- Scott Miller
Eight years of wandering in the political wilderness. Eight years. For the past eight year, Republicans have pretty much abandoned the tenants of their conservative core principles that gave them control of Congress in 1994. It has been a journey which has brought them to the brink of extinction, and caused this conservative to leave the party. Yesterday, we received a sign that Republicans may have finally found their path home. If so, welcome back. This from the NY Times:
House Passes Stimulus Plan With No G.O.P. Votes
WASHINGTON — Without a single Republican vote, President Obama won House approval on Wednesday for an $819 billion economic recovery plan as Congressional Democrats sought to temper their own differences over the enormous package of tax cuts and spending.
As a piece of legislation, the two-year package is among the biggest in history, reflecting a broad view in Congress that urgent fiscal help is needed for an economy in crisis, at a time when the Federal Reserve has already cut interest rates almost to zero.
But the size and substance of the stimulus package remain in dispute, as House Republicans argued that it tilted heavily toward new spending instead of tax cuts.
All but 11 Democrats voted for the plan, and 177 Republicans voted against it. The 244-to-188 vote came a day after Mr. Obama traveled to Capitol Hill to seek Republican backing, if not for the package then on other issues to come.
Mr. Obama followed the House vote with a cocktail party at the White House for the Congressional leaders of both parties, from the House and the Senate. The House Republicans, including the minority leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, were fresh from their votes against the recovery package.
NOT ONE REPUBLICAN VOTE! Thank you Rep. Cantor! Thank you House Republicans. Thank you to the 11 Democrats who has the courage to vote against this massive pile of crap liberal spending.
As Mark Levin pointed out, this was a stunning defeat for the Obamarxist… a bipartisan vote AGAINST his first big POL (piece of legislation), which really is a POS (piece of sugarhoneymustard).
Now folks, we still have time to stop this massive pork spending bill. We’ve got to get on the phones, and send emails to our Senator’s office to kill this thing, or change it to a pro-growth stimulus. If you need a little motivation to get on the phone, consider this from the Wall Street Journal:
This is a political wonder that manages to spend money on just about every pent-up Democratic proposal of the last 40 years.
We’ve looked it over, and even we can’t quite believe it. There’s $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that hasn’t turned a profit in 40 years; $2 billion for child-care subsidies; $50 million for that great engine of job creation, the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global-warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture demonstration projects. There’s even $650 million on top of the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV conversion coupons.
Here’s another lu-lu: Congress wants to spend $600 million more for the federal government to buy new cars. Uncle Sam already spends $3 billion a year on its fleet of 600,000 vehicles. Congress also wants to spend $7 billion for modernizing federal buildings and facilities. The Smithsonian is targeted to receive $150 million; we love the Smithsonian, too, but this is a job creator?
Another “stimulus” secret is that some $252 billion is for income-transfer payments — that is, not investments that arguably help everyone, but cash or benefits to individuals for doing nothing at all. There’s $81 billion for Medicaid, $36 billion for expanded unemployment benefits, $20 billion for food stamps, and $83 billion for the earned income credit for people who don’t pay income tax
As for the promise of accountability, some $54 billion will go to federal programs that the Office of Management and Budget or the Government Accountability Office have already criticized as “ineffective” or unable to pass basic financial audits. These include the Economic Development Administration, the Small Business Administration, the 10 federal job training programs, and many more.
Oh, and don’t forget education, which would get $66 billion more. That’s more than the entire Education Department spent a mere 10 years ago and is on top of the doubling under President Bush. Some $6 billion of this will subsidize university building projects. If you think the intention here is to help kids learn, the House declares on page 257 that “No recipient . . . shall use such funds to provide financial assistance to students to attend private elementary or secondary schools.” Horrors: Some money might go to nonunion teachers.
The larger fiscal issue here is whether this spending bonanza will become part of the annual “budget baseline” that Congress uses as the new floor when calculating how much to increase spending the following year, and into the future. Democrats insist that it will not. But it’s hard — no, impossible — to believe that Congress will cut spending next year on any of these programs from their new, higher levels. The likelihood is that this allegedly emergency spending will become a permanent addition to federal outlays — increasing pressure for tax increases in the bargain. Any Blue Dog Democrat who votes for this ought to turn in his “deficit hawk” credentials.
This is supposed to be a new era of bipartisanship, but this bill was written based on the wish list of every living — or dead — Democratic interest group. As Speaker Nancy Pelosi put it, “We won the election. We wrote the bill.” So they did. Republicans should let them take all of the credit.
… and they did. Thanks again to the House Republicans.
Now, I know that it is hard to know where, who, and when to fight when the libs are coming at our wallets and liberties on so many fronts, but let’s take the big ones down first. This massive pork spending, disguised in the wrapper of ”stimulus”, is anything but… the only thing this POS will stimulate is dependency on the government… so let’s burn up those Senate phone lines, and concentrate on Olympia Snow up there in the People’s Republic of Maine.
