Obama: Pass the Spendulus, Or I Shall Blot the Sun From the Sky

Or something along those lines.

President Barack Obama warned on Thursday that failure to act on an economic recovery package could plunge the nation into a long-lasting recession that might prove irreversible, a fresh call to a recalcitrant Congress to move quickly.

In an op-ed piece in The Washington Post, the president argued that each day without his stimulus package, Americans lose more jobs, savings and homes. His message came as congressional leaders struggle to control the huge stimulus bill that's been growing larger by the day in the Senate. The addition of a new tax break for homebuyers Wednesday evening sent the price tag well past $900 billion.

Senate Democratic leaders hope for passage of the legislation by Friday at the latest, although prospects appear to hinge on crafting a series of spending reductions that would make the bill more palatable to centrists in both parties.
Obama painted a bleak picture if lawmakers do nothing.

"This recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse," Obama wrote in the newspaper piece titled, "The Action Americans Need."

He rejected the argument that more tax cuts are needed in the plan and that piecemeal measures would be sufficient, arguing that Americans made their intentions clear in the election.

"I reject these theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change," he wrote.

Right, buddy. You ran on a platform of spending $800 billion wastefully on a thirty-year old mouldering liberal wish-list, right?

From bloomberg.com, even Susan Collins isn't buying into that. At least not all the way:

Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican leading a push to strip billions from the plan, said lawmakers are “very leery of having an enormous package” that is “just a collection of everyone’s favorite programs.”

Collins said after a meeting that the bipartisan group hasn’t decided how much they will seek to cut. She said she would not support a plan as large as the $819 billion package approved last month by the House of Representatives.

And from another story (sorry, no link), Dear Leader shows that pragmatism and ideological flexibility he actually did run on:

The president dismissed calls by Republicans for more tax cuts to be included in the stimulus plan.

“Those ideas have been tested and they have failed,” said Obama today as he addressed Department of Energy employees at their headquarters in Washington. “The scale and scope of this plan is the right one.”

All that crap about not caring where good ideas come from? That he's post-partisan and will not knee-jerkedly reject an idea simply because of its ideological pedigree?

Yeah. All of Obama's promises come with an expiration date.

I wonder if America's enjoying the change it capriciously voted for.

Thanks for both of those snippets to TheQuietMan.

Et Tu, Lindsey? Graham delivers a "scathing rebuke" to the President over his being "AWOL" on spendulus negotiations?

Vid: Mark your calenders. On this date, Lindsey Graham and Michelle Malkin agreed.

Cancel Susan Collins' as an anti-spendulus vote, too. At the link, she says Obama convinced her that $800 billion was the right size of the package.

posted by Ace at 02:36 PM

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