Red Hen Republicans?Once upon a time there lived a man in a big white house. He looked outside one day and saw many, many people suffering. “Hey everybody,” he said, “people are suffering and things are going to get worse fast. Who wants to help me write a stimulus bill?”
So Democrats and Republicans started putting together a stimulus bill but there was trouble almost immediately. “We don’t want to help everyone,” Republicans said, “we just want to give more tax breaks to our rich friends even if it wrecks the economy once and for all.”
Their leader, Michael Steele, even complained that Democrats don’t know how to create wealth. He was right that the best way to make some people rich is to let the people with the most money keep it all and borrow from others to pay for wars and private contractors and new bureaucracies that Republicans invent and give names like Homeland Security. That really does create wealth, just not for everyone.
So the Democrats pitched in to write the legislation and then the man in the big white house asked, “Who will help me pass the stimulus bill?”
Again, Republicans refused.
Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) said, “…our efforts continue to keep the measure from being a spending free-for-all…Having been disappointed with both bailout measures, I believe my vote in opposition was appropriate.”
Democrats passed the package anyway, and the man in the big white house signed it and said, “Who will help me spend the money in the stimulus bill?”
Mica elbowed up to the front of the line.
“The timing couldn’t be better,” Mica said in a joint statement with [Democratic Florida Rep. Corrine] Brown, regarding $750 million in transportation funding in the bill, some of which is likely headed for the [Central Florida Commuter] Rail project.
“I applaud President Obama’s recognition that high-speed rail should be part of America’s future,” Mica said in a separate statement.
And so, the man in the big white house worked very hard to get a bill to help the people, and even though the Republicans didn’t help him, he shared the money in the stimulus package with them anyway.
“He’s a socialist,” the Republicans said. “Why, he’s practically red.”
Would you please remove your head from crevice of the “republican-democrat” divide?
The democrats aided and abetted the worst of the Bush regime’s abuses, and made sure to overule the will of the people and not impeach or end the war.
Both parties have decent people and crooks – mostly the latter.
The stimulus is simply a bad idea. We have a problem created by too much debt, not enough savings, inflated housing prices. America doesn’t make anything anymore, and is supported by financial smoke and mirrors. Trying to sustain this situation with more government debt in order to free up lending, i.e. debt creation, is hardly the answer.
Republicans are generally a bunch of crooks, but that doesn’t mean they don’t at least have some sound principles (even if they tend to ignore them). If you let people alone, they will prosper.