Can Harry Reid and Senate Democrats get any dumber?
The Politico is reporting that the Senate Democrats are launching a pre-emptive strike on their colleagues on the other side of the aisle over the Pork-A-Palooza bill. It's not so much that they're firing shots across the bow before they really take up the bill, but rather the stupidity of their arguments:
In a Thursday afternoon news conference, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid urged Senate Republicans not to line up against the bill, and says Republicans will be blamed for any delay in the landmark economic legislation.
“If we don’t [pass the bill], it’s not our fault, we’re trying,” Reid said. “The president has done a remarkable job covering all the bases on Capitol Hill.”
And Senate Vice Chairman Charles Schumer said that any GOP effort to lay the blame on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for failing to win was “very unfair.”
Reid argued that Senate Democrats had also been accommodating, allowing for an amendment process folding in GOP-favored tax cuts.
[Stop. They're not giving the GOP a fair shake on the tax cuts being proposed to generate an influx of capital into the markets to right the ship. They're idea of "tax cuts" is an increase of the EITC -- Earned Income Tax Credit -- which goes to people who, in essence, don't pay taxes to begin with. these people get their tax money back at the end of the year, all of it.]
The pre-emptive brush-back pitch came the day after House Republicans voted in unison to reject the stimulus package. The bill passed in a 244-188 vote.
“For those in the House that voted against this package, their alternative is what?” asked Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin.
[Gee, Senator Durbin, how about across the board tax cuts, and a suspension of all federal spending unless it is absolutely necessary. In other words, take care of what needs to be taken care of to run the government, but end the extra pork spending which this bill is loaded with.]
Schumer piled on the tough talk, accusing House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, an outspoken opponent of the package, of “leading his members off the cliff.”
Reid pushed back on GOP complaints that not all of the spending in the package was truly stimulative.
"Stimulus is in the eye of the beholder," Reid said.
To Chuck Schumer, Boehner isn't leading his party off the cliff. He's leading the House GOP out of the wilderness, and holding the line against wasteful spending which will do nothing to stimulate this economy at all. And to Senator Reid, that was the most asinine comment that could have been said. "Stimulus is in the eye of the beholder"? Representative Michele Bachmann penned a piece in the Strib today explaining that the Obama administration is following a model that didn't work back in 1929:
The stock market collapse of 1929 brought a crashing halt to the Roaring Twenties. But President Herbert Hoover’s response to the economic crisis ensured that it became a genuine catastrophe. Contrary to popular perception, Hoover did not respond to the downturn with inaction or indifference — rather, he pursued a series of misguided big-government adventures that lengthened and deepened our economic woes.
Hoover not only dramatically hiked income and import taxes, but he instituted big-government spending programs all but identical to those being debated today. Hoover’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation tried to ease economic pain by funneling tax money to state governments, local governments, banks and a variety of businesses. His Federal Home Loan Bank Act extended loans in an effort to increase low-income housing — beginning the ill-fated history of federal intervention in the housing market.
These measures proved a dismal failure, and things got only worse. In the 1932 campaign, Franklin Roosevelt actually attacked Hoover for his big-government policies, decrying Hoover’s presidency as “the greatest spending administration in peacetime in all of history.”
Yet, once elected, Roosevelt not only maintained Hoover’s programs, he used them as a foundation for his titanic New Deal expenditures. He even expanded Hoover’s failed housing program and launched the now-infamous mortgage giant Fannie Mae. And even in the face of a staggering 25 percent unemployment, FDR held fast to the big-government philosophy — jobs programs, handouts, tax hikes — and, as a result, presided over a decade of economic misery.
FDR’s own treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, had to admit as much in 1939: “We are spending more than we have ever spent before, and it does not work. … We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. And an enormous debt to boot!”
She's spot-on. The excessive spending done by FDR, which led to the largest expanse of the federal government ever, did nothing to help get the nation out of the Depression. It put us deeper in it, and only a world war was able to let us dig ourselves out of it. Spending money isn't the solution to a recession, nor is printing more money, which will lead us into the realm of inflation, and quite possibly hyper-inflation.
But that's exactly the plan the Democrats are pushing. They want the excessive spending and debt to rock this nation. As Rahm Emanuel famously quipped a crisis is an opportunity. With this bill, the Democrats are content to deepen the crisis, which they hope will make the people turn to the government to solve a crisis that they, themselves, created.
Memo to Harry Reid: The GOP isn't doing this because they find it fun (well, maybe they do). They're doing it because their constituents are telling them to hold the line on this. The only intelligent thing that Harry Reid has said is that if the Pork-A-Palooza fails, it's our fault. We'll accept that with a smile on our faces. We're stopping a 40 year wish list of worthless projects, programs and wasteful spending that will do nothing to help this nation.
Kudos to Mitch McConnell and the GOP in the Senate dead set against this "crap sandwich." We can't afford this bill; the nation can't afford the debt the Democrats want to heap upon future generations.
Publius II
In a Thursday afternoon news conference, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid urged Senate Republicans not to line up against the bill, and says Republicans will be blamed for any delay in the landmark economic legislation.
“If we don’t [pass the bill], it’s not our fault, we’re trying,” Reid said. “The president has done a remarkable job covering all the bases on Capitol Hill.”
And Senate Vice Chairman Charles Schumer said that any GOP effort to lay the blame on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for failing to win was “very unfair.”
Reid argued that Senate Democrats had also been accommodating, allowing for an amendment process folding in GOP-favored tax cuts.
[Stop. They're not giving the GOP a fair shake on the tax cuts being proposed to generate an influx of capital into the markets to right the ship. They're idea of "tax cuts" is an increase of the EITC -- Earned Income Tax Credit -- which goes to people who, in essence, don't pay taxes to begin with. these people get their tax money back at the end of the year, all of it.]
The pre-emptive brush-back pitch came the day after House Republicans voted in unison to reject the stimulus package. The bill passed in a 244-188 vote.
“For those in the House that voted against this package, their alternative is what?” asked Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin.
[Gee, Senator Durbin, how about across the board tax cuts, and a suspension of all federal spending unless it is absolutely necessary. In other words, take care of what needs to be taken care of to run the government, but end the extra pork spending which this bill is loaded with.]
Schumer piled on the tough talk, accusing House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, an outspoken opponent of the package, of “leading his members off the cliff.”
Reid pushed back on GOP complaints that not all of the spending in the package was truly stimulative.
"Stimulus is in the eye of the beholder," Reid said.
To Chuck Schumer, Boehner isn't leading his party off the cliff. He's leading the House GOP out of the wilderness, and holding the line against wasteful spending which will do nothing to stimulate this economy at all. And to Senator Reid, that was the most asinine comment that could have been said. "Stimulus is in the eye of the beholder"? Representative Michele Bachmann penned a piece in the Strib today explaining that the Obama administration is following a model that didn't work back in 1929:
The stock market collapse of 1929 brought a crashing halt to the Roaring Twenties. But President Herbert Hoover’s response to the economic crisis ensured that it became a genuine catastrophe. Contrary to popular perception, Hoover did not respond to the downturn with inaction or indifference — rather, he pursued a series of misguided big-government adventures that lengthened and deepened our economic woes.
Hoover not only dramatically hiked income and import taxes, but he instituted big-government spending programs all but identical to those being debated today. Hoover’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation tried to ease economic pain by funneling tax money to state governments, local governments, banks and a variety of businesses. His Federal Home Loan Bank Act extended loans in an effort to increase low-income housing — beginning the ill-fated history of federal intervention in the housing market.
These measures proved a dismal failure, and things got only worse. In the 1932 campaign, Franklin Roosevelt actually attacked Hoover for his big-government policies, decrying Hoover’s presidency as “the greatest spending administration in peacetime in all of history.”
Yet, once elected, Roosevelt not only maintained Hoover’s programs, he used them as a foundation for his titanic New Deal expenditures. He even expanded Hoover’s failed housing program and launched the now-infamous mortgage giant Fannie Mae. And even in the face of a staggering 25 percent unemployment, FDR held fast to the big-government philosophy — jobs programs, handouts, tax hikes — and, as a result, presided over a decade of economic misery.
FDR’s own treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau, had to admit as much in 1939: “We are spending more than we have ever spent before, and it does not work. … We have never made good on our promises. I say after eight years of this administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. And an enormous debt to boot!”
She's spot-on. The excessive spending done by FDR, which led to the largest expanse of the federal government ever, did nothing to help get the nation out of the Depression. It put us deeper in it, and only a world war was able to let us dig ourselves out of it. Spending money isn't the solution to a recession, nor is printing more money, which will lead us into the realm of inflation, and quite possibly hyper-inflation.
But that's exactly the plan the Democrats are pushing. They want the excessive spending and debt to rock this nation. As Rahm Emanuel famously quipped a crisis is an opportunity. With this bill, the Democrats are content to deepen the crisis, which they hope will make the people turn to the government to solve a crisis that they, themselves, created.
Memo to Harry Reid: The GOP isn't doing this because they find it fun (well, maybe they do). They're doing it because their constituents are telling them to hold the line on this. The only intelligent thing that Harry Reid has said is that if the Pork-A-Palooza fails, it's our fault. We'll accept that with a smile on our faces. We're stopping a 40 year wish list of worthless projects, programs and wasteful spending that will do nothing to help this nation.
Kudos to Mitch McConnell and the GOP in the Senate dead set against this "crap sandwich." We can't afford this bill; the nation can't afford the debt the Democrats want to heap upon future generations.
Publius II
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 11:26 AM
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