Game on, I guess. The House voted 244-188 to pass the stimulus bill. So, after all that outreach and concession on the president's part, not a single House Republican voted for the bill.
The
House voted, 244-188, on Wednesday evening for President Obama's
package of federal tax cuts and spending worth $819 billion and meant
to jump-start the economy out of its worst crisis in decades.
Although the president's legislative victory was no surprise, given the
Democrats' 255-to-178 advantage in the House, the lack of any
Republican support was a disappointment for Mr. Obama. The vote came
hours after Mr. Obama declared that "we don't have a moment to spare"
just after conferring with business leaders at the White House. (Link)
It's apparently a bet the GOP is prepared to make; that the stimulus as written will fail and they'll be able to tell voters they told us so.
But, as Steve Benen reminds us, there's a precedent for the Republicans here:
Of
course, the last time we saw a vote like this one was probably the 1993
vote on Clinton's first budget -- every single Republican in the
chamber voted against it, hoping to prove, once and for all, that they
were right about economics and Democrats were wrong. If memory serves,
that budget was the first step towards the longest economic expansion
on record, the creation of 22 million jobs, and the total elimination
of the federal budget deficit.
Of course, no one knows for certain the stimulus will be effective and we won't know whether the stimulus is actually working for some time. But I do know one thing for sure; Any objective look at the data should disqualify Republican management of our economy; it's failed with it's faulty supply side economics and trance like prescription of tax cuts and rebates as a solution to every problem.
I trust the this group in the GOP to manage the economy about as far as I can throw my car.
It would do Jay some good to do research before writing garbage like this. The economic expansion actually started with Reagan after his tax cuts went into effect and continued until 2006 with a couple of short recessions including a recession during Clinton’s term. If Jay had taken the time to research he would also know that the national debt was almost 6 trillion dollars when Clinton left office. Clinton may have had a balanced budget but the national debt continued to rise during his term.
Posted by: LJ | February 17, 2009 at 06:26 AM
OK, how about this; I'll show you mine if you show me yours. Here's some data on economic metrics by year (http://www.slate.com/id/2199810/) and here's some data on national debt vs. year, debt vs. % GDP, and changes in revenue vs. spending for Presidents Johnson through Bush (http://www.cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/usdebt.htm).
President Reagan increased the national debt roughly 128% during his terms. President Clinton raised the national debt by 36% during his terms.
Posted by: Jay McDonough | February 17, 2009 at 07:55 AM