House Republican vote against economic stimulus is just stunt & tactic
January 29, 2009 at 7:47 am by Wayne GarciaNot one single House Republican voted for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 yesterday. Thank God it passed anyway, by a party-line vote of 244-188.
I say that not because I like pork (yes, Pelosi et al. stuffed some junk into the bill that has very little to do with stimulating the economy.) Or because I think the plan has enough tax breaks for small businesses (it has some, but could use a little more.) Or because I like socking future generations with nearly a trillion dollars in debt. I don’t.
But the consensus among economists is that spending is needed to create jobs. Building infrastructure is not only a quick way to put people to work but makes a small dent in our national backlog of public investments in roads, bridges, transits, energy-efficient buildings and a new energy grid that is sorely needed and will pay dividends (and create jobs) in the long run as well.
What you saw yesterday wasn’t the end of Barack Obama’s ability to reach bipartisanship, nor was it a principled stand against Big Government by Republicans. It was two other things:
First, another rebuke of the leadership of Nancy Pelosi — who like her counterpart in the Senate, Harry Reid — is not the kind of Congressional leader we need in an Obama administration. Pelosi did shove the bill down the GOP throats, not too surprising given the only GOP idea was to push more tax cuts that have been proven not to stimulate the economy.
Second, it was a tactic, a Hail Mary pass of a strategy, a last-ditch effort to hope that if the stimulus plan fails that the GOP can say “We told you so” and mount some kind of comeback. It was led around by the nose by douchebags like Rush Limbaugh, who demanded that Republican leaders listen not to their consituents but instead to the same old voices that drove them into the ground during the eight year tragedy that was the George W. Bush Administration.
So don’t be distracted by the media noise you will now hear about the Death of Bipartisanship. Let’s focus instead on making a recovery and starting to pay off the huge loan we are about to sign for.
