The 787 Takes Flight

…no, not the Boeing aircraft – I’m talking about the new $787 billion stimulus package. Which President Obama allowed to sit on his desk for four days before he signed it after insisting that it had to be passed now. Now! Right now, or the country will collapse! Everything you hold dear is on the verge of disaster! My God, what part of “now” don’t you understand? Nownownowrightfreakingnow!!!

Greetings from the Left Coast, where we here at Left Coast Blues do the heavy thinking for those who just can’t be bothered.

Just to put that number in perspective, if you had started spending $1 million every day on the day Jesus Christ was born, you’d still have roughly 150 years to go before you spent $787 billion. It’s the biggest single spending bill ever in the history of the nation – both in dollars and in percent of Gross Domestic Product. It’s over 1,000 pages long, so most people have no idea exactly what’s in it…probably including many of the legislators who voted for it.

And no one will ever know whether it worked. If the economy recovers, which it would have eventually done regardless, the proponents of the bill will claim the credit. If it doesn’t work, they’ll simply claim that things would be even worse if it hadn’t been passed, and, besides, it was the fault of the mean old Republicans who didn’t let us spend enough.

This spending bill was drafted entirely by House Democrats, who jumped at the chance to throw in every pet project that they'd been denied for the last 8 years. It was debated for less than an hour by the House of Representatives before it was pushed through. It went to the Senate, where their version was drafted entirely by Democrats. The Senate allowed less than two hours of debate on it before it was pushed through. The Senate/House conference committee who worked out the differences between the two bills was composed entirely of Democrats – Republicans were completely shut out of the process. Yet many in the media seemed amazed that no House Republicans and only three Republican Senators were willing to vote for it.

Barak Obama was supposed to be the post-partisan president. On January 20, he said we had “come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.” He promised that, “Those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account – to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day…” He was going to reach across party lines and bring us all together.

Now we know. He did reach across the aisle, but only to tell Republicans, “Look, we had an election, I won, so shut up, get in line, and do what I say.” This was good, old-fashioned Vengeance Politics. This was “we’re-finally-back-in-power-so-bend-over-and-brace-yourself-because-it’s-payback-time” politics. Or, as they call it on Obama’s side of the Looking Glass, “Change You Can Believe In.”

Thanks for listening.