Posted on 02/10/2009 2:24:08 PM PST by rabscuttle385
The Senate today passed a massive $838 billion economic stimulus package while Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner gave only scant details on the next step of the financial bailout package.
Wall Street was not impressed as the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell sharply, down over 300 points by mid-afternoon.
Three Republican senators - Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania - joined with the Democratic majority in passing the stimulus package on a 61-37 vote.
The bill will now have to be reconciled with a House version that relied more on spending programs and less on tax cuts than the Senate bill. No Republicans voted on the bill in the House.
The three Republican senators who voted with the Democrats were promptly targeted by the National Republican Trust PAC. The political action committee said it would seek defeat Sen. Specter in the 2010 elections by financially backing his primary opponent.
“Sen. Specter voted for the so-called stimulus bill, mortgaging the future of Pennsylvania’s children and grandchildren” said Scott Wheeler, executive director of the National Republican Trust PAC. “This bill will do nothing to help the millions of Americans who need a job, want to buy a home, want to start a business – in other words it will do nothing to really stimulate the economy. It will just line the pockets of liberal political hacks to whom the Democratic Party is beholden. Sen. Specter and other Republicans who voted for this travesty will be held accountable.”
Geithner left unexplained many of the details on how he would proceed spending the remaining $350 billion of the $700 billion Troubled Asset Recovery Plan (TARP) started under President Bush.
The plan includes a new public-private partnership that would seek to unclog the credit markets by buying up toxic securities.
It's been known for YEARS that those three are simply closet Democrats with an "R" next to their names on ballot. Gotta love the "now that they voted for the Stimlus, the party should not support them anymore" crowd. That's about..... oh.... ten years overdue, actually.
WHERE were the conservative activists last year when Collins was up for re-election? WHERE was the push to find a challenger for her in the primary? Conservatives have only themselves to blame for Collins being a rubber stamp for Obama for the next 4+ years. Collins faced absolutely no pressure to support the party base at election time. She regularly votes with the RATs on all kinds of major issues and gets a total pass from GOP voters in Maine, and now has six years to do whatever she wants. But that's okay, she's "electable", right?
Since many on FR seem to have have forgotten, here's a little reminder -- the "weak sisters" of the Senate Republicans -- the absolute WORST of the bunch (FAR more liberal than just a Norm Coleman type right-of-center Republican), were: 1) Specter 2) Collins 3) Snowe 4) Chafee 5) Jeffords. The latter two are gone now, and immediately ceased the farce of calling themselves "Republican" the moment they left office (Jeffords ceased pretending to be Republican shortly after he was re-elected). Both openly support Obama now.
But why have conservatives allowed the first three to infest the party for the last decade?
Copy and paste this little thread from 1999 until it sinks in with some conservatives:
Not one of the "bad" people on that list have ever "gone conservative" on any meaningful issue. They've been worthless forever and will remain worthless forever.
Spector, Collins and Snow are dirt.
One of them (hopefully only 1) has a wang.
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