Kyle Bell

One thing is pretty clear: Obama took office to what amounted to telling a doctor to revive a dead corpse. The economy is in the worst condition it has been since the Great Depression. The $800 billion bailout that President Bush and Treasury Secretary Paulson pushed through Congress was mostly wasted by banks on the purchase of their rivals and lining their own pockets with bonuses. Obama’s arrival at the White House was like showing up to a party only to find that all of the good food had been eaten, the drinks were all gone and the guests were all passed out. Not a fun situation to be in.

Republicans have been complaining for weeks now. Rush Limbaugh has said that he hopes the president will fail. Some have even gone so far as to say that they are losing patience with Obama. Apparently when you are a Democrat you only get two weeks to fix an entire broken country. If you are George Bush you get eight years of free passes, excuses and blind loyalty.

The $800 billion price tag of the stimulus is less than the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Republicans are more than happy to spend money investing in Iraq and Afghanistan, but if the money is going to be spent in America then they want nothing to do with it. The stimulus bill before Congress does many things, not the least of which is provide tax relief in the form of rebate checks to people that need it, fund much needed infrastructure projects and focus on the creation of new jobs.

Republicans have complained that Democrats are not working with them on the bill. The Republican idea of bi-partisanship is putting aside Democratic values of looking out for those with the least and adopting their failed policies of tax cuts for the wealthy (and corporations). Let’s be clear here. Since taking office, President Obama has appointed three Republicans to his cabinet in the key positions of Defense Department and Commerce, as well as Transportation. How many Democrats were in George Bush’s administration? Just one – in his first term.

President Obama has both invited Republicans to the White House and visited the House and Senate Republicans on Capitol Hill. He has even made concessions on the stimulus in order for it to gain Republican support. Despite all of this, not a single Republican in the House voted for the stimulus package. In the Senate only 3 Republicans voted for cloture (60 votes are needed to end a filibuster). In order for the stimulus bill to pass Democrats had to negotiate, which is fine, I believe in compromise. However, according to Republicans it is wasteful spending to:

*make federal buildings energy efficient ($3.5 billion cut from the bill)

*clean up industrial waste with the EPA’s Superfund ($200 million cut)

*convert federal vehicles to hybrids ($300 million cut)

*expanding broadband Internet ($2 billion cut)

*Head Start ($1 billion cut)

*Title 1 ($600 million cut)

*school construction ($16 billion cut)

*higher education construction ($3.5 billion cut)

*help states fill budget gaps ($40 billion cut)

*health prevention ($5.8 billion cut)

Many of these would immediately stimulate demand in the economy. Afterall, someone has to create the vehicles the government buys, workers and assembly line employees will help make buildings more efficient and construction workers needed to build a new school or university building. Each one of these has the potential of putting thousands of people to work. Better yet it invests in the economy, the education of our children and reduces energy consumption. This is not “wasteful spending” as the Republicans would lead people to believe. And it’s only a fraction of the overall bill.

John McCain so much as suggested that lowering the corporate tax rate would stimulate the economy. The underlying problem is not that corporations pay too much taxes. The problem is that people are not spending, a result of millions of job losses, personal debt and economic anxiety. Tax cuts alone are not going to solve this recession. The government is the only entity that can guarantee spending happens.

Really it’s no wonder that governors like Charlie Crist support this bill, a Republican from Florida who supported John McCain and was considered to be his running mate. It provides much needed funding to the states and municipalities all around the country. It is the states and the cities in America that have to live with the consequences of a lack of federal funding for things such as education, healthcare, a lack of broadband and so on. Compared to the federal government the states, and to an even greater extent cities, have fairly limited resources.

That is exactly why Republican governors and mayors support this bill. They have to actually solve the problems of their states while members of the House and Senate can stand on “principle”. I use that word mockingly since Republicans never had these concerns with spending money under President Bush. Now that they have a Democratic president to beat up, the Republicans can reverse gears 180 degrees and claim to be “fiscally conservative” again – all while the economy continues to deteriorate by the day.

President Obama has made clear that he is “happy to get good ideas from across the political spectrum, from Democrats and Republicans,” but that he won’t “return to the failed theories of the last eight years that got us into this fix in the first place, because those theories have been tested and they have failed. And that’s part of what the election in November was all about.” He had a bigger mandate from the American people than any president has had in over a generation. Republicans that get in the way of change are going to find that in 2010 the climate will not be any more hospitable to them than it was in 2008.