Stimulus Plan Prospects Good

The Obama/Democratic economic stimulus bill appears to be heading for passage in the Senate after three Republicans expressed support for a less expensive bill. After passage, expected tomorrow, the bill will be sent to conference between the House of Representatives and the Senate, where a compromise final version will hopefully be agreed upon and sent to President Obama for his signing into law.

I am a little taken aback at how, with less than three weeks gone in the new president’s first term (after a very clear victory in the election), the so-called “honeymoon” period when partisan politics are put aside as a gesture of good-will to the new president has never materialized. I owe part of this to the presence and power of virulent, poisonous right-wing talk jocks like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, who were never elected to anything but act as if they were high judges over anything political in this country. And the fawning reaction of our elected Republican officials to the diatribes of these “opinion-makers-for-hire” against the new president is disgusting. The Republicans who oppose the stimulus bill “on principle” had no such qualms when pushing through, year after year, grossly expensive appropriations bills funding our adventure in Iraq. The stimulus bill, unlike the Iraq quagmire, will send money and jobs directly back into our economy while tending to many different neglected areas of infrastructure. On top of that, tax breaks will also help send money flowing through the economy and help to reverse the business downturn.

Also, when the presidential campaign was going on full-bore and the mortgage industry collapse brought on calls for bailouts, Republican nominee John McCain actually “stopped” his campaign to rush to Washington and express his support of emergency government actions. Now, he stands on the Senate floor with a diametrically opposite position, strongly opposed to the government “jump-starting” the economy. On principle. It makes me wonder which John McCain we would have ended up with had he been elected to be president. And makes me glad that he wasn’t.