Posted on 01/28/2009 5:05:03 PM PST by Michael Eden
In public - and eagerly devoured by an Obama-worshiping press - Barack Obama and his team of advisers have framed the process of crafting a stimulus package as one that will be inclusive and bipartisan in nature.
But in private - and now happily increasingly in public as well - Democrats are telling Republicans where they can stick their objections to Democrats acting like money grows on trees and that the government can dig the economy out of a hole by digging deeper and faster.
Obama had the pretension of talking about his plan passing with 80 votes in the Senate. How about 178 forks in your eye instead? Obama talked about going through the budget "line by line" to cut out waste, but can't even do that with his own spending initiative.
The Republicans may actually grow a spine as Democrats shut them out of a room so they can craft a bill featuring little actual stimulus but massive spending to fund projects that Democrats have always wanted.
"There was no Republican input at all involved in what House Democrats outlined today," Boehner, R-Ohio, said at a news conference at the Capitol. "I just took a moment to look over the draft from Chairman [David] Obey and the draft or outline from Chairman [Charlie] Rangel. Oh, my God.Boehner also said:"I just can't tell you how shocked I am at what we're seeing. You know, it's clear that they're moving on this path along the flawed notion that we can borrow and spend our way back to prosperity."
“We expressed our concerns about some of the spending that’s being proposed in the House bill,” House Minority Leader John Boehner said after meeting with Obama.And would that the hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives was the only issue. This spending bill (i.e. NOT a "stimulus" package) features $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts so they can finance more insults to Jesus displayed in jars of urine. It features $400 million to throw away on "climate change" research. But the "mother of all pork" is the $4.19 BILLION that will go to Obama front group ACORN. This package is more about instilling old socialist-welfare packages than it is about stimulating the economy.“How can you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives?” Boehner asked. “How does that stimulate the economy?”
"Stimulus"? The Congressional Budget Office has said that at least 25% of the Obama bailout would not even be spent before 2011. GOP Whip Eric Cantor has compiled a sizable list of media sources reporting just that fact. That won't help our economy when we need it - which is RIGHT NOW. And only about 12% of the spending can even be construed as "stimulus." The Wall Street Journal rightly states that the massive socialist pork package has nothing to do with the economy.
Nancy Pelosi expressed the bi-partisan spirit of Democrats:
"Yes, we wrote the bill. Yes, we won the election," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters yesterday, saying Republicans were not being realistic in their expectations.Meanwhile, Pelosi all but predicts that the $825 billion figure is going to continue to balloon higher:
Pelosi suggested that the package, currently at $825 billion, could become even larger.Barack Obama put his feelings about bi-partisanship this way:“It has grown,” Pelosi said, “and we’re still in the process.”
"I won," Obama noted matter-of-factly, according to sources familiar with the conversation.Obama met with Republicans to tell them all how wonderful he was, assuring them how open he was to bipartisan compromise. Nice gesture undermined by its sheer showy meaninglessness. Obama talked about compromise, but the bill stayed the same hard-core partisan waste of money.
To those of you who believe that Obama was the king of the fairies, and that happiness and fluttering butterflies would follow him wherever he went, he is already presiding over the same-old, same-old:
The GOP's shrunken numbers, particularly in the Senate, will make it difficult for Republicans to stop the stimulus bill, but the growing GOP doubts mean that Obama's first major initiative could be passed on a largely party-line vote -- little different from the past 16 years of partisan sniping in the Clinton and Bush eras.To their credit, not a single Republican supported the Obama bailout and social spending package. All 178 Republicans in the House of Representatives turned it down. But Nancy has her vote. American wanted Demcorats to run the country, and how they get to see what that will mean for them. As of right now (there's time for it to mushroom even more yet), it means an additional $350 billion in interest payments over the next ten years. CNN reports that the plan with interest will be $1.2 trillion.
Why does Barack Obama want "bipartisan support"? If this massive spending program would really "stimulate" an economic turnaround, why would he even want Republicans horning in on his credit? Why not pass it, and crush the Republicans for good for failing to support this wonderful legislation? Because he wants cover, that's why. When this mother of all pork fiascos fails, he doesn't want Democrats absorbing all the blame for it.
Personally, I feel this way: let the Democrats ram it through on a highly partisan and ideologically-driven vote. Let them pile it as high as they can with all the lavish pork their greedy little brains can imagine. Let them imperiously shove all kinds of liberal socialist spending onto the country. And let Republicans stand against it, vote against it, predict it will fail horribly, and then hang it around Democrats' necks like a giant, dead, rotting albatross in the coming months and years ahead.
Democrats don't need Republicans to transform our market based economy into a socialist government-run economy. Fine. Just as long as they don't have the naked chutzpah to even ask for it, much less expect it.
Don't ask us for a kiss while you're trying to rape us, Democrats. Expect to get your eyes gouged out, your nose broken, and as much other damage as we can possibly do to you.
They only posture when it doesn’t count. They haven’t grown a spine.
I did however take time this evening to call two Republican Representatives in my state and thank them for opposing the bailout.
That’s good. IMO they need to hear when they are doing well and voting the way we want them to. They certainly get enough letters telling them what they are doing wrong and how rotten they are for doing so.
I’m in the same boat as theocodont. I called my Senators at their DC number and told them not to vote for tax cheat Geithner for Treasury Sec.
But calling Democrats and begging them not to vote for something liberal is probably like begging the devil not to do something evil.
It sucks having Democrats represent you. But at least we get a lot of sunshine in the People’s Republic of California.
So maybe the trick is to “adopt” some Republican lawmakers and congratulate them for acting like conservatives.
They only posture when it doesn’t count. They haven’t grown a spine.
I fear you’re right, but I HOPE that we have a “1994” part II. Remember the Republicans and how they rallied around the Contract with America?
Or maybe we can start a third party: the Backbone Party.
You can bet the Backboners wouldn’t lack spines.
It certainly wouldn't hurt, and it just might help. I also wrote my Democrat Senator (Bill Nelson, Florida) to vote “No” on approving Eric Holder. I reminded him of the Elian Gonzalez debacle back in 2000. I called Sen. Martinez's office and told them the same thing. Not sure it did any good, but it made me feel like I was making my opinion known.
I think we all expect them to cave but I also hope to become pleasantly surprised if they hold firm.
This is the opening skirmish a the battle (and I’m just talking about the bailout package).
My view is: a total filibuster in the Senate might backfire on Republicans (i.e., the media will portray Repubs as the obstacles to solving our crisis). I would rather have GOP leadership negotiate with RINOS like Olympia Snow et al to vote AGAINST the package, but make little attempt to filibuster.
That way, the thing - bad as it is - passes with few mods so we can hang all the pork on the Democrats. And when it DOESN’T work (and I mean, start on them IMMEDIATELY) depict it as a failure. Hang it ALL on them. The Democrats passed a pork-laden socialist spending bill instead of a stimulus - and we’re going to pay billions in interest payments for pork. And Democrats are corrupt failures, and do we want them running the country?
That’s just my view.
Humal,
I actually call my Congress people on important votes even though they are Dems. I figure it can’t hurt, and could even help. And I think if more conservatives spent the time to notify their leaders of what they think/want, we wouldn’t have nearly as much crap as we do.
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