Change I Can Believe In

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) is pushing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to take a harder line with the Senate after a trio of Republican senators forced Congress to trim billions from the $787 billion economic stimulus package.

It’s not clear how far Pelosi is willing to go in standing up to the Senate — or, realistically, what effect Hoyer and Pelosi combined could have in the face of the 60-vote hurdle Senate Democrats face.

But after last week’s stimulus votes, Hoyer called on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to force Senate Republicans to mount actual filibusters if they want to stand in the way of bills “so that the American people can see who’s undermining action.”

And in a private conversation with Pelosi, aides say Hoyer reminded the speaker that they’d talked previously about tolerating Senate strong-arming on the stimulus and on children’s health insurance — two Democratic priorities — but then holding their own on future legislation.

It is about time you make these motherfuckers put on their their adult diapers and read the dictionary on the Senate floor. You don't have to take the filibuster away, as the Republicans threatened to do, you make them go up there and filibuster health care reform. Quit letting them poison your priorities without having to get on the TV obstructing legislation.

We've got your backs.

Poor Arlen

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), who broke with his party to support President Obama's stimulus package last week, said before the final vote Friday that more of his colleagues would have joined were they not afraid of the political consequences.

"When I came back to the cloak room after coming to the agreement a week ago today," said Specter, "one of my colleagues said, 'Arlen, I'm proud of you.' My Republican colleague said, 'Arlen, I'm proud of you.' I said, 'Are you going to vote with me?' And he said, 'No, I might have a primary.' And I said, 'Well, you know very well I'm going to have a primary.'"

Another casualty of the South rising again, otherwise known as "what hath conservatives wrought."

To sum up, the entire stimulus bill has been junked by Republicans, of whom, Obama has received 0 votes from the House, and presumably 3 votes in the Senate.

Statesmanship, indeed.

Next time, make these motherfuckers filibuster.

I almost posted this yesterday,

but I did not want to admit the defeat of the western economy. Presumably out of self interest.

For those of us who have been following the stimulus progress, I think we realized today that it's over. Congress is unwilling to provide the economy what it needs to stop the free fall.

And there is nothing anybody is going to be able to do to stop it once its gets rolling, and oh brother, it hasn't even started yet. You will know it's started when the market rallies the second time after this piece of shit bill passes. The first will be the sucker euphoria, the second rally will be the vultures, the shorts, covering. And then I do not see a floor.

If you haven't already, immediately start putting away six months worth of living expenses into your savings. Assume high energy prices.

Dear reader, good luck. You will need it.

If you prefer to go out swinging, call, do not e-mail, your senators. http://www.senate.gov

We are that close, and it is that dire. And it appears that finally Obama is getting it.

I've told you, I tell you, and will continue to tell you that the enormity of the problem--and the enormity of the only logical solution--is almost incomprehensibly awesome.

There has been a vacuum of leadership that Obama, for whatever reason, has been unwilling to rightfully step into.

Congressional democratic leadership are mindless, soulless puppets of no discernible vision. They display the leadership instincts of sheep, who have been successfully played and shepherded by the inept Republican bumblers who have just had their asses handed to them in an electoral rout not seen in decades--consider the height of the Republican House advantage in the 1990s: 24 votes, which they achieved in 1994. The Democrats in the house currently have a 77 vote edge.

In the two years they have been in power, they have not made one decisive stand for the interests of the United States of America. Not one. Obama has wrongly allowed them the opportunity to show their meddle on an issue of such importance.

Give them a microphone and they will dribble platitudes of no consequence from their worthless mouths. They speak of generalities and the need for decorum and forbearance and restraint. Feeble in mind and adverse of the slightest risk, they cede initiative to shadows.

They do themselves, their party, the American people, and the Constitution a disservice.

This farce needs to end. I believe in the separation of powers of government. I believe in the ability to find bipartisan solutions to common problems. I believe in compromise. And I sure as fuck do not believe in the superiority of the theory of the unitary executive.

But Obama is going to have to kick them in the ass. Very, very hard. And make them do his bidding. I believe this not because the President should, but until we have a change in leadership, the President must.

There are no words to describe the current bill as anything other than a shameful, hopeless, tragic farce of deliberative politics. This is not American government at its finest hour, and we do not have the ability to wait for Congressional statesmanship to show up. The President must kill this bill right now, submit a new one mindful of introductory fucking macroeconomics, and inflict as much pain on Democrats as possible to pass. the. bill.

Political Capital Stimulus Spending

The stimulus sucks. I hate the House bill. Maybe the Senate one will do better, and since they both have to be reconciled to each other, maybe we'll be surprised by the political alchemy. I hate the Senate more than I hate the House, so you have no idea how much it chafes me to write this.

The current form of the "stimulus" is a complete waste of money. The tax cuts are just fucking stupid. A lot of the Democratic initiatives in the bill are fucking stupid, too. As far as I can tell, most of the spending is in the form of political caricature. Hundreds of billions going toward idiotic Republican tax cuts, and more hundreds on retarded government programs, with very little stimulative spending, with a large chunk going to states simply to keep them solvent, I suppose.

$42 billion, total, for transportation infrastructure development and expansion, outside of the state funding, which as far as I know does not have any sort of provision that would force states to augment this with their cut. Killing me here. Telecommunication and transportation projects should be half the entire stimulus, and instead we're talking about 5%? The proportion of junk/good stuff should look like the exact opposite of what we're getting from the House. I don't understand the necessity for that.

I'm sniffing a strategy here, and if I'm wrong, I will totally own up to simply being an apologist for Dems. I think that's fair, but I will defend myself by saying I don't agree with the strategy.

Let's say the economy can handle $400 b investment of infrastructure over the next two years. We just passed an $850 b or so bill which accomplishes very little to this end. So, best case scenario, the Senate axes $600 b of the stupid shit, gets a much smaller number, and is publicly prodded to double the stimulus specifically for infrastructure back up to that usable $400 b.

If it goes down like this, Republicans say they blocked the most egregious Democratic spending, Democrats get to say they blocked more Republican tax cuts for the wealthy, and both sides get credit for the robust infrastructure money. Republicans win because people think they are a strong opposition party asserting conservative values, Democrats win because people think they are an effective majority party with liberal bona fides, and Obama wins a victory for bipartisanship.

(He'll need all he can get when they eventually have to nationalize the banks in the Swedish model sometime this year. I don't think there's enough job creation out there that will buoy home prices, so I think this nationalization event is inevitable. This will probably be the big story out of this mess, so obviously it deserves treatment later on. )

The problem, as I see it, both in reality and in my pet theory, is that they started out with far too little of the easy win stuff. $42 billion for transportation? Don't get this at all. My only guess is that the $30 b in highway stimulus funding is probably the cap on smart spending in this area, but that seems low. If only there was a very likable Republican as the Transportation Secretary that could sell appropriations committees on the benefits of more investment in rail and other transit. With the construction industry taking such a hard hit, it would make sense to me to spend more money building shit, so I hope we're looking at more than transportation.

I'm almost 90% sure I'm giving all of the players in this too much credit, though it is my hope that I haven't shot too far. It's far too early to tell what the result will be, and I think there will be errors in judgment, but I really do think there's a plan here that will be evident later--Goddamn I hope there is, anyway.

This is here and now, though, and when we get to the other side of this mess, I don't think this bill will be much of a factor in the history of the recovery.