Failure to Rise by Paul Krugman

[Joanne98]

By any normal political standards, this week's Congressional agreement on an economic stimulus package was a great victory for President Obama. He got more or less what he asked for: almost $800 billion to rescue the economy, with most of the money allocated to spending rather than tax cuts. Break out the Champagne!

Or maybe not. These aren't normal times, so normal political standards don't apply: Mr. Obama's victory feels more than a bit like defeat. The stimulus bill looks helpful but inadequate, especially when combined with a disappointing plan for rescuing the banks. And the politics of the stimulus fight have made nonsense of Mr. Obama's postpartisan dreams.

Let's start with the politics.

One might have expected Republicans to act at least slightly chastened in these early days of the Obama administration, given both their drubbing in the last two elections and the economic debacle of the past eight years.

But it's now clear that the party's commitment to deep voodoo - enforced, in part, by pressure groups that stand ready to run primary challengers against heretics - is as strong as ever. In both the House and the Senate, the vast majority of Republicans rallied behind the idea that the appropriate response to the abject failure of the Bush administration's tax cuts is more Bush-style tax cuts.

And the rhetorical response of conservatives to the stimulus plan - which will, it's worth bearing in mind, cost substantially less than either the Bush administration's $2 trillion in tax cuts or the $1 trillion and counting spent in Iraq - has bordered on the deranged.

It's "generational theft," said Senator John McCain, just a few days after voting for tax cuts that would, over the next decade, have cost about four times as much.

It's "destroying my daughters' future. It is like sitting there watching my house ransacked by a gang of thugs," said Arnold Kling of the Cato Institute.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/02/13

[poverlay]

1. Now they know how we've been feeling for the last eight years. At least we aren't putting

their sons and daughters on the front line in a religious war so we could make a few more bucks.
And we're going to take that 19" pos t.v. of yours and replace it with a 54" flat screen, but hey, keep on bitching.

[Captain Hilts]

2. The R's have been pasted in the past two elections. We can act more boldly now.

The people are now more left than the Prez and Congress. It's maddening.