At least to some degree:
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Sunday the massive stimulus bill backed by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats could go down to defeat if it’s not stripped of unnecessary spending and focused more on housing issues and tax cut.
The Senate version of the bill, which topped out at nearly $900 billion, is headed to the floor for debate. The House bill totaled about $819 billion and earned no Republican votes, even though it easily passed the Democratic-controlled House. At some point lawmakers will need to compromise on the competing versions.
McConnell and other Republicans suggested that the bill needed an overhaul because it doesn’t pump enough into the private sector through tax cuts and allows Democrats to go on a spending spree unlikely to jolt the economy. The Republican leader also complained that Democrats had not been as bipartisan in writing the bill as Obama had said he wanted.
“I think it may be time … for the president to kind of get a hold of these Democrats in the Senate and the House, who have rather significant majorities, and shake them a little bit and say, ‘Look, let’s do this the right way,'” McConnell said. “I can’t believe that the president isn’t embarrassed about the products that have been produced so far.”
Anything the Congressional GOP can do to cut out the wasteful and worthless spending and add a bit of actual stimulus and/or tax cuts will just make it that more likely we’ll start to get out of this recession some time in the second half of 2010 or, perhaps, the first half of 2011…pass it as is, and we’re doomed to an economic depression which will last until a year or two after Obama and his Democrats are either booted out of office or, at least, are forced to apply supply-side economics to the problem. Of course, my preferred course of action is one which won’t happen, but which would put us on the best long-term course – admit we screwed up for the past 75 years or so and go back to a genuinely free market economic system. But we won’t do that – because we’re stupid (and I mean that in a nice way).
In the end, the election of Obama – the most overtly leftwing President America has ever had – might prove beneficial to conservatism in the long run. By showing how entirely out of touch the left is, Obama and his Democrats are just handing the GOP issue after issue to clobber them on in 2010 and beyond. But first we must try to save the economic life of the United States – even if by helping to kill the worst aspects of the bill we end up helping Obama.
Blogs For Victory 