You gotta love the Democrats idea of bipartisanship.
First, it's amusing to see Republican leaders redefine words. Democratic leaders and the White House negotiated for days with several Republican senators, and made painful and unnecessary cuts just to earn their support. This, however, isn't "true" bipartisanship, presumably because the far-right is still unhappy.
Um, no, what makes the "stimulus" bill partisan is the ham-handed way House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid handled it. If Democrats were honest, they would admit that the financial crisis was used as an excuse to resurrect every Democrat pork project put on hold for the last few years, while Queen Nancy dismissed complaints about partisan way the bill was cobbled together as process arguments.
There was nothing painful about the cuts Democrats agreed to in reducing the price tag of this boondoggle to future generations. And if Democrats hadn't wanted to cut in one "painful" place, there were certainly literally billions of others.
Second, President Obama spent a considerable amount of time and energy engaging congressional Republicans directly, soliciting ideas, making changes, and hearing them out. To hear GOP leaders tell it now, Democrats deserve blame for not incorporating more failed right-wing ideas into the package. (Including hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts wasn't enough to satisfy Republican demands.) The goal, they insist, should be making the failed minority party happy, not rescuing the economy in a time of crisis.
Is this what this deranged fool is talking about when he says Obama engaged congressional Republicans? Was fearmongering and threatening part of "hearing them out"?
Contrary to what the delusional say, the goal of any stimulus package should be to stimulate the economy, not pay off Democrat minions and throw taxpayer money into black holes like the NEA (and no, "black hole" is not racist).
And third, it can't be stated enough that negotiating with people detached from reality is fundamentally impossible. Obama came to the table stating a simple truth: given the circumstances and exhausted options, the economy needs a government stimulus. He was prepared to have good-faith discussions over how much should be spent, where it should be invested, how quickly, etc.
No one in the Republican delegation argued that we didn't need a stimulus bill. The argument was over the scope and size of it. When Obama flippantly told Republicans "I won," he wasn't seriously soliciting their ideas. He was sending them a big FU. It was only once he realized that his plan was tanking that he actually decided negotiations were in order.
Democrats don't care about bipartisanship until they think it's necessary to getting what they want. In this case, a couple of "moderates" (read RINOs) are all they need. Republicans aren't crazy for thinking that stealing from our kids to pay for honeybee farmers today is a bad idea. One of the parties here might be insane, but it's not the Republicans.
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