In The Blogs

*The Stimulus Bill

| Tue Dec. 30, 2008 10:37 AM PST

THE STIMULUS BILL....Tim Fernholz points to this Bloomberg piece about Mitch McConnell's reaction to a massive stimulus bill:

"A trillion-dollar spending bill would be the largest spending bill in the history of our country at a time when our national debt is already the largest in history," McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said in a statement. "As a result, it will require tough scrutiny and oversight. Taxpayers, already stretched to the limit, deserve nothing less."

McConnell called for giving lawmakers and the public at least one week to review the legislation once it has been written. He also said he wanted Senate committee hearings on the measure, rather than immediate floor consideration.

Italics mine. Obviously McConnell is just trying to rustle up opposition to the bill, and his tired invocation of "fraud and waste" harkens back to equally tired Republican opposition to the WPA in FDR's day. It's pretty weak tea. Still, I'll give him a pass on this. If the public stance of the Democratic leadership during a Republican presidency was a request for one week of hearings and review on a $700 billion measure, that would seem pretty reasonable to me. Coming from a Republican during a Democratic presidency, it seems pretty reasonable too. I'll bet McConnell gets that and more. Hopefully, the days of thousand-page bills coming out of conference and getting sent to the floor within 24 hours died when....

....Mitch McConnell's party lost control of the Senate. I say, let it stay dead.

Continues Below

Continued From Above

Comments

Submitted by bigTom (not verified) on Tue Dec. 30, 2008 10:55 AM PST.

Despite the fact that it simply pure boilerplate, meant as a marker of "we are the responsible party", it sounds pretty reasonable. Of course we should check that the stimulus spending actually makes sense, and doesn't include a lot of give-a-ways and pork. I hope we will also check to insure that all the spending items make sense as investments in our longterm future, not just expenditures for consumption, or for the building of infrastructure we won't ever use.

Submitted by Jasper (not verified) on Tue Dec. 30, 2008 11:42 AM PST.

It goes without saying that among other deceptions McConnell is well-aware he's using is misleading language with respect to debt. Yes, it is true that if you count money owed to future retirees national debt is quite high, but the more relevant public debt figure is about the same percentage of GDP as it was at the beginning of WWII (you know, the same war that, as Krugman puts it, finally provided a stimulus large enough to get the country out of Depression once and for all).

This is not an argument against getting our fiscal house in order to deal with entitlements, by the way -- it's something we need to do (most pressingly, healthcare reform, as Social Security's problems are easily repairable) after we've restored the economy to health. It's just an argument against letting ideologues like McConnell demagogue the country into a repeat of the 1930s.

Submitted by Yellow Dog (not verified) on Tue Dec. 30, 2008 11:44 AM PST.

If the public stance of the Democratic leadership during a Republican presidency was a request for one week of hearings and review on a $700 billion measure, that would seem pretty reasonable to me.

But the Democratic party, unlike the repugs, does not exist for the sole purpose of destroying this presidency.

McConnell is my (gag!) senator and I'm telling you straight it's yet another gull-the-suckers con.

If the dems show the slightest interest in attracting a single repug vote, or giving a flying fuck what any repug thinks, Boehner and McConnell will use that to destroy them.

The ONLY way the dems will get any legislation to Obama's desk is to ignore the repugs completely. Shut them out of everything.

Lock them out of the building, if that's what it takes.

But ferkerissakes, stop acting like the repugs will play fair if dems are just nice enough to them.

If you've got to put the guns down, then pick up a bazooka.

Submitted by David in NY (not verified) on Tue Dec. 30, 2008 11:45 AM PST.

bigTom -- The definition of "give-aways and pork" is changing, and you should realize it.

See Keynes, General Theory:

"If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused goldmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing."

Submitted by dcsusie (not verified) on Tue Dec. 30, 2008 12:05 PM PST.

What Yellow Dog said. We aren't trying to be reasonable with Al Queda, so there's no reason to try it with the Republithugs.

Submitted by g. powell (not verified) on Tue Dec. 30, 2008 12:30 PM PST.

David in NY is correct, the point of stimulus spending is to spend it quickly. If we examine each item and are prudent about how we spend the money, we fall into a depression. Of course, I'd like to see the spending do some good, but that is secondary.

Things are getting bad very quickly, it's time to panic. Spend the freakin' money now.

Submitted by jrw (not verified) on Tue Dec. 30, 2008 12:41 PM PST.

If I were Kevin, I would not give McConnell credit for any good faith in whatever he says. If we've learned anything from the current crop of Republicans it's that they never make good faith arguments, there is always another agenda, to manipulate all things to their partisan advantage. Country first!

Submitted by arbitrista (not verified) on Tue Dec. 30, 2008 1:05 PM PST.

This is easy. You give him his 1 week of time, and no more than 1 calendar week of hearings. In exchange for a promise not to filibuster. If he says no, he gets to wear that pretty "obstructionist" tag.

Submitted by Steve High (not verified) on Tue Dec. 30, 2008 1:36 PM PST.

Point One:

When the Dems organize the Senate, they can drop the cloture rule to 55. Without this, McConnell dictates the size and nature of the stimulus.

Point Two:

The $5 billion GMAC loan goosed the market more than the first $290-odd billion. How much do Bush and the Reps hate unions to drag their feet on this? If they had pumped this money into consumer lending back in Sept/Oct., GM would not have needed $4 billion to hold off its creditors and might have even got close to maker its quarter.

TIP: If you own a small business and some kind of a credit score, you've still got 12 hours or so to buy a pickup or even a Lexus and depreciate the whole thing off for 2008 (Consult your tax professional). Otherwise, why not wait until Dec 2009?

Nice work, GOP. Real F-in' nice.

Submitted by Bob h (not verified) on Tue Dec. 30, 2008 2:10 PM PST.

"when our national debt is already the largest in history".

And just who was it who ran up the $5 trillion in additional debt, Mitch? And what do we have to show for it?

Submitted by Wisconsin Reader (not verified) on Tue Dec. 30, 2008 2:24 PM PST.

Let them secede this time!. . . It is fine! . . .
They need not pay federal taxes NOR will they receive their usual $2 back for every $1 they pay in. . . The Israeli - Palestinian expression does also apply to these Senators from the former Confederate states and territories. . . "They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity."

Submitted by fatman (not verified) on Tue Dec. 30, 2008 5:13 PM PST.

The thing that kicks me in the man toys is this !!!!!!! How can we borrow trillon of dollars from a country that hates us !! Are e not in debt so much now that our great great great grandchildren will be born more than 20,000 in the hole as of birth in my humble opion as i can only see it if America was to tell the world to pay us back all the money that is owed to us we would bemuch better off and would be 1 if not the richest countries in the world i truly feel in my heart that we should cut off all funds to the world till OUR own people are taaken care of and no more American people are hungry nor any one on s.s.i. or disability who can pay there bills and be able to eat without worring about weither they can pay for there medicanes
If people like it or not this is the truth

Submitted by bob in fla (not verified) on Tue Dec. 30, 2008 6:43 PM PST.

The ONLY way the dems will get any legislation to Obama's desk is to ignore the repugs completely. Shut them out of everything.

Lock them out of the building, if that's what it takes. - posted by yellowdog
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`

My sentiments also, except one small problem. It takes between 1 & 3 Republican votes to bring an up or down vote in the Senate. OOPS!!!

And I gotta agree that the days of voting on bills w/o reading them need to be over.

Submitted by Luther (not verified) on Tue Dec. 30, 2008 7:55 PM PST.

"A trillion-dollar spending bill would be the largest spending bill in the history of our country at a time when our national debt is already the largest in history,"

If you have a problem with that, then you have a problem with reality.

Submitted by anonymous (not verified) on Tue Dec. 30, 2008 11:48 PM PST.

"A trillion-dollar spending bill would be the largest spending bill in the history of our country at a time when our national debt is already the largest in history..."

In my lifetime, the only time the national debt hasn't been the largest in its history were the one or two years of the Clinton surplus.

And if the spending bill is over two years, it comes out to $500B/yr, which would be just a touch less than the FY08 defense authorization bill.

I'm not arguing that a two-year, trillion-dollar bill is commonplace. But neither is it on an entirely unprecedented scale. And while the level of debt is now unprecedented, that's hardly unprecedented: it's been nearly continuously unprecedented for decades.

Submitted by foxtrotsky (not verified) on Wed Dec. 31, 2008 12:00 AM PST.

My sentiments also, except one small problem. It takes between 1 & 3 Republican votes to bring an up or down vote in the Senate. OOPS!!!

Before contributing any more all-caps and exclamation marks to the conversation, make sure you've considered the reconciliation process, under which filibusters are not allowed.

I'm not a master Senate parliamentarian, so I can't be 100% certain the bill will be considered under reconciliation. But given how that process has been used in the past, somebody has a lot of explaining to do if it's not.