A compromise deal between three RINOs and several purportedly moderate Democrats has been tentatively reached on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 – a.k.a, the Crap Sandwich, a.k.a. the Generational Theft Act of 2009, a.k.a. Porkulus, a.k.a....
Well, you get the picture.
The latter monikers still very much apply to this obscene spending bill - no matter what you may hear from Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, Arlen Specter or mainstream media outlets touting this as a more palatable, "bipartisan" alternative to the original bill.
The deal reportedly has cut billions of dollars in spending from the originally proposed legislation. But at $780+ billion, Mitch McConnell’s analogy still holds. If we started spending $1 million a day back on the day Jesus Christ was born, we’d still only have about $730 billion today. That's $50 billion less than the cost of this "leaner" piece of legislation.
You don't have to be an economist to understand that we just do not have that kind of money lying around. We will be borrowing every single penny of it, risking (rather, guaranteeing) rampant, crippling inflation in the very near future. When you factor in the interest, the cost of the bill will still easily top $1 trillion.
This is a compromise?
Susan Collins (R-ME):
“The American people want us to work together. They don't want to see us dividing along partisan lines on the most serious crisis confronting our country."
Well, what does she mean by that, exactly? Last time I checked, Rasmussen reported that only 37% of the American people support this bill. It find it highly unlikely that number will increase as a result of the bill now costing “only” $780 billion. Americans generally do, I think, want to see politicians working together in Congress, but I don't take that to mean they will support a bill that will completely handcuff this nation fiscally for decades to come and put us on a direct path toward European-style socialism.
Please tell me I'm right about that.
Ben Nelson (D-NE):
“We trimmed the fat, fried the bacon and milked the sacred cows."
At this point we'll just have to take Nelson's word on that, because the public currently has no access to the details of the revised bill. At best we'll have 48 hours to review them - if they are released to the public sometime today.
Spend a mega-ginormous amount of money first, ask questions later. That seems to be what Barack Obama and the Democrats want us to do - and to their great shame, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe, and Arlen Specter are inexplicably going along with them, standing in the way of what is otherwise a very unified, principled, and vocal opposition on the part of their Senate colleagues.
With friends like them in Congress, the Republican Party needs no enemies. But that's a topic for another post.
UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers - and many thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link.
Please contact Collins, Snowe, and Specter and let them know how you feel about this "compromise." Nothing is final until votes are cast, and at this point it looks like that may occur on Monday.
- Arlen Specter: Ph 202.224.4254 ; Fax 202.224.1229
- Susan Collins: Ph 202.224.2523 ; Fax 202.224.2693
- Olympia Snowe: Ph 202.224.5344 ; Fax 202.224.1946
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