The Death of Hope

The one thing that everyone agreed should be the very first thing that the new govt. in Washington D.C. accomplish; implement a financial stimulus package and, I (and I think most Americans) hoped both parties could join together to make it happen. A package was put together and presented to the House and was widely criticized by the Republicans, but passed without a single Republican voting for it. The stimulus package then went to the Senate where the Republican senators held it up and demanded that a lot of cuts which they’re still arguing about. So much for bipartisan compromise.
It seems the Republicans in congress have decided that they are the fiscal watchdogs, protecting the American people from large govt. debt. That’s great if the public has the memory span of a gold fish. The very same Repubs for eight years voted on things that took us from the largest budget surplus to the largest budget deficit in history. Furthermore, everyone agrees we need a stimulus package, even if we’re not sure what it should contain. Up until a few weeks ago the fiscal watchdogs were spending the money on a made-up war where subcontractors were hired to do the same thing at the same time as the US military except they get paid ten times as much and where billions of dollars just disappeared, and they found lots of other places to spend money too, on things that were nowhere as important as a stimulus package, plus they cut taxes for the biggest taxpayers; until they got to a trillion dollars of debt.
So what kind of wasteful spending are the newly minted fiscal watchdogs interested in cutting? Well here’s a hint; it’s not the law that the Dems slipped in that allows congress to decide if you don’t need the expensive things your doctor prescribes. They want to cut all the science support, since new technology, alternative energy sources, and applied science can’t stimulate the economy. They want to cut money going to education, because making taxpayers pay more to keep their children’s schools open doesn’t have anything to do with the economy. Also, they want to cut bailout money to the states so you can have higher state taxes to offset any tax cut you get from the feds
Meanwhile, the GOP congresspersons still vote in lockstep, but give it a different label so business as usual sounds like new and improved, and the latest polls suggest that most people view them as obstructionists rather that defenders. So help for the economy gets delayed and the Republicans may be insuring that even fewer voters support them in the next election.