GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

Hasty “Stimulus” Passage:
Business as Usual in Washington . . . on Steriods

by

On Tuesday, House Democrats promised not to vote on final passage of the “stimulus” until forty-eight hours after it had been published online. They even held a formal vote on it, with not a single Democrat (nor a single Republican) voting against it.

With a majority in the House, Democrats set the schedule for votes. Yet, even though the legislation was released to Congress only at 11PM Thursday night, posted 32 minutes later on the Speaker’s web-site, the House completed its vote at 2:24 PM the following day (yesterday).

So, that’s 14 hours and 52 minutes from its online publication to the completion of the vote (or 15 hours 24 minutes, if it had been published online when my information shows it was released to members of Congress).  But, I guess if you do math like the Democrats who crafted this fiscal behemoth, there’s not much different between 15 and 48.

House Minority Leader John Boehner said “not one member [of Congress] has read this:”

I wonder how the American people will react when they start learning about the provisions buried in the bill, including language partially overturning the popular and successful Welfare reforms of the Clinton Era and a major overhaul of the health care industry.

Voters will look too kindly on representatives who rushed such a huge and expensive bill. This is not just business as usual in Washington, it’s business as usual on steroids.

Our fellow citizens might just think it fitting this legislation passed on Friday the Thirteenth.

ADDENDUM:  Tigerhawk weighs in:

Two days ago, lefty bloggers were arguing that the Judd kerfuffle somehow amounted to a “declaration of war” by the GOP on the Obama administration. How, though, does that compare to the tactics used by the Democrats to prevent any sort of meaningful debate by Republicans, the press, or even the lightspeed blogosphere on this crucial piece of legislation? Not only did the Obama-Pelosi-Reid axis make a mockery of their own pledges of transparency, but they never once explained why the palpable need to act quickly — I agree with that — meant that there was no time to post the bill on the web or argue about it for a week or two. Whatever the need for speed, the difference between one day and ten days would be irrelevant to the economy. No, the bill had to be passed quickly precisely because the Democrats were afraid of the argument itself.

Read the whole thing!

UPDATE:  Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell:  “This is an extraordinary sum of money. It deserves an extraordinary level of scrutiny.”  I agree.

Comments

  2. The same thing happened sixteen years ago in 1993 – remember what happened the following year?

    GOP Hill = 2010.

    Sigh…these libtards are too stupid to realize that history can repeat itself.
    Impeach Obama 2011 !

    Regards,
    Peter H.

  4. Steroids, or crack, one of the two — perhaps both. I wonder though if most Americans will ever hear about the corrupt provisions. The MSM certainly isn’t going to tell them. Which is one big difference between 2009 and 1993. They were certainly biased back then too, but now they are truly nothing more than the propaganda arm of the DNC. Facts that make the “One” or Democrats look bad will simply be removed from the history books and rewritten by the Ministry of Truth.

  5. I would think the gay community would celebrate the new health care provisions. No more unattractive old people to deal with! It’s Logan’s Run with a higher age limit. The gay community won’t have to simply marginalize and demean the elderly anymore–they can simply say there just isn’t the money, dahling.

  6. Guess liberals really don’t give a crap about “fascism” after all. Can’t have “big brother” listening in on terrorist phone calls, but he can sure as hell read your medical records and decide whether you live or die.

    Just goes to show the liberal douchebags who threw “Orwellian” around, the last 8 years, didn’t know what they were talking about.

  10. The silver lining is all the pork and waste that will be found after passage, giving Republicans something to run on. Also, the Chicago-style corruption that is sure to follow as all that money gets handed out. The lobbyists on K Street got to see the bill before Congress did, so you know there are some shady deals in it.

  11. I second SoCalRobert- I think we’re doomed. The welfare changes alone, allowing the teat to get bigger, more inclusive and more generous, ensures their (Dems) loyal minions will grow and grow. How long til there aren’t enough taxpayers to support the expanding entitlement class? As a wise man once said…

    “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse form the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”

    It was a good run but I just don’t see how it can be turned around with the Dems handout frenzy buying votes at this pace.

  12. Patriot Goddess: Yes… but… the current deficits / policies are, to coin a phrase, “unsustainable”.

    Either they will end in the collapse of America… or the collapse of the policies and the whole bad, leftist philosophy behind them. Possibly both. Americans get to choose how much of one, vs. the other. But either way, 10 years from now, the American government will be drastically different from what we’re looking at right now. The end of the road – Not the end of the world, but the end of the New Deal road – is near.

  13. So if we’re paying for the stimulus with a mixture of 30-year and short-term treasuries, we’re borrowing to borrow. Does Pelosi think we’ll just inflate our way out of debt? Does she think that the Chinese will tolerate being paid with 2009 interest when the time comes to collect? Does she think that at that time the U.S. market will still have the clout it once had? Does she think they’ll continue to devalue their currency once they start their buying spree of hard U.S. assets because the dollar is worthless?

  14. Does Pelosi think we’ll just inflate our way out of debt? Does she think that the Chinese will tolerate…

    If she thinks about it at all… then, “yes”.

    The New Order of the day is print, print, print, print, print. Hand giant gobs of cash out to your political friends, any time they want, because the Treasury will issue new bonds that the Federal Reserve, in turn, will cover with giant gobs of newly printed cash. Of course the Chinese will pull out of the dollar / U.S. bonds, if they know what’s good for them. But Pelosi doesn’t believe it yet. She needs to see it.