House and Senate Republicans would have us believe the following things:
1) The stimulus bill is full of pork, and the majority of the bill will not provide any stimulus to the economy
2) The Democrats did not practice bipartisanship and Republicans had no input as to the Stimulus Package
3) In their near-unanimous opposition to the bill, the GOP has shown solidarity indicating a “rebirth” of the party
Unfortunately for them, the facts do not support these allegations. The economists do not support these allegations. The statements made by REPUBLICANS do not support these allegations. And if these legislators were to take the time to listen to the American people…they would find out that WE neither support, nor believe, these allegations:
- Apparently, 22 Republican governors are in FULL SUPPORT of the measure. Governors have to balance their state budgets each year (a practice that many legislators could benefit from). As state coffers dwindle due to reduced tax revenue…these governors are having to make painful cuts, including layoffs, at the worst possible time: when more and more people require state services (unemployment, food stamps, job assistance, healthcare, child support enforcement, family assistance). And roads still need repairing, schools and other public buildings still require maintenance, and bridges and dams are falling further into disrepair. Many of the projects the D.C. Republicans have listed as “pork“…are actually shovel-ready projects that the governors have specifically asked for, to help create jobs and develop/maintain state infrastructure.
- Republicans, when not bemoaning the supposed “pork,” still criticize the bill for not having enough tax cuts. It’s too bad that most economists disagree. Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman says that the most effective part of the bill, money to states, was cut by the Republicans…and the tax cuts range from ineffective, to useless. Krugman calls the Obama tax cuts “ineffective” and said the Republican-added cuts for “home-flippers” and the Alternative Minimum Tax are even more “useless.” Krugman goes on in a later post to say: “The centrists went to work on a bill that, perhaps inevitably, was a mixture of economic muscle and useless fat; as the price of their support, they cut deeply into the muscle while leaving all the fat in place.” Krugman also observes that the 36 Republican senators who voted against the bill were the same 36 who voted FOR the DeMint amendment to the bill…which would have replaced “$800 billion of stimulus with $3.1 trillion of non-stimulative tax cuts.” He’s right…for these men and women to accuse the Democrats of “generational theft” while at the same time supporting the DeMint provisions…DOES make them hypocrites.
- Arlen Specter, Susan Collins, and Olympia Snowe were the three Republican senators to vote for the Stimulus Bill. Outcasts? Rebels? Party Traitors? No…according to Specter, a large number of Republicans actually support the bill…they just don’t want the voters to know it. Specter describes one conversation with a GOP colleague:
“When I came back to the cloak room after coming to the agreement a week ago today, one of my colleagues said, ‘Arlen, I’m proud of you.’ My Republican colleague said, ‘Arlen, I’m proud of you.’ I said, ‘Are you going to vote with me?’ And he said, ‘No, I might have a primary.’ And I said, ‘Well, you know very well I’m going to have a primary.’”
He goes on to say “I think there are a lot of people in the Republican caucus who are glad to see this action taken without their fingerprints, without their participation.” We have terms to describe people who would go before the press and their constituents and tell what a “bad, rotten, worthless bill” the stimulus package is…while at the same time realizing that it is actually in the best interests of their constituents…and forcing other senators to help the bill pass just because they don’t want to be on record as supporting it. Cowards…hypocrites…liars…these are but a few of the terms one might use.
- On the subject of Republican legislators speaking out of both sides of their mouths…I give you Rep. John Mica (R-Florida) and Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska). Mica recently lauded the inclusion of money for high-speed rail in the bill, in a press release, calling it a victory that he had managed to see the the funds were included. Young, in his own press release claimed that he “won a victory for the Alaska Native contracting program and other Alaska small business owners last night in H.R. 1, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.” Young went on to say that he “worked with members on the other side of the aisle to make the case for these programs.” That’s right. Both Republicans are bragging about their input into the bill (even though OF COURSE Republicans had no input into the bill), both of these men voted AGAINST the bill, and both men (Young the very same day) decry the bill as full of spending projects (like theirs): Young said, “This bill was not a stimulus bill. It was a vehicle for pet projects, and that’s wrong.”
- In the eleventh hour, the GOP made attacks on the bill containing either misinformation, or attacks so foolish that even conservative writers criticized them. Here’s David Frum (editor of the conservative site, NewMajority.com) had this to say: “The problem with the story is not that it was false. The problem with the story is that it was stupid. The US economy has plunged into severe recession (94% of Americans describe economic conditions as “bad,” according to the Feb 2-4 CBS poll, and 51% say conditions are getting even worse)…and facing all this – we’re talking about mice? Could we possibly act more inadequate to the challenge? More futile? More brain dead?” Ross Douthat writes on the Atlantic in agreement with Frum: “[T]oday’s Republican Party has no leaders at all, if you define leaders as politicians with the credibility and power to chart a new course for the party, as opposed to having it charted for them by the GOP’s most vocal constituents and most ideological backbenchers…the GOP’s leaders in Washington, your Mitch McConnells and John Boehners, owe their power entirely to backroom politics: Nobody loves them, nobody trusts them, and as a result they’re in no position to execute the kind of pivots that the party needs to make. One can reasonably expect them to do better than they’ve done to date when it comes to articulating an actual alternative to Obamanomics – i.e. more Larry Lindsey, less Jim DeMint – but one can’t expect them to do much better.”
- The beltway media has been patting GOP leaders on the back…even claiming that some (Boehner and Cantor to name a couple prominent examples) have really “risen in standing” as a result of the stimulus debate. Both Boehner and Cantor have issued their own self-aggrandizing material…not-so-subtly claiming credit for “reinvigorating” the struggling party. In the most recent, most bizarre example of GOP wishful thinking, Cantor released the following clip (strangely set to Aerosmith’s Back in the Saddle Again):
But…the polls don’t seem to agree. According to the most recent Daily Kos poll, Reid, Pelosi, and Congressional Dems have seen an increase in voter approval…while Boehner, McConnell and Congressional GOP’ers have seen a decline. It’s entirely likely that most Americans see Congressional Republicans and their leaders more as portrayed in this SNL clip:
- The White House seemed to be intending to make a point in its recently released slideshow, titled “The Story of the Economic Recovery Package.” A majority of the photos show conferences with Republicans…informal and formal discussions with Republicans…phone calls with Republicans…even Republicans asking for Obama’s autograph. Yes…these are the same Republicans crying big fat baby tears that they were COMPLETELY EXCLUDED from work on the Stimulus Package. Perhaps former President Bill Clinton described the GOP’s approach to bipartisanship best: “Those guys are on automatic … you punch a button, and they give you the answer they give you…he has reached across [the aisle], and it takes two to tango. I find it amazing that the Republicans who doubled the debt of the country in eight years and produced no new jobs doing it, gave us an economic record that was totally bereft of any productive result are now criticizing him for spending money. You know, I’m a fiscal conservative, I balanced the budget, I ran surpluses. If I were in his position today, I would be doing what he’s doing.“