28 Legislators support the Silent Majority!
The American Silent Majority should be proud of our representation in Washington. We have eleven members of the House of Representatives and seventeen Senators who actually subscribe to the campaign pledge of “country first”, even if the author of the pledge, Senator John McCain (R-AZ), no longer believes it himself.
Republican Senators including McCain have taken a “party first” attitude in a sort of weird childish temper tantrum. With many items which Republicans support being in the legislation, Republicans seem to have a theory anything written by a Democrat has to be partisan and wrong. Many, like my Senator, Jeff Sessions (R-AL) have stood on the floor of the Senate and made arguments with half-truths to support this theory. Sessions announced the only way we could pay for the stimulus was to print money. Printing money, he said, “causes inflation.” If Sessions had been in my high school government class, he would have gotten an F on current events this week. He is either being disingenuous or is ignorant in light of recent Federal Reserve statements. One of the primary worries of the Federal Reserve as this economy dangerously spirals into uncharted territory is deflation. The economy is SO bad right now; one could argue we actually need a little inflation.
Scare words like inflation undermine the stimulus’ potential to positively affect consumer and market psychology. Part of the problem is no one is spending money. Part of the partisan Republican indifference may have something to do with today’s ABC program This Week. George Stephanopoulos pointed out today, the Republican leadership believes the economy won’t be any better by the next election cycle. That being the case, a bad American economic attitude is actually a partisan Republican ally. In what may be the most partisan of ironies, they would rather the economy go farther down the tube if the stimulus passes. Cynically, a good start down this path is the infomercial the partisan Republicans are producing. It will help insure Americans believe the stimulus will not work.
Discrediting the stimulus in the minds of Americans seems to also be on the aim of Michael Steele, the new Chairman of the Republican National Committee. He tells Republican Governors like Charlie Crist of Florida they don’t understand the stimulus bill. He says those governors do not understand the distinction between stimulus created road building contracts and some other kind of private road building contract which goes on forever. In my 15 years of being a transportation engineer I haven’t seen many roads built without a government entity contracting with a private construction firm and have seen no contract last forever.
Finally, we get to the issue which gave the Republicans political cover to begin this nonsensical political war.
Apparently, in a sort of “thumb in you eye-we won” gesture, the House stimulus bill included items like money for family planning. I am pretty sure the Democratic House leadership understood how incendiary a provision like this could be. Why not leave it out of this critical legislation? Was it hubris, ineffectiveness or stupidity which drove the leadership to allow this kind of explosive provision? President Obama trusted this leadership with one of the most important bills of his political career and he was let down. With an American now losing a job every four seconds, I can think of at least three people who need to join those Americans. Those people are Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and Democratic Caucus Chair, John Larson (D-CN). At the end of the day these people represent the American Silent Majority about as well as those partisan Republicans.