Keep the Change

Last week we chatted about how partisan the House version of the economic “stimulus” bill was and how simulative it wasn’t. This week we’ve seen the Senate attempt to shave a hundred billion or so off the bill after public opinion on the “stimulus” package started slipping. We’ve also been privy to some bipartisanship, but not from the man that promised it. Instead of strong bipartisan leadership, President Obama gave us all a dose of what the left used to call Bush style fear tactics and a load of partisan rhetoric.

President Obama opined in the Washington Post that if this stimulus bill is not passed soon we could face a deeper and potentially irreparable recession. He wrote the following, “And, if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years ... our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.” Now I’m not a professor of literature, but that sentence sure sounds like it’s meant to persuade those who do not support this bill by inspiring fear of a “deeper” or “irreversible” recession. Many Obama supporters used to accuse President Bush of being a fear monger when he would address his detractors by warning of the dangers inherent in having weak national defense policies. It shouldn’t take Kreskin to guess whether or not the same will be said of Obama now that he is employing the same tactics. The only difference is that Bush was right. There is a direct correlation between being more susceptible to attack and having less stringent defense measures. The same correlation does not exist between the absence of Obama’s “stimulus” plan and an enduring economic recession or depression.

Our President also wrote the following in last weeks op-ed piece in response to the criticism the bill has received, “I reject these theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change. They know that we have tried it those ways for too long.” Again, I’m no Mensa candidate, but that doesn’t exactly sound like someone that’s embracing the opposition, or reaching across the aisle. What it sounds like to me is some highly partisan rhetoric reminiscent of when he was on the campaign trail. In truth, the Republicans over the last eight years were not fiscally conservative. They spent big time, and it’s a large factor in why their ranks have dwindled and they’ve suffered so many losses in the 2006 and 2008 elections. They did offer tax relief and that did help the economy, but not enough to fend off the inevitable bursting of the housing market bubble and the subsequent credit freeze. I’m not trying to absolve the Republicans of any guilt in this nations current economic woes, but I will contend that this crisis is a culmination of overall government failure. For some reason everyone is supposed to be ready to let the federal government mortgage the future to get us out of this hole through pork spending, increases in entitlements, and some tax refunds? Why? Because the new guys are so much better and more worthy of our trust then the old guys? Sorry, I just don’t buy that.

In the meantime, while Mr. Obama was writing his Washington Post op-ed designed to scare everyone into supporting Pelosi and his bogus bill before any of the pork could be slashed, Senators Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Susan Collins (R-ME) were actually demonstrating some bipartisan leadership by heading up an effort to clean up this bill and make it more palatable for Republicans and fiscally conservative Democrats (yes, there are a few). Now I am still by no means in support of the bill, but this week showed me that I should no longer attempt to give President Obama the benefit of the doubt as I did last week. He proved himself to be every bit the partisan he claimed he wasn’t. He also showed himself to be willing to act quite similarly (if you subscribe to the left’s rhetoric) to the man he spent his entire campaign denigrating, President George W. Bush.

In the end there’s only one stimulus that’s guaranteed to work and that’s giving the taxpayers their money back. If every taxpayer was given a chunk of what is now $827 billion, there is literally nothing they could do with the money that wouldn’t stimulate the economy other then burying it in the yard like some kind of suburban pirate. If they put it in the bank to bolster their savings, the economy gets stimulated. If they spend all the money, the economy gets stimulated. If they invest it in the stock market, it stimulates the economy. If they use the money to pay off some or all of their debts, the economy gets stimulated. The list goes on, but I think you get the point. Unless they light the money ablaze, the result of giving the taxpayers the money will be 100% economic stimulus. Incidentally, I’m pretty sure burning money is how those spoiled douche bags used to start the bonfires on Laguna Beach.