
The president wrote in the Washington Post today:
In recent days, there have been misguided criticisms of this plan that echo the failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis... I reject those theories...
In addition to being a clear message to Congress, this sounds like a mission statement -- for the administration and for us. Reject the Republican economic theories.
To that point, there's no debating the Republican record on the economy. Their allegiance to Reaganomics and free market deregulation have led us to the brink of, well, dogs and cats living together and mass hysteria.
Nevertheless, there they are on cable news and the Sunday shows acting as if they know something. At the same time, they've proved themselves to be dishonest, bad-fath actors in this thing. They've spread lies about fake CBO reports, while also ignoring an actual CBO report on the Senate bill indicating that it would, in fact, succeed in stimulating economic growth. They've spread lies about nonexistent ACORN line items in the bill -- line items that only exist inside of Michelle Malkin's twisted dome. I mean, they met with Joe the Plumber on the Hill this week to discuss the economy. Joe the Plumber. About the economy. Because they're very serious people who ought to be taken very seriously.
And so they should be summarily shut out of this process -- whether or not the president wants them out.
The Republicans have zero cred.
And that's the message we can unify around: ZERO CRED.
Operation Zero Cred.
From there, considering the unprecedented dollar amount of the recovery bill, it might be impossible to herd every cat. But perhaps, in the process, we'll at least marginalize the Republicans just a little more. And that will surely mean a larger, more robust recovery bill.
So as the saying goes: We are the ones we've been waiting for, and all that.
Don't write or send e-mails. Written screeds can be conveniently lost, deleted or shredded. Telephones, on the other hand, make loud beeping and ringing noises and you'll know right away that there's a real life human being on the other end of the line who has to listen to what you have to say.
Phone numbers for your senators here. Phone numbers for your congressmember here.
The message:
"The Republicans have zero credibility on the economy."
Paraphrase President Obama:
"Please reject the Republican theories that got us into this mess in the first place."
Feel free to toss in the following:
"Make the Republicans stand and filibuster if they want to filibuster. No cloture votes!
Don't get into specific details of the bill. Our message needs to be consistent and unified: Zero Cred. The Republicans have zero credibility. We reject their ideas and we reject their theories.
Let's do this.
Order my book: One Nation Under Fear, with a foreword by Arianna Huffington. Also available in stores.
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Senate Stimulus Bill (Full Text)
Updated on February 8 The pdf is now available. * * * * * Updated on February 8 The compromise Senate stimulus bill has been...
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Obama says differences shouldn't delay stimulus
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said Monday that "very modest differences" over a massive package to revive the economy should not delay its swift passage,...
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Obama White House Losing Patience On Stimulus
Underscoring the reality that GOP opposition to the stimulus seems firmly entrenched, the Obama administration mounted a more aggressive stance in favor of the recovery...
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STD Money, Recovery.gov, The Patriot Act: HuffPost Readers Dig Through The Stimulus
More money to battle STDs. Recovery.gov stripped out. A nod to the Patriot Act. Huffington Post readers have taken a preliminary look at the Senate...
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Top Dem Senator: "Hundreds Of Billions More" Needed For Bank Bailouts
Sen. Kent Conrad, chairman of the Budget Committee, warned Monday that the financial sector would need "hundreds of billions more" in federal dollars before the...
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Senate Looks To Boost Mass Transit, Highway In Stimulus
WASHINGTON — The Senate voted Tuesday to give a tax break to new car buyers, setting aside bipartisan concerns over the size of an economic...
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Where Is The Stimulus Shock And Awe?
During a November 25 press conference, then President-elect Obama promised "a new spirit of ingenuity," declaring that the "old ways of Washington simply can't meet...
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Stimulus, Yes; Bank Bailout II, No
If Obama does his job he will mobilize public opinion and isolate Republicans who would rather sink the economy than give a Democratic president legislative success.
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Economic Stimulus: Investing in Vets Delivers a Huge Bang for the Buck
As the Senate begins to debate the stimulus package this week, our elected leaders must ensure that any plan fully supports the newest generation of veterans and their families.
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Bipartisanship Fetishism vs. What's Best for America: Obama Needs to Choose
At tonight's press conference, CBS's Chip Reid asked President Obama about whether, given the lack of bipartisanship on the stimulus bill, the White House was "moving away" from its "emphasis on bipartisanship?" Obama replied that his "bottom line when it comes to the recovery package" is: does it create or save jobs? That's good to hear because the president's actions over the last couple of weeks have left many wondering whether bipartisanship, rather than what's best for America, has been his priority. Perhaps there will come a day when the Venn diagrams of the Republican Party and the national interest actually intersect. But, at the moment, we find ourselves with a GOP whose leaders believe, among other things, that government jobs are not real jobs, and that Obama's stimulus plan is "the socialist way." Hard for bipartisanship to flourish in this kind of atmosphere.
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Billionaire For A Day: A More Entertaining Economic Stimulus Package
Let's do something to capture all Americans attention and by doing so make the economic stimulus package real to all of us: 800 Americans will each win a billion dollars.
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Palin's Facebook Page: Opposes Obama's Stimulus Plan
We learn on Facebook that Palin has "serious concerns" with Obama's stimulus package. Say what?
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Just imagine: What if McCain Had Won the Election and Obama had Shafted him During the Stimulus Debate?
Um, are McCain's feelings after losing an election the big question on people's minds in the nation? I think the stimulus package is the focus of the country right now, don't you?
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Stimulate Me!
Experts seem relatively unified, if such a thing is possible, on the issue of direct economic stimulus to every taxpayer. They're against it.
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Where's Ross Perot When You Need Him?
I'm ready for a little old fashioned Ross Perot specification of the expected outcomes of the stimulus package. This is what we call in education a "teachable moment."
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Rahm Throws Pelosi Under The Bus To Save Stimulus Bill
The story of the morning seems to be that the Obama team is unhappy with Nancy Pelosi and the House committee chairs for delivering up such a liberal, pork-laden bill that they themselves really had nothing to do with.
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Our Twin Crises
That we are unable to manage a functioning economy or deal with climate change because rapacious Wall Street traders have disproportionate political clout is a measure of our political dysfunction.
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Creating Jobs Is Not "Wasteful"
America voted for a change of direction last November, not more of the same. Republicans should listen to the American people and work in a bi-partisan fashion to help get our country on the road to recovery.
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Oh, About That "End" of the Obama Honeymoon ...
Where Obama may have made a mistake is in being too substantively accommodating with people who are basically not going to support him except in the event of an extraterrestrial invasion.
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Patriotic Extortion
Imagine if the Democrats had not pre-capitulated to the Republicans on the stimulus bill. Imagine if they had forced the Republicans to actually mount a filibuster.
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Steele Crazy After All This Year
We are witnessing, not so much the collapse of the Republican Party, as its slide into insanity. What was the GOP's great accomplishment last week? A show of "unity" enough to block the first stimulus package.
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Command and Control?
At a time when the country is virtually pleading with him to exert command and control, he has yielded that role to congressional partisans that the public doesn't quite know and almost certainly doesn't trust.
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Why the Stimulus is Needed, Part II
Given the decreases in personal consumption expenditures and gross private domestic investment, what are the chances of the consumer spending again or business investing again?
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House vs. Senate Stimulus Bills
Some highlights: The House version would spend $60 billion more on education -- the Senate version adds more than $100 billion for tax cuts to individuals and families.
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A Better Stimulus for the Economy
The problem with our economy is not weak spending, which is just a symptom of our predicament. The root problem is lack of confidence in the future.
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The Truth About the Stimulus Package
Until other countries are willing to do their share to stimulate the global economy, the Obama administration is right to lift our boat first.
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Stimulus Package: If You Jump Halfway Across a Chasm You Fall Into the Abyss
If we are going to spend two trillion dollars (and most likely more) trying to deal with the economic crisis, shouldn't we do it right?
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Change vs. Bipartisanship: What Happens When You Throw a Bipartisan Party and Half the Guest List Stays Home?
The problem with a message of bipartisanship is that it makes it very difficult to tell the story of why things are so bad that we need dramatic change.
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Delusional or Just Cynical?
A good example of the "frothing at the mouth" reaction to the stimulus plan is a blog penned by Jonathan Tobin, Executive Editor of Commentary.
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Obama Financial Team to Taxpayers: You'll Get Nothing, and Like It
There's nothing that prevents the public from getting their fair share of any future bank profits appropriate to the high risk investment they are being forced to make.
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No, Seriously: Republicans Don't Get It
Investment in bike paths will not only improve our economy, and take our country in the right direction for the future; it is exactly the kind of investment the American people want.
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Obama's Wake-Up Call
Even as unemployment hits 7.6 percent and shows no signs of slowing any time soon, the GOP is falling over itself to protect the ostentatious privileges and prerogatives of a few financial potentates.
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Selling Stimulus
What the administration needs, and what its senior advisers proved so adept at during the campaign, is a simpler, more compelling, campaign-style message for what this legislation is really about.
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A New Movement
There is a movement to strip billions of dollars from the stimulus bill led by Ben Nelson of Omaha (whose Democratic status is debatable) and Susan Collins (Republican) of Maine.
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Energy Self-Reliance and Our Future
You want my opinion on a stimulus plan? Follow Ohio's example and invest in American energy. All of it.
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Stimulating
As muddled as this economic stage may be -- and all major measures taken in crisis usually are -- it is born of the drive to reconstruct and not profiteer, and that alone is progress to applaud.
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Bipartisanship (is) for Dummies
The idea that we can turn this economy around by caving to the feckless demands of those who screwed it up in the first place is utterly bankrupt.
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Obama: Use This And the Jobs Bill Will Pass With a 100 Vote Margin
Our best salesman is Obama. There is no house or senate member who this president cannot roll over.
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Obama to Speak Monday Night on Stimulus While Rep. Pete Sessions Says Republicans Are the New Taliban
If the media hadn't acted so irresponsibly the past two weeks and President Obama hadn't tried to be so bipartisan, he might not have had to take to the airwaves, but that's not the case anymore.
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Pulling the Wool Over Our Eyes
The American people elected President Obama in record numbers to lead our country in a new direction, if the Republicans aren't willing to join him, the least they can do is get out of his way.
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Our Phone Calls Are Working, Don't Let Up!
If representatives know that's what their constituents want, they will be both more inclined to keep that critical public investment from the House bill, and act with the speed.
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Obama Undermines Jobs Mandate For the Sake of Bipartisanship
Roosevelt had the New Deal, Kennedy had the New Frontier, Johnson had the Great Society, and Obama has...the stimulus plan. An abstract goal with fungible components that valued process above all else.
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Lions Coach Up Steelers on Stimulus Package
How can anyone take the GOP seriously on economic policy? Agree or disagree on their philosophy; their record is demonstrably terrible. They are the Detroit Lions of Congress.
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Republicans Say They'd Support the "Right" Stimulus Bill, But Stimulus for Them Is Only More Tax Cuts
If you look closely at what the Republicans are saying, this isn't a debate on the merits of this stimulus legislation, but rather another round of policy battles fought during last year's campaign.
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Democrats in Congress Need to Learn How to Lead
I am losing patience with congressional Democrats' innate instinct to capitulate, something that has been evident since the November 2006 mid-term elections.
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Strangling California's budget - Los Angeles Times
How big is California's budget hole? Try these numbers on for size ...
Maybe it's just so true that a lot of people thought of it at the same time.
The one remaining policy point of the Republicans - tax relief - is now hard for the Democrats to come out against because of a nebulous sense that they will be opposing the President. President Obama, in attempting to steal the tax relief idea away from the Republicans, came to own the idea during his campaign. Then he went the extra step by actually PRE-NEGOTIATING THE REPUBLICAN POSITION by throwing them the bone of tax relief in the stimulus plan. This had the effect of handicapping the Democratic position from the get-go.
The Republicans are now taking advantage of this weakness. Not only do they have their precious tax cuts but they have the majority party playing defense. The ever-growing allotment of the stimulus plan now devoted to tax relief threatens to dilute the effectiveness of the plan to actually stimulate new economic initiatives. I suspect tax relief will only serve to prop up the failed old economy; this may suit the Republicans just fine but it won't help the unemployed.
The President needs to get honest with the public and get rid of this "tax cut policy" albatross. The political attempt to take the issue away from the opposition has run headlong into the real need to discredit this failed policy in favor of a pragmatic approach to creating real economic stimulus.
Democrats lose nothing by voting for this bill.
GOP lost a lot by their obvious party cronies before country changes to the bills.
A few key Republican rallying points:
>Gore wants "endless recounts" until he wins (even though he really wanted a single fair one).
>We have to prevent Iraq from using their WMDs (even though they didn't have any)
>Iraq was a noble cause because of Hussein (WMDs? who said anything about WMDs?)
>Tax cuts are always good for the country, even with two wars. (Please ignore that the country it really benefits is China).
>Iraq was about "taking the fight to them" (please ignore that we said it was about WMDs and that Al Qaeda had no ties to Iraq.)
>Democrats are sheep and the Republicans actually think about things (That one always makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time.)
Each of these ideas were widely touted among Republicans. Democrats, for their part, considered these ideas and dismissed them for the illogical rants that they were. Herein lays the power of the Republicans and the weakness of the Democrats. It is a powerful tool for Republicans to forego reason in the name of unity.
This is why the Republicans are winning the stimulus battle.
>"Kept us safe"
That is one Republican rallying point I omitted due to limited space. It is particularly interesting because it takes such convoluted logic to accept. First, it requires defining "safe" as both being on American soil and excluding anthrax. It also ignores the guy who hid a bomb in his shoe but was stopped by passengers and crew. In addition, it forces believers to ignore that there were 8 years between attacks on US soil prior to 9/11. Its a good thing that Republican talking points don’t have to make sense, because otherwise “kept us safe” would make peoples heads explode.
I'm not sure if the author understands how a modern cloture works. A senator doesn't have to pull and all-nighter to have a fillibuster anymore. A cloture vote is necessary under the current rules of the Senate, so if they don't have a cloture vote, they don't have cloture, and thus the filibuster is automatic.
But while urgency is appropriate, we're losing the initiative.
/quote
Exactly right! The Harry Reid compromise bill does not have enough spending, but far worse, it includes 42% tax cuts last I checked, about $350,000,000,000 worth, which only provide 2 or 3 cents more stimulus than they cost the government in revenues. I hope we'll see separate bills for neglected "liberal agenda" items which by-the-way are vital to the general welfare, like education, transportation especially mass transit and bike trails, and if unemployment is still above 5% then, maybe we can put the anit-gays and anti-women nuts to work sodding the Mall or passing out condoms and sex ed brochures.
http://www.economy.com/mark-zandi/default.asp?src=economy_homepage
The way I see it, giving them all their tax breaks without a fight, President Obama has given each Republican and "centrist" or "moderate" or "fiscally conservative" or [blechhh] "Blue Dog" Democrat a hefty length of political rope. Most of them have decided to fashion that rope into career nooses, which they've slipped around their own necks. It's up to liberals to pull the floor from under them, by making those representatives' constituents fully understand that tax cuts, at this time, will harm America, and everybody in Congress knew it.
I don't think this is the President's attempt to hang conservatives and moderates, but he may end up hanging us all if he doesn't throw over the idea.
We can pay for the whole program by busting the military down in rank. NO MORE WARS! AMYWHERE! That's over 2 billion a month. Everybody comes home,...right now. We leave just like we did Saigon. Everything worked out fine there.
No mercy, no quarter, no negotiation. If its a fist fight they want then lets give it to them, just like the Blue did to the Grey in our own Civil War. I am so sick of the Southern Republican Mentality I could vomit.
Get out of the way or get knocked out of the way. That was the people's mandate. Initiate a Tax Audit on the entire Republican side --- let's see who's clean and who's dirty.
These guys will never change or concede, we simply have to beat them up. Lets get to it. No more "make nice" Community Organizer Style. Get Tough NOW.
With many of those turkeys, dreaming up reasons to say "No" is the most work they've done in 20 years of political life.
The Repubs represent almost every aspect of what's wrong with America. Yet they know how to control Congress. When will the Dems ever learn?
The two party system is the worst possible system for us when we're so incredibly polarized. We need AT LEAST a third (hopefully fourth or fifth) viable party to get things done by teaming up on big ticket bills. We need a way to break the gridlock. And no, a one party scenario is far more terrifying than a gridlocked two party system. I still suffer from night terrors because of '96-'06...
' followers' do not think - they just buy into the far right ' message ' Too uninformed to even know that Limbaugh is all for the Reagan / Bush policies that got us into this current crisis. Limbaugh must laugh all the way to the bank, since he has so many' ditto heads ' that he has fooled. IF only they would read & research the actual facts. But no- they are willing to sacrifice all to their ' leader . BUT this election showed that - The majority of us are thinking people- who know we've l been ' had ' for 8 years with Bush and many more since Reagan - the FATHER OF DEREGULATION & TRICKLE DOWN AND HUGE TAX CUTS to the wealthy- Reagan lowered the top tax rate from 80 % to 30 %. Then Bush said' The wealthy need even more tax breaks- so he gave them another huge tax break and to big oil.. Boy- Ignorance is bliss.
To put it simply: The republicans have given us focused laws written by a very small group of people (usually lobbyists, but that's another rant). OTOH, the democrats have given us laws designed by relatively enormous committees.
Probably nature of the beast in both cases, but this country really needs a third choice. Maybe if Hugo Chavez loses the term limits battle in Venezuela, he'll offer to come here and run things...
Seriously, what was he thinking? That he could get them on board, and then if the economy continued to go south, it would be everyone's fault and the Rethugs wouldn't attack? Get real. Democrats need to learn that it doesn't matter what they do, the Rethugs will lie and whine about it anyway, so they might as well just do the right thing and let them howl.