I would like to suggest that the President of the United States has just been conned by Senate Republicans and their three stooges--Senators Specter, Collins and Snowe.
Here's the way I see it, Republican Senators were afraid to offend their core constituency by voting for an adequate stimulus bill, but they were extremely concerned about filibustering against it, because that would've offended the entire electorate.
I think, by now, just about everyone realizes that on Election Day 2010, we will be lucky if our economy is as good as it is today. We have gone over the cliff, and even the best plans will only slow our descent. No one knows what to do, because we have never faced an economy this bad, and a debt this bad, at the same time. We're not going to clear that up in two years, and even with a trillion dollar stimulation bill, our unemployment rate would probably be higher than it is now. The question on Election Day is going to be, who's to blame, and the GOP Senators wanted to make sure it wasn't them, but they also did their best to make sure that any bill they passed would be inadequate.
It would've taken forty-one Republican votes to block the President's proposal, there are forty-one Republican Senators, but if they would've filibustered, then the blame for failure would've been theirs. So, they freed up their stooges, three soft Republicans--two women and a man of Jewish descent--not, by their standards, true conservatives, real Republicans, to offer their votes to Harry Reid, if he would only "compromise".
They conned the President, the fifty-six Democrats and the two Independents who favored the bill, into watering it down until it was sure to provide little relief to those who needed it most. As one example, they gutted the bill out of billions of dollars in state and municipal aid, which will certainly result in the firing of cops and firemen and teachers all over the country. Mayors cried foul, governors protested, but the "compromise" went through, and the final bill pays little attention to their needs.
I think we all would've been better off if the President had forced them to make the choice--filibuster and risk the future of their party, or do the right thing, support the President in his attempt to fix the economy. This is the time for us to do everything in our power to avert a catastrophe. The nits the Republicans picked in the bill would've had little effect on our overall economy, but the concessions their stooges won will hurt every city and every state. This was a time for all of us to rally around the US government, truly the only agency large enough to be effective in a crisis like this. To hear them once again to easy way out and proclaim, "All we need is more tax cuts." suggests that there is no chance for bipartisanship.
I think it's time for the President to stand up for the principals he proclaimed during his campaign, take the stands that he thinks best for the country and fight for them in the House and in the Senate--make those who oppose him stand up and vote and let Americans know who wants to help and who wants to hinder.