Bus Fumes

Rep. John Boehner says it all for me:



Guess that goes to show what our Congressional representatives think of their constituents. I don't know about you, but I won't forget this, and you can be damned sure I'll take it to the voting booth in 2010.

I sure would like to know who those seven Democrats were who voted against the package, as I'd love to send them a note congratulating them for common sense and moral fiber.

It's discouraging beyond belief, and highly telling, that lobbyists had the document before the leadership did.

And what are economists saying?

Another reason that some analysts frown on the stimulus is the social spending it includes on things such as the Head Start program for disadvantaged children and aid to NASA for climate-change research. Both may be worthy efforts, but they aren't aimed at delivering short-term boosts to economic activity.

"All this is 25 years of government expansion jammed into one bill and sold as stimulus," said Brian Riedl, the director of budget analysis for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative policy research group.

And...

" . . . Serious observers believe that recovery cannot begin until we acknowledge that losses in the financial system amount to some trillions of dollars, rendering many institutions insolvent. The temptation will be to muddle along, hoping that these institutions can gradually regain strength without putting massive amounts of taxpayers' money at risk. If we go down that road, we are likely to end up with zombie banks whose balance sheets are riddled with near-worthless investments — banks that cannot lend to credit-worthy customers and who cannot trust one another," Galston wrote.

Too right.
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P.S. -- I'm not the only one who notes and heartily dislikes the condescending tone.
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P.P.S. -- Remember who we'll be borrowing the lion's share of that money from, too. That'll make you rest easier at night.
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A few more quotes:

So there you have it: Obama and the Democrats, by ramming the 'stimulus' bill through on a party-line basis and bulldozing Republican opposition, have taken ownership of old-time Big Government liberalism; they have surrendered to Republicans the very issues that divided the GOP and attracted moderate swing
voters to the Democratic banner; they have energized and galvanized their opponents; they have discarded the pretense of bipartisanship; and they have, in the end, lashed themselves to the mast of policies that are proven not to work. The only thing the stimulus bill will stimulate is conservatism.

And...

How many ideas that might have taken off are we going to miss, and how many therapies that could have worked out, if the money had held out a bit longer? The Citis and Caterpillers of the world are getting the headlines with their massive layoffs, understandably. But there are a lot of outfits that you've never heard of that are in the process of losing everything. Money wouldn't have saved La Jolla armaceutical's drug for lupus - the science just wasn't there, in the end. But lack of money could keep the next drug from even being found. And...

In fact, the bottom line is that, historically, the problems that technology has
addressed have gotten solved, and the ones that were dependent on politics and
so forth have not.
J. Storrs Hall