Them’s Fighting Words

“So then you get the argument, well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill. What do you think a stimulus is? That’s the whole point. No, seriously. That’s the point.” – President Obama on Stimulus Plan

Finally! That is what I was thinking after 2 weeks of Republican bashing on the Economic Stimulus Plan. President Obama had enough of the distortion crated by the Right and set the record straight.

It may be bit too late in my opinion since this bill has been butchered to appease Republicans who ended up voting against it even after their needs were met. Talk about bipartisan support for legislation that is needed to jump start our economy.

Obama systematically and in lawyer fashion addressed the arguments made by Republicans over the last few weeks. The GOP is hollering and screaming to get tax cuts in the Stimulus Plan, since they still think this antiquated strategy is still viable. Psst … would someone like to remind them that it did not work for President Bush when he relied on a Stimulus Plan made up of tax cuts?

Obama adds, "I welcome this debate. But come on, we’re not — we are not going to get relief by turning back to the very same policies that for the last eight years doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin."

The Republicans have been acting like the last eight years did not occur. In fact, they speak of the National Debt as an issue that was soley created by Democrats. Their reaction to the Stimulus Plan is lukewarm … as to say that they do not understand why we need it.

Obama states, "When you start hearing arguments on the cable chatter, just understand a couple of things. Number one, when they say, well, why are we spending $800 billion — we’ve got this huge deficit? First of all, I found this deficit when I showed up."

While I agree that we need a solution to our current economic situation … the current version of the Stimulus Plan has been compromised in order to gain the support of Republicans. The bill needs to be killed and be drafted from scratch. I hope Obama and Democrats have learned their lesson that courting Republicans in order to create a bipartisan bill does not always conclude with a happy ending.