House Republicans - aka whiny babies that won't play nice

Today the US House passed their $819 billion dollar version of the economic stimulus plan. The vote was strictly on party lines - no Republicans voted for the bill.

President Obama bent over backwards meeting with Congressional Republicans to hear their concerns. He leaned on Democrats to get things like family planning money removed from the bill ('cuz remember, the Republican God hates family planning). And yet, they still snubbed the bill.

Can anyone say sour grapes?

I wonder if this is what the next two years will be like. Republicans voting in a bloc to be as obstructionist as possible.

I seriously cannot understand how it is that they do not realize that their slanted views of economics, and the result of putting those slanted views into action, is the reason why they are the minority party. And if they continue on this path, they will be an even smaller minority party for some time now.

Tax cuts for workers (note, I said workers, i.e., the poor and middle class, not trust fund babies, CEOs, and corporations) are a good thing. And that's why the package has $212 billion dollars in tax cuts.

However - a tax cut doesn't do you any good if you don't have a job.

And that's why the bill contains $607 billion in other government spending. Money for the states, which can use those funds to:
a)pay government workers, as opposed to laying them off
b)give money to the university system, which can them employ education professionals, as opposed to laying them off
c)repair roads and bridges, and strangely enough, employ people to actually do those repairs, etc.

And strangely enough, when the government workers and professors and construction workers have income, they are better able to buy cars and cappacinos and insurance policies and other goods and services. So then other people will have jobs.

Conversely, if you gave that money to large corporations, they would use it to gobble up other companies (resulting in layoffs) or hoard it. They won't use it to hire more workers. Why? Because there's no one that can afford to buy the "stuff" that more workers would produce. They don't act altruistically, and therefore, why would they spend money to employ unnecessary workers? They wouldn't.

Hopefully some moderate Senate Republicans will be less petty when this bill comes to the US Senate. Otherwise, a really bad situation will just get worse. If you want a nightmare tonight, just imagine what the Dow and other world markets will do if we fail to pass a stimulus plan due to petty partisan idiocy.

Bye bye, what's left of my 401k. And sadly, probably bye bye my job. But hey, at least I'll have LOTS of company.