Judd GreggJudd Gregg has withdrawn himself from nomination for Commerce Secretary, citing essentially irreconcilable differences on matters of policy. Gregg recused himself from the senate stimulus vote, which perhaps was what prompted the WH to pull the Census from Commerce control. Not an auspicious beginning. Judd falls on his sword and says its basically his fault, he should have known better. I concur. He should have.
Stimulus - (AKA Porkulus)
Two things - when Obama says the bill has no earmarks, he's right. There are no congressionally inserted bits in the bill, put there in some outside of the process manner. Everything in the bill is available for review, which brings me to my second point, which is that there is not going to be a review. I supported Obama, but I don't like the way he's allowing this to go down. The president is about to get a bill authorizing spending nearly a trillion dollars. The bill as of this afternoon had not even been completley distributed to all House members, much less read. They will pass this massive bill tommorow, some 1800 pages long, and no one will have read it thouroughly. That is a recipe for a lot of waste, nor is it thoughtful or prudent. The democrats have the votes to pass it, and can ignore the republicans. Its not necessary to rush this through.
Actually, without the Republican turncoats, they don't have the votes. Gregg is back in the Senate, and Kennedy is too sick to vote. (That's not how I want things to be, that is how it is.)
ReplyDeleteWell, effectively, with Snowe, Collins and Specter, they do have the votes. I don't like the process, and if there was anytime a little Hope and Change magic dust would be welcome, its now. Obama outsourced the writing of the bill to Congress and Reid and Pelosi wrote it. So there is plenty of crap in there along with that which is good. The GOP's problem is that they want to say no, but cannot present an alternative that would be demonstrably regarded as better.
ReplyDeleteCoburn is making noises that he will put the brakes on this thing in the Senate and wont vote for it, holding them over into Valentine's Day. I don't think there is anything wrong with some extra scrutiny to push out more of the permanent funding programs that don't need to be in there.
But the GOP is making a bit of a gamble. If you simply assume that the economy will naturally turn around, figure that it may just begin coming out of the cycle around 2012. If that happens, Obama will get the credit for it. So interestingly enough, the republicans are now in the position of hoping for economic failure in order to reap electoral success, something they often accused the democrats of.