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southpol: The American Prospect
Cute, but no no no. This is all Beltway mentality: who’s up, who’s down politically.
1. It should have been called a “jobs bill.” That would have made it harder for Republicans to oppose it.
That’s true. Why wasn’t it?
2. It doesn’t really matter how big it is. Passage at any size was the win the White House needed.
Yes, if you’re still playing the political game and thinking about 2010 and 2012, that is. However, if you’re looking to avert economic cataclysm, not so much. (Oooh, I hate “not so much.” But go on.)
3. The 59 percent — and rising — approval for the bill among Americans may be the confidence builder the economy needs.
Can’t argue — just look at the stock market.
4. The 65 percent COBRA credit, which allows the recently unemployed to continue health-insurance coverage, on its own may be worth all the trouble.
What “trouble” — passing much-needed legislation? That’s what they get paid for.
The extension benefits the long-term, not recently, unemployed. And the long-term unemployed can’t afford COBRA payments. Mine lapsed. Anyone need a slightly used web editor? Oops, I misread credit for extension. My bad!
5. The deduction for state and local taxes on car purchases should have been extended to used cars, too. Who can afford a new car?
How is making it easier to buy a used car going to help Detroit?
6. The $2 billion for high-speed rail seems like a bad joke, especially if it goes to building a line from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.
If all $2 billion were going to that — is it? — it would lend itself to mockery, although it would still create jobs, which is the whole point, and stimulate tourism.
7. In the overplaying-your-hand department, House Democrats are lucky that they have Republicans to make them look reasonable.
And we’re all lucky that House Democrats and Republicans are too busy measuring their third legs to worry about pulling us out of the abyss.
8. Judd Gregg, the commerce secretary who never was, should have voted for a package that he is going to have to work with and sell. Oh, I forget, he’s not going to do that on principle.
Judd Gregg should be launched into orbit.
9. It showed that the president is not a “TD,” a timid Democrat — he’s got a little fight in him.
Well, he did come out of nowhere to win an impressive election. If proving he’s not “timid” was an important accomplishment, we have even bigger problems than I thought.
10. It showed that Congress can move fast when it is made to.
So did the Patriot Act and FISA. Not reassuring.
11. It reaffirmed the pointlessness of the Washington cocktail party, even one held at the White House.
Anything that gets Republican senators drunk is never pointless. A few bad hangovers and we won’t need 60 votes.
12. It has probably convinced Obama that to get anything past the Congress, he needs to sell the American people first.
I think he already knew that but OK.
13. It reinforced the self-importance of moderate Republicans.
And every other member of Congress.
14. The $100 billion fiscal conservatives removed from the bill is coming back. After all, the president gets to present a budget soon.
And the same three moderate Republicans in the Senate can shoot it down again. Also, the alternative minimum tax cuts for the wealthy that replaced stimulus spending are going away? Or just being added to the deficit?
15. Given the ferocity of the GOP reaction to the deal they struck with Democrats, Sens. Collins, Snowe, and Specter should be happy that Obama intends to close Guantánamo.
Ho… ho… huh? Who should they be afraid Obama is going to send to Guantánamo, the moderate Republicans who supported him? Or the conservative Republicans who criticized them for making the deal? And Collins et al. will be bummed about that? But, haha.
16. It may be the surest sign yet that Arlen Specter, the longest-serving senator in Pennsylvania history, will run for a sixth term in 2010.
Maybe he’ll finally come clean on the Warren Commission cover-up.
17. The tussle between Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi suggests we might be headed for some familiar Democratic infighting in the coming months.
I probably won’t notice, since I’ll have to cut off my cable and high-speed Internet and sell my computer.
18. In the end, it was the Republicans who reduced the money meant to go directly into people’s pockets. That’s called hypocrisy.
They would claim that their tax cuts go straight into people’s pockets while stimulus spending gets skimmed off and wasted on things like high-speed rail from LA to Vegas. I don’t agree. But God forbid we should engage the other side’s arguments when we can name-call.
19. That no one can explain how exactly the package is going to work may be the best reason to be hopeful that it could actually succeed.
That no one can explain how Santa gets down the chimney may be the best reason to be hopeful he will actually come.
20. Obama should be very pleased that we’re talking about the stimulus package instead of his Cabinet picks.
And we should all be pleased that the stimulus is too small and the Cabinet picks sucked. Oh, wait….
21. It exposed Obama as overly reasonable. He didn’t scare people enough: A 5 million job shortfall in the economy is, in fact, a catastrophe.
That’s why FDR was so successful. He ended the Depression with those scary Fireside Chats.
22. If The New York Times is calling your efforts at bipartisanship “futile,” it may be time to stop extending the olive branch.
Maybe it is. But this is like saying if The Nation or NPR (or The American Prospect) is calling your efforts at bipartisanship “futile,” it may be time to stop extending the olive branch. It doesn’t exactly make the point.
23. The bill will be a success as soon as it prevents the first home foreclosure.
Huh? If that’s so, Obama could probably have paid someone’s mortgage out of his own pocket and saved us all a lot of distraction.
24. The passage of the legislation now allows the administration to turn its attention to the more politically problematic issue of the banking crisis.
We really better hope they’ve already been on that one for a while. And, the banking crisis isn’t mainly “politically problematic.” It’s economically problematic. No one really knows how to fix it.
25. Obama is lucky that Tim Geithner was not the point man on this one.
And we’re all lucky he picked someone who instills such vast confidence to be point man on the worst economic crisis since the Depression.
