This Washington Post article outlines liberal concerns about Obama's stimulus package. Some fear is that the plan isn't bold enough. There is relatively little money for mass transit and green energy vis a vis the tax cuts.
I'm not that troubled by this. Obama ran his campaign like it was a marathon, not a sprint. There was a lot of panic along the way, as Hillary dug into Obama's lead with the 3:00 AM ad, and in September when the Republicans went wild over Sarah Palin. Obama seemed slow to respond. But his pace was just right. In that WaPo article his officials argue that there will be other chances to put the economy on a greener, healthier, long term footing. I expect he's right. For all the hype about the first hundred days, the Presidency is a marathon too, especially when trying to dig oneself out of the crater in which we find ourselves.
The Republicans have attacked the plan around the edges--the Medicaid money for family planning,re-doing the sod on the National Mall--but the bulk of the plan is aid to states and infrastructure repair. This is stuff that simply has to be done. You can't let interstate highway bridges just keep on collapsing like that one in the Twin Cities. And I don't think you can tighten Medicaid eligibility requirements right when literally tens of thousands of people are losing their jobs and their insurance on a daily basis. It's a completely cynical posture, to say that you're against wasteful government spending, and then force the states--whom your small government, federalist vision ostensibly lauds--to do the dirty work for you by scrubbing the Medicaid rolls, laying off teachers and closing prisons.
They're betting that it's 1993, and the country is still basking in the afterglow of its Reagan-inspired rightward lurch. I think that the country is experiencing a serious hangover from our Second Gilded Age, and is open to a firmer hand on the wheel. At least these party line votes will give voters a clear idea whom to blame and praise next time around.
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