It’s unacceptable for GOPs to play politics with the Stimulus

It really bothers me that the Republicans are playing with our future. The House passed the stimulus package with no Republicans voting for it. Today, the Senate pass their version of the Stimulus bill, this time nearly avoiding a filibuster when three centrist Republicans sided with the Democrats. Instead of working alongside to fix the economy and improve people’s lives, the GOPs have apparently decided to stake the political future of their party on their opposition of the Stimulus. So, in another word, they would rather see the country go down in flames than to compromise and pass a bill that they may not completely agree with. This is completely unacceptable.

I understand that the two parties have distinctively different philosophies and approaches to our economy, however, I also believe that they understand the dire situation that we are currently in. Just recently, we found out that the country was on the brink of a complete collapse, when 550 billion dollars were removed from the money market in a matter of two hours. Had the federal reserves not acted accordingly, an estimated five Trillion dollars would have left the economy in 24 hours. That would’ve led to the destruction of our economic system, our political system. The world economy would’ve followed suit within hours of such a meltdown. Members of congress were briefed on this and understand the severity of the circumstances. I also know that they see difference paths to recovery. Yet, it is completely unacceptable that they would rather play political games with our economy and hold the country hostage than to pass this bill to stop the bleeding. This is why I’m pissed. The Republicans know the dire consequences of inaction, yet they were more than willing to play the usual political games and use this Stimulus package to position themselves politically. They don’t seem to see or care about the world outside of the halls of Congress, instead they see only potentials for self gain and self interests. Of cours, not all GOPers are like this. Some, like Arlene Specter, see the need to work and compromise. Others like Republican Governor Crist of Florida, being closer to the people as the head of a State, fully supports the stimulus package, because they have seen and felt first hand the impact of the recession. However, out of the Republican Congress members, only THREE voted for any form of the stimulus packages. That’s all I need to know and it is unacceptable.

GOPs like to complain about a lack of compromise from the Democrats and that is a bunch of crap. First off, I don’t remember the Republicans making any kind of efforts to reach across the aisle when they had control of the Congress and the Presidency. All they did was to shove things down the Democrats and the people’s throats. Second, I do recall that it was a Republican controlled Congress and a Republican President that set this country down this path to where we are right now. It was the Republican Congress that authorized an illegal war that is costing TWO BILLION dollars a week in Iraq. It was a Republican controlled Congress who eliminated regulatory protections set in place to prevent such a financial market meltdown, and it was a Republican President, who had a Republican controlled Congress during most of his eight year tenure, that increase the size of the government, doubled our national debt and left us with almost a TRILLION dollars in deficit. Finally, don’t tell me that President Obama and the Democrats didn’t try to compromise. They included modifications to the AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax) that most economist disagree with in order to please the Republicans. The package contains a large tax cuts that, again, most economist don’t believe will help. They eliminated provisions in the stimulus for schools, police, states support and other programs that the Republicans, again, don’t like for various reasons. It took THREE centrist Republicans, who were willing to work with Democrats, hours of hard work to come up with a package that they felt comfortable to vote for. President Obama made every effort to reach out to the Republicans, asking for their inputs and asking for their support. In fact, the same Republicans that are now attacking the stimulus supported various aspects of it, like the tax cuts, early on. President Obama, in his first Presidential Press Conference even brought this up,

Now, just in terms of the historic record here, the Republicans were brought in early and were consulted. They were pleasantly surprised and complimentary about the tax cut that were presented in that framework. Those tax cuts are still in there. I mean, I suppose what I could have done is started off with no tax cuts, knowing that I was going to want some and then let them take credit for all of them. And maybe that’s the lesson I learned.

Their opposition is not with the package or a lack of consultation. They oppose it because the Republican party wants to use it as a springboard to rebuild the Republican party. They want to rebuild the party on the backs of hard working Americans. That is unacceptable.

Is this stimulus package sufficient? Not in my mind. They eliminated a lot of good projects and didn’t put nearly enough into infrastructure. Will the stimulus package work? We don’t know, no one will know for sure, even the naysayer Republicans can not tell you if a plan will work or not. All we can do is speculate and make best estimations. However, there is one thing that I know for sure and that the people sitting in Congress know for sure. If we do not act and act swiftly, this financial crisis will continue to worse dramatically, unemployment will continue to skyrocket and credit will remain in cold storage. That’s unacceptable.

Despite all of the doom and gloom, I know that as a country, we will survive this just like when we pulled out of the Great Depression. Because human beings are survivors. However, it took action and leadership from our government to get us out of our last great crisis. Despite what some GOPers like Conyer believes, the New Deal worked to help get the country out of the recession. Could it have been more successful? sure. Did it fail in some areas? absolutely. Was it perfect? Not even close. This stimulus package and future packages will go through the same thing. Some items will work and some will fail. We may need more intervention and pump more money into the system. However, to deny it a chance for success is to deny the American people a chance to climb out of this recession. That’s unacceptable.

This old adage that President Obama and others have been using maybe cliche and old, but it has never rang truer than now. We absolutely can not let our need for perfection be the enemy of what is necessary. For we know not what perfection will look like, but we all know what inaction will represent.