Sift through their self-righteous attacks on the Senate floor and the bluster of their talking heads on Fox News, and there's an important aspect of the debate over the recovery package that the Republicans in Congress seem to forget -- they're the ones that got us into this mess. After all, over the past eight years they have driven our economy off a cliff faster than Thelma and Louise
Think about it -- it was President Bush who transformed a $5.6 trillion projected budget surplus into a record budget deficit. He did so by cutting taxes for the wealthiest among us while spending $10 billion a month in Iraq. It was the Republicans in Congress who opposed common sense oversight and regulation of the financial industry, and who passed pork by the barrel, most memorably Alaska's $250 million bridge to nowhere. And it was under their collective watch that our economy lost 5 million manufacturing jobs and millions of families lost their homes to foreclosure.
Facts may be stubborn things, but the Republicans in Congress aren't letting them get in their way. That's why it's time that they spare taxpayers their supposed indignation over the proposed recovery package and buckle down and help to pass a plan that will help all Americans already. They're attempting to pull the wool over our eyes, and whitewash their role in causing the current economic crisis. Despite President Obama's repeated efforts to reach out to them and find common ground, the Republican leadership continues to treat these meetings as little more than a photo-op. Instead of working proactively and constructively behind closed doors, they continue to lob pithy sound bites to the media and propose little more than increased tax cuts.
While I appreciate President Obama's goal of working across the aisle to fix this crisis, we cannot allow partisan temper tantrums to stand in the way of fixing our economy. 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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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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Operation Zero Cred
The GOP with Joe the Plumber on the Hill this week to discuss the economy. They should be summarily shut out of this process -- whether or not the president wants them out.
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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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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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Amen
That's why terms such as partisanship that I hear frequently from speaker of the House Pelosis tend to make me nervous. Partisanship with those that broke it doesn't make a lot of sense.
The striking thing about the American GDP is that 70% of that is spending by consumers. The only way to recover from that is to find new industry and new jobs. In your own northbay community there is already a thriving medical marijuana industry. One way to bring new jobs and job growth to Sonoma and Marin counties would be to end prohibition and use the significant tax revenue to help support government programs.
Currently the thinking is raising $35 billion over 4 years in California by increasing the tax on a pack of cigs. Legal taxed cannabis could pour billions into the California economy ALMOST IMMEDIATELY and without great expense to government in setting up or training.
Congresswoman Woolsey isn't it time to end cannabis Prohibition and reap the economic benefit?
Just look at Hannity's website forum "Washington Politics" http://forums.hannity.com/ and it becomes even more clear that the opposition to EVERYTHING proposed and done by Obama, is as Limbaugh himself said in explaining Powell's endorsement of Obama... "It's all about race. It's ALL ABOUT RACE"!
No matter the cost Hannity, Limbaugh and their audiences have let it be known to the GOP that an African American President can not be allowed, under any circumstances, to succeed!
We, as a nation, may never recover, and the right wing zealots will just sit back amongst the rubble and proudly proclaim "We told you so"!
Obama whose Presidency is in its infancy (just 15 days old) is striving to clean the massive mess, which the Republicans let happen and led that to happen. Instead of feeling embarrassed and ashamed for having wreaked such a havoc, they are criticizing and obstructing Obama, perhaps to let those people profusely suffer who relegated (rightly) them to minority and mandated Obama to reign and run all their planetary affairs. Republicans would never be able to recover or rise unless they recognize in spirit that their majority has not been stolen by the Democrats, but lost due to their own wrongdoings and worst performance.
Those keen to make meaningful and measurable contribution towards restoring USA's planetary prestige and power are urged to cultivate Obama's rare planetary popularity among billions beyond their shores. Before summing this letter up, this humble scribe sincerely and vehemently vouch for the substance of this precocious blog by learned
Carol
We are going to have to endure another four years of republican obstructionism, drama, and ugly partisanship.
This is all they know...it's all they got....they will fight over every single Bill and idea, and do their best to keep this country from moving forward...and to especially keep Government from WORKING, because a Government that works would put the final stake in their whole idealogy.
A Republican "government" employee is an oxymoron.
They should give both Nancy and Dianne's jobs--they aren't doing anything with them, anyway.