28 January 2009

Rush To Stimulus

When you're a teenager you live in search of instant stimulus. You rush to find it as quickly and as often as possible. But as President, shouldn't you take a little time in thoughtful consideration? Instead of healthy bipartisan discussion, the Obama administration has rushed ahead with their economic stimulus plan, stifling debate and demonstrating all of the self-control and preparation of a math club member who stumbles across a willing cheerleader.


Perhaps the administration was thinking, "Why have a healthy debate about this stimulus package. I mean, we're only talking about a cost to the American taxpayers that's estimated to exceed the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined." Oh, wait . . . haven't they been complaining about that for years? Anyway, what's the big deal? They decided to shut down Gitmo within a year without having a plan of what to do with the detainees, and those are terrorists and killers. This is just money. And best of all, it's not even their money.

Today's House vote went about as expected with Democrats lining up in support and every Republican voting against the $819 billion stimulus package that contains more pork than my mother's Ham & Soggy Greenbean recipe. The dissent was perhaps best voiced by Rep. Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland:

"Mr. President, I think our obsessive borrowing has fully mortgaged my kids and my grandkids," Bartlett told Obama, according to statement from Bartlett's office. "Now we're working on mortgaging my two great-grandkids.

"Mr. President, I think it's more than a little bit selfish to try to solve our economic problems which we created by burdening future generations yet to be born," he added.


Of course, given Obama's earlier executive order to federally fund international groups that promote or perform abortions, that little problem of burdening "future generations yet to be born" may just take care of itself.

My complaint here is twofold.

1) When you're about to spend loads of loot like this you should at least spend a month or so looking over the situation.

B) When you claim that you are coming to Washington to build bridges and unity you may want to at least pretend to listen to the opposition.


Of course, if you believe our fledgling President, there is no need to listen to the opposition because nobody disagrees with him . . . I guess he's hoping that nobody tells the American people about the army of economists identified by the Cato Institute who think he's nuts.

6 comments :

  1. Z said...

    Hey, pal, you blame ME for getting you riled up over the ACLU right before you go to bed and I come here to tease you about what you said and you've got this for ME to digest just before I DO? (Smile)

    Khaki, can you BELIEVE the )@($&()@*#& we're living through these days? HELP!!

    xxx

  2. Anonymous said...

    KE, as one of those math members, I never have stumbled upon a willing cheerleader; they always had to be coerced. That said, we the people are the proverbial cheerleader here; not quite ready to give up our "prize", but being told how great the package (pun intended) will be and how much we really want to give it up (another pun)...the money that is - and our kids' futures.
    yes, we had to listen to the Dems talk about how much the war cost for years and now they're surpassing it in little over a couple weeks of being in power. How many stimulus packages have the Japanese tried over the past generation or so? Eighteen? Twenty? None has worked; why do keep trying a tried-and-true way to failure? FDR, that generation's worst "economist", drove the country deeper and deeper into debt and unemployment; I sure hope B. Hussein Obama (thank you, Ann Coulter for that moniker) doesn't repeat history.

  3. Seane-Anna said...

    11 Dems bucked the trend and voted with the Republicans against this montrous stimulus package. Not quite the kind of bipartisanship Obama wanted. Bravo to them!

  4. Rick Frea said...

    Yes. I've heard about that army of economists too. I'll have to take a look at that. Great post. I think Obama is so much in a rush to get something done he's not using his head. Would you rather have something done right now, or something done right.

    I think it was Grover Cleveland who said during his depression when people asked him to do something: "It's not the role of the government to fix economies. Economies fix themselves." His depression lasted less than 2 years.

    Too bad our government officials have stopped learning from past experiences.

  5. Khaki Elephant said...

    Z, and to make matters worse I then went over to the Queer Conservative to read Kevin's take on Obama's nuturing treatment of terrorism. Rough night.

    Sergei, you nailed it looking to the pacific. There are two things we should learn for the Japanese: first, socialist economic stimulus doesn't work and second, crazy nuclear experiments can create giant fire-breathing lizards.

  6. Khaki Elephant said...

    Seanna-Anna,
    Excellent point! The main stream media keeps talking about the failure of bipartisan efforts on this bill, but the truth is that there was bipartisan action, it was just against the thing. Thanks for bringing that one out!

    Freadom, it's not often that somebody gets a chance to quote Grover Cleveland. Nice. And right on the money!