Don’t divorce my friends.
“Fidelity”: Don’t Divorce… from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.
Obama is Clear
Speaking at the Department of Energy today, President Obama spoke strongly about why we cannot return to the Bush-era policies that got us into the mess we are in today.
…So let me be clear: Those ideas have been tested, and they have failed. They’ve taken us from surpluses to an annual deficit of over a trillion dollars, and they’ve brought our economy to a halt. And that’s precisely what the election we just had was all about. The American people have rendered their judgment. And now is the time to move forward, not back. Now is the time for action….
He explained how the stimulus bill is going to begin to change our energy economy.
“…[T]his plan will begin to end the tyranny of oil in our time.
After decades of dragging our feet, this plan will finally spark the creation of a clean energy industry that will create hundreds of thousands of jobs over the next few years, manufacturing wind turbines and solar cells, for example — millions more after that. These jobs and these investments will double our capacity to generate renewable energy over the next few years.
We’ll fund a better, smarter electricity grid and train workers to build it — a grid that will help us ship wind and solar power from one end of this country to another. Think about it. The grid that powers the tools of modern life — computers, appliances, even BlackBerrys — (laughter) — looks largely the same as it did half a century ago….”
I hear that the Senate might vote tonight. I hope they pass this bill swiftly.
Obama Understands
President Obama had several interviews yesterday. This bit is from his interview on ABC News. He’s talking with Charlie Gibson about the stimulus bill.
…The criticisms have generally been around some policy initiatives that were placed in the bill that I think are actually good policy, but some people may say is not going to actually stimulate jobs quickly enough. I think that there’s legitimate room for working through those issues over the next several weeks to make sure that we get the best possible bill. But here’s the thing that I think we have to understand. The economy is in desperate straits. What I won’t do is adopt the same economic theories that helped land us in the worst economy since the Great Depression. What I will do is work with anybody of good faith to make sure that we can come up with the best possible package to not only create jobs and provide support to families, but also to lay the groundwork for long-term economic growth….
Emphasis added. Here’s another bit.
Well, I think what Speaker Pelosi also said was that she wanted to sit down with them and talk to them and, in fact, included some of their ideas in the package. I mean, keep in mind, when I first released the framework for our plan, we were complimented by the Republicans for the fact that about $300 billion of the package was in the form of tax cuts. I was criticized by members of my own party.
Now, that hasn’t changed much. The only thing that’s changed is the politics of it. And I’m less concerned about bipartisanship for bipartisanship’s sake. I’m interested in solving the problem for the American people as quickly as possible. And I think that we have an obligation to make sure this money is spent wisely. I want this thing to move through the Senate. I want the House and the Senate bills to be reconciled….
It’s good that he is reality-based. But the Administration has made some definite errors in rolling out this stimulus bill. For one thing, they gave the Republicans far too much, far too fast, and didn’t play enough hardball in negotiating various provisions. And while I agree with most of the longer-term provisions in the bill, they might have played out better if brought up separately.
But primarily they let the Republicans get far too much attention for their whining in the early news cycles around this bill. Think Progress has documented twice as many Republicans in the media in the days immediately after the bill was introduced. The Democrats should never have let that happen, and I hope they’ll do better in the future with defining the contours of the discussion as it unfolds.
Puppy Bowl V
The Lily Ledbetter Equal Pay Act
Here is President Obama, speaking this morning at the signing of the Lily Ledbetter Equal Pay Act. The remarks are about ten minutes long, but every word is beautiful. We have a President now who, to a great degree, understands women’s issues.
Many thanks to FireDogLake for posting the clip.
Targeting Republicans
Americans United for Change has created a series of 30-second ads targeting a number of Republican Senators who might be persuaded to support Obama’s economic recovery plan. The ads are a joint project of Americans United for Change, MoveOn.org, and two large unions: AFSCME and SEIU. See the national ad below.
There are versions specifically calling out Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Charles Grassley of Iowa, and Judd Gregg of New Hampshire.
Not One Vote
In this time of great crisis, not one Republican voted for the economic stimulus bill. Not one, even after multiple changes made to address their concerns.
I’m listening to MSNBC, and the Republicans think this is a clear victory. (“We held together and changed the bill. Our leadership is more effective than anyone thought. We made the Democrats back down on things they wanted.”) Shameless.
More on Tax Cuts
Elana Schor, writing for TPM-DC, a new Talking Points Memo blog, gathers evidence of why tax cuts are ineffective as economic stimulus.
…Mark Zandi, a Republican economist who advised John McCain’s presidential campaign, has been stressing this point for months. Zandi’s research showed a corporate tax cut delivering $0.30 in real GDP growth for every $1 invested, an alternative minimum tax patch delivering $0.48 for every $1 invested, and a regular tax rebate delivering anywhere from $1.02 to $1.28 for every $1.
Compare that to aid to state governments, which Republicans have roundly criticized: $1.36 for every $1 invested. Infrastructure spending delivers a whopping $1.59 in GDP for every $1.
But it’s not just Zandi making this point. The Congressional Budget Office — you know, the guys with the incomplete stimulus report that Republicans absolutely loved last week — deemed last year that corporate tax cuts are “not a particularly cost-effective method of stimulating business spending.”…
Really, Obama and the Congressional Dems need to respond to all this Republican whining about tax cuts by re-focusing the stimulus bill on truly effective economic measures, not by letting the bill go under because of attempts to be “bipartisan”.
Addition: What Balloon Juice said.
Addition: What Sadly No! said.
Tax Cuts = Failure
Krugman’s response today to the Republican Congressional obstructionism:
The truth, of course, is that the country is hemorrhaging jobs and Americans are heading to the poorhouse by the millions. The stock markets and the value of the family home have collapsed, and there is virtual across-the-board agreement that the country is caught up in the worst economic disaster since at least World War II.
The Republican answer to this turmoil?
Tax cuts.
They need to go into rehab.
The question that I would like answered is why anyone listens to this crowd anymore. G.O.P. policies have been an absolute backbreaker for the middle class. (Forget the poor. Nobody talks about them anymore, not even the Democrats.) The G.O.P. has successfully engineered a wholesale redistribution of wealth to those already at the top of the income ladder and then, in a remarkable display of chutzpah, dared anyone to talk about class warfare.
Krugman goes on to give some examples, if you’re not convinced. I’ve understood for years that the Republicans were waging class warfare. They have no real concern for the middle class and the poor. The state of our economy today is the direct result of their efforts. No one on the Democratic side should be afraid to state that truth front and center throughout this stimulus discussion.
There is no reason to accommodate the failed policies of the Republican Party. That’s another truth we need to state out loud, over and over again.
Bipartisanship
Someone needs to remind the media that when Obama says he wants to change the tone in Washington and relieve some of the bickering, that doesn’t mean he’s going to change his own ideas about policy, and give the Republicans what they want just because they stamp their little feet.
He has said, clearly and more than once, that he wants ideas that will work. And he will make the judgment about what works based on his own criteria. The reason the Republicans don’t have a lot of input into this stimulus bill is that they have no good, workable ideas. The results of their thinking is right in front of us, played out over the past four years. It has been a tremendous, complete, failure.
I don’t think this bill is perfect – I’d like more emphasis on mass transit, for one thing – but I do believe it will be the best that can be had on such short notice. Perhaps the Republicans can control their urge to be obstructionist, though after what I’ve seen the past couple of years, I am not hopeful.