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Thursday, February 12, 2009

What Happened to Bipartisanship?

President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats said they wanted seventy votes in the Senate. They said they wanted a bipartisan bill. Not only does that appear not to be true, the media appears not to be holding them to this commitment.

CNN is running a series of packages this morning calling the GOP “the party of no,” echoing a Big Labor ad released yesterday.

We think this kind of partisan bickering is exactly the problem with this stimulus process.

9 comments:

  1. I discuss dealing with the financial crisis and other topics on http://www.newgeography.com/users/kenstremsky

    I recommend people read

    "A 545 Billion Private Stimulus Plan

    Let's bring home foreign earnings without tax penalty." by Allen Sinai

    http://www.wallstreetjournal.com

    "Obama Has the Chance To Be Another FDR -- He Can End The Era of Marijuana Prohibition" by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman

    http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/120365

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  2. Congratulations on a grass-roots effort to get the truth out about this very flawed effort to make the federal hog trough even larger. It is instructive that while private industry is cutting workers, the Obama administration wants to increase the federal workforce. And even worse are the parts of the bill that will reverse welfare policy -- extending unemployment benefits, for example, sounds like a humane thing to do. In fact it just builds incentives into the program to stay in the jobless population, and other parts of the bill similarly work against private enterprise. So I worry not only about the indebtedness we are handing our children and grandchildren, but also about the incentives we are reconstituting to "let government take care of things." It hasn't worked elsewhere and it won't work here. Despite Obama's observation at his Monday press conference that Japan didn't go far enough in the nineties, economist are pretty universally agreed that Japan's intervention only made their recession worse. This stimulus will do the same for us.
    F

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  3. "President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats said they wanted seventy votes in the Senate."

    Anyone who knows the democrats know that their idea of bipartisianship is republicans bending over and kissing their *SS.

    The liberals should think about this.

    If 3 republicans voting for the stimulus package is considered bipartisian than everything that Bush did was bipartisian.

    SHOW ME ONE THING BUSH DID THAT HAD LESS THAN 3 DEMOCRATS IN BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS VOTE FOR IT.

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  4. Congrats from here as well. It is a huge leap forward for those uninterested in personal responsibility. 'Everything bad that happens to me must be someone else's fault and somebody better bail me out'. If I make poor choices in my personal finances then someone will bail me out. If I make poor choices in my state's finances as a governor then someone will bail me out. Now our president is making poor choices in our country's finances so that future generations will have to bail us out. Is it me or is this Madoff's Ponzi scheme on a whole new level?

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  5. Thank you for taking on this grass roots effort. You have my support. The only thing this bill stimulates is our debt and indebtedness to coutries like China. Also tucked into the bill are items that will be the start of his national health care agenda. Big brother telling the doctors if they are providing the corect care. What does that have to do with stimulating the economy?

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  6. Is anyone listening to the public in congress?
    I understand the calls to the senate were 100 to 1 opposing this "stimulus" package.
    Also, here in NH we didn't even have 2 senators to vote for us. Why is it Judd Gregg decided not to vote, and Jean Shaheen doesn't listen to the people of NH? Now that Judd Gregg decided to back out of his nomination, he also said he will not run in 2010. Good thing, he didn't do his duties anyway.
    Also, is right for the President of the United States to go on national TV and use scare tactics to the American people?
    Whatever happened to "The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself."?
    This administration is already dooming the future of America.
    Why should my children, grandchildren, and even great grandchildren pay for the failures of the few (most) in congress, not doing what they are elected and appointed to do?
    Watch over the corruption, and don't be part of it.

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  7. Finally a forum for people who understand the issues and are not blinded by the promise of a free lunch. "I know times are tough, but here's some free money to shut you up while we impose our socialist agenda".

    The biggest danger in the stimulas proposal is not the dollars of future debt it represents but rather the notion of Govt. as the ultimate safety net for iresponsible behavior.

    As a father of teen-age children, I've witnessed first hand the errosion of personal responsibility. Our public schools do not teach the simple concept that hard work equals reward and lazyness equals failure.

    A whole generation of americans have been brain washed into a passive state believing government programs and handouts are the primary determinent of success. Congress is now preparing to saddle this least prepared generation of Americans with the greatest debt load in history plus a whole bunch of giveaways and entitlements that will burry them even deeper. People, it is not the Government's money!

    Without a penalty for iresponsibility, human behavior will not change. Our current economic troubles are the result of too much Government envolment and the idea that everyone deserves the same standard of living regardless of how much they work (or dont) to acheive it.

    I can't understand why everyone is so surprised to learn that banks made bad loans knowing they had the Government not only co-signing but encouraging the practice (Thank you Barny Frank) and then re-packaged these worthless instruments to obscure their true value to dump them on the unsuspecting.

    Let the borrowers default and the banks fail because this is the most valuable lesson of capitalism. Do not penalize your most productive citizens by taxing them into debt in order to raise the standard of living for your least productive.

    I hate to say it but maybe an extended period depression and hardship that forces people to work for their survival would return America to the values that made it great and an example for the rest of the world.

    Keep this blog going. Tell your friends. This madness must stop.

    Anonymous for the Great State of New Hampshire LFOD

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  8. How can any member of Congress vote on a bill which he/she couldn't possibly have read in full, much less even scanned? It's outrageous. Shumer is totally out of touch with the real world and has written off every American as a fool with his unconscionable statement. No Mr. Shumer, you do not speak for me, for my family, or my friends.

    Marty in NH



    The arrogant, greedy, self-serving individuals who are supposedly representing us in D.C. need to be reminded for whom they work, who gives them their jobs, who pays their lucrative benefits, and who picks up the tab for their high-on-the-hog life style and "tiny porky projects."

    Obama should be ashamed of the legacy he is most certainly securing for his children and grandchildren. Fiscal responsibility, like other things, rolls downhill from the top. How is this spending bill going to teach anything but continued financial irresponsibility and the pervasive 'government should take care of me' attitude which our social welfare system breeds?

    The new octo-mom is a great example of what entitlement programs spawn: She gets over $500 (before the last 8-pak was born), in government issued food stamps, 3 of her children are already collecting disability, her hospital tab is being sent directly to the state of CA...and yet she claims she is not on the dole, she's just taking what she is "entitled" to. If 3 of her first 6 full-term babies are exhibiting special needs for whom she already cannot provide without government aid, think of the chances that the octuplets have, coming from the same gene pool, combined with their tiny birth weights.

    If anyone has any doubts about how the Fair Tax would be a great improvement over the current IRS system, please read one of the books by Neal Boortz. It is straight forward and succinct. You can also get more information at www.fairtax.org

    This is not the world my parents and grandparents left for me and this is not the world I want to leave for my children and grandchildren.

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  9. Has it occurred to anyone that the current financial crisis was caused by republican and conservative mismanagement or our government and financial industry? Deregulation by the republicans and conservatives over since Regan, supported by Clinton, and accelerated by Bush is to blame for the current financial crisis. And the Bush administration spent $$ wildly irresponsibly, building a mind-blowing deficit out of what had been an economic surplus.
    Obama has been in office for just over 2 months. Hardly enough time to change "the world I want to leave for my children." The extreme financial irresponsibility of the previous administration caused this crisis. How could anyone think that more of the same deeply flawed policies could fix it? I recommend reading some history about what happened before, during and after the last great depression. That one was also generated by bad conservative financial and environmental mismanagement. And it was ended by liberal economic and social policies.

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