I love Harry Reid. And by “love,” I mean, “want to punch in the face.”
We begin in a position of popular electoral strength and end in Gutless Gulch with Senator Harry Reid now proposing that we cut back the tax cut portion of the bill *as a compromise* to cutting the $100 billion dollars “centrist” Republicans want to cut out of the spending side.
Can we get back to reality, here? “Stimulus” is defined by government spending that replaces slacking spending by the American people for the sake of keeping jobs. We can’t keep cutting stuff out of an already inadequate spending package and hope to possibly stem the tide. We’ve lost a trillion dollars in spending on the consumer side alone, but we’ve got no more than half a trillion in new spending.
Let’s be crystal clear about this: there is no such thing as wasteful spending in a mega-recession!
Some spending that offends the sensibilities of Republicans is fine to remove. I think family counciling is good, but if you want to leave that to Jesus, so be it. But don’t make that an economic issue, because it isn’t.