Praise for Senate Republicans. No, really.
04/03/09
In a most surprising development - particularly following the defection of Sens. Specter, Collins and Snowe on the "stimulus" package - the Senate Republicans held together to unanimously oppose Obama's tripling down on the federal deficit and the further mortgaging of our future:
The House and Senate approved competing $3.5 trillion Democratic budget plans Thursday night, each tracking the priorities of President Barack Obama but also falling short of the bold mandate he could need to move his ambitious agenda through Congress.
No Republican in either chamber backed the president, but the 233-196 House vote surpassed the size of budget victories for either party over the last decade. And Democrats lost only two of their members on the 55-43 vote in the Senate.
For those that recalled Obama's consternation - justified consternation - over the decificts racked up during the Bush years, you'll be interesting to see this projection of where we're going under his plan:
Jonah Goldberg has an interesting take on the peculiarity of Obama's argument in favor of racking up the debt through deficit spending:
Here’s the basic story President Obama wants to tell. The last eight years were an economic disaster because President Bush and the Republicans ignored necessary government regulations and “investments.” The economic crisis has discredited “market fundamentalism,” as some liberals call it. Now, thanks to Bush’s hands-off approach to the economy, Obama has no choice but to get government much more involved. “To kick these problems down the road for another four years or eight years,” Obama sighs, “would be to continue the same irresponsibility that led us to this point.” ...
What if they’re looking at the economy through the wrong end of the telescope? For starters, Bush was hardly a laissez-faire president who ignored Obama’s oft-stated domestic priorities. Sure, Bush was more laissez-faire than Obama. But that’s not a very high bar.
Education spending under Bush rose 58 percent faster than inflation. Medicare spending, thanks largely to Bush’s prescription-drug benefit (the largest expansion in entitlements since the Great Society), went up 51 percent during the Bush years. Spending on health research and regulation rose 55 percent. Spending on highways and mass transit went up by 22 percent.
Maybe that’s too little in Obama’s eyes, but it hardly validates Obama’s fictions about the last eight years. Let us also recall that Bush’s Wall Street bailout efforts were largely indistinguishable from Obama’s. Indeed, Obama’s Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, was the co-pilot for Bush’s Treasury secretary, Hank Paulson. Now that Geithner’s in the captain’s chair, there haven’t been many course corrections.
It won't be too long before this speech from Great Britain's Danniel Hannan will apply as much over here as it does currently over there: