Just a quick update to today’s earlier post about how concessions to win the support of THREE Senate Republicans have greatly decreased the Stimulus Bill’s potential to actually AID THE ECONOMY.
A few updated points:
1) Despite the GOP’s insistence that the entire bill has been flawed and that the Democrats have been behaving badly, polls clearly show that the public is NOT BUYING IT. Obama’s handling of the stimulus received a 67% approval rating…the Democrats’ work so far on the bill: 48%…the approval rating for congressional Republicans…31%. If only we could have some sort of huge, nationwide vote on who should be handling our economic recovery…some sort of “election“…that would certainly show the Republicans that we don’t trust their ideas anymore…
2) Winner of the Nobel Prize for economics, Paul Krugman, had THIS to say about the changes recently made to appease the GOP: “What do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, undermines schools, but offers a $15,000 bonus to affluent people who flip their houses? A proud centrist. For that is what the senators who ended up calling the tune on the stimulus bill just accomplished.” He goes on to warn that the greatest and most unjustifiable change involves the removal of $40 billion dollars which was go to cash-strapped states. The entire column is worth the read…
3) AND…despite all this, Joe Lieberman (I-CT) today declared that the three Republicans who succeeded in gutting the most effective provisions of the Stimulus Bill are actually a “gang of moderates,” and “heroes,” and…wait for it…they “really deserve the Congressional Medal of Honor on this one.“ To read the rest of Joe’s shameless rear-kissing of the Republican Party (who can blame him – he certainly has lost friends among Democrats)…go here. It all begs the question: when is Lieberman going to quit screwing around and just join the Republican Party?
More updates as I have them…