Before I left for San Francisco, I could have sworn I read an article saying that as recently as November, the then-president-elect was considering a “stimulus” of $300 billion (something which, as I recall, would have been enacted before he took office.  Because I have a different computer with me now, the history on this browser would not include what I read last night.

If anyone finds such an article, could you let me now?

When searching for that article, I did find this from October 14:

With fears rising that the nation stands on the precipice of a prolonged recession, House Democrats are contemplating a huge infusion of public cash — as much as $300 billion. . . .  A spending package of that magnitude would be far larger than anything Congress has previously considered. . . .

(Emphasis added.) The current proposal is far more than twice that.  That article didn’t mention the Obama campaign.

So, as the president makes this the centerpiece of his First 100 Days, I’m wondering if Obama campaigned on a proposal of this magnitude.  I don’t recall that he did.

If he had put forward such an spending package, would he have fared as well as he did last November?

Seems like Congressional Democrats are calling the shots in Barack Obama’s Washington.

SOMEWHAT RELATED:  Ann Althouse:

If Obama had said, “I didn’t just accidentally say ‘spread the wealth around,’ I really believe in the redistribution of the wealth, and I want you to vote for me because you do too,” he would have lost.

Recall, how in the campaign and in his first days as president, Barack Obama promised his would be a more transparent Administration?

But, he and his allies in the House and Senate aren’t being very transparent about the president’s signature proposal in his First 100 Days. The “stimulus” is over 1,400 pages long, includes federal expenditures of nearly one trillion dollars. You think with legislation of that magnitude, Congress will take some time to consider its various provisions, allowing the people’s representatives time to familiarize themselves with its contents

But, no, it seems lobbyists will get a copy of the bill before Congress does.  And they’ll have only one night to read it before debate begins. One night to read a 1,400 page document? One blogger reckoned they’d have to be speed readers just to get through the whole thing:

In order for anyone to read the entire bill in 13 hours, they’d have to start the very minute they got it and read over 1.8 pages a minute every minute, without a break. They’ll be clocking in at a reading speed of 640.5 words per minute at that rate. If anyone needs a potty break, they’d better take the bill with them. Forget eating.

That won’t give them much time to think about it. That blogger informs us that the average person reads 200-400 words per minute when reading for comprehension. (H/t Instapundit.)

Guess the Democrats broke their promise to delay a vote until the final bill has been posted online for 48 hours. Wonder if the president will keep his and wait for five days after it has been so published before affixing his signature.

Can you imagine how the Democrats would react if Republicans rushed a vote on a bill such as this?  They took longer to debate whether or not to go to war in Iraq and were accused of rushing to war.

This is an ominous sign of the democracy in Obama’s Washington when legislators aren’t given the time to familiarize themselves with the arcana of the legislation. And their constituents, i.e., we the people, don’t have time to consider it nor have the time to register our thoughts with those representatives before they vote.

Let’s hope at least some Senators have the since to filibuster this bill in the interest of a serious debate on the multi-hundred billion dollar proposal. To do any less would be to thumb their noses at the American people and break the promises Barack Obama made to them when he campaigned for their votes last fall.]

UPDATE:  After posting this, I checked the blogs and various news sources to see what time the full text of the legislation was released.  

Via ReadTheStimulus, I found this on Speaker Pelosi’s website, posted Thursday, February 12 at 11:32 PM.  That means members have 9 hours and 28 minutes to read it before the scheduled vote, 38 hours and 32 minutes fewer than the full 48 hours House Democrats promised (in an unanimous vote) on Tuesday.  How quickly they break their promises.

UP-UPDATE: Looks like that House has delayed the vote until 1:30 PM EST, which means that our representatives have 34 hours fewer to review the massive bill than the Democrats promised.

UP-UP-UPDATE: If the time, 2:24 PM EST on the final tally of the House vote on the “stimulus” is the time the vote was complete, that means, members had approximately 14 hours to read it after it was released, 34 fewer that the House Democrats had promised just three days previously. I guess that’s the shelf life of a Democratic promise in Obama’s Washington. Three days.

Just wait, just wait, the more the American people learn about what’s in this boondoggle, the more they’ll turn against the Democrats. I see at least three Democratic Senate seats flipping based on this vote alone (Arkansas, Indiana, Nevada), provided the Republicans come up with decent candidates. And it looks like at least one Republican Senate Republican won’t be returning to Washington in 2011. Let’s hope his replacement is person who defeats him in the Pennsylvania primary.

For the past week, I have been trying to craft a post celebrating the bicentennial of the birth of the first and greatest Republican President.

Many ideas crossed my find about Abraham Lincoln.  I recalled his steadfast commitment to winning the Civil War, even as a popular opinion began to turn against him and his adversaries heaped scorn upon him.  His leadership also came to mind, the determination he showed as he faced many setbacks during that war, with a series of bungling and ineffective generals leading the Union Army.

I could write about how he taught himself law, history and philosophy, articulating (notably in the Lincoln-Douglas debates) a coherent political philosophy, long before he began his first presidential campaign.  Or, I could write about his courage in signing the Emancipation Proclamation, convinced, even as some in the North were not, that we needed abolish the heinous institution of slavery forthwith.

But, sometimes, as it is with blogging, you determine to write a post, even about a person you much admire and little comes in the form of a coherent narrative.

Fortunately, this morning, as I was preparing to set off to meet the newest PatriotNephewWest, my car laden with gifts for this young lad, I chanced upon one of the Powerline posts on “Lincoln at 200.”  In the third of those posts, Scott Johnson observes:

As a politician and as president, Lincoln was a profound student of the Constitution and constitutional history. Perhaps most important, Lincoln was America’s indispensable teacher of the moral ground of political freedom at the exact moment when the country was on the threshold of abandoning what he called its “ancient faith” that all men are created equal.

The moral ground of freedom. The moral ground of freedom, a wonderful expression to sum up the idea which drove our greatest Republican president. Throughout his life, in speeches, debates and public statements, Lincoln expanded upon that notion. And acted, to the best of his ability, in accord with that idea.

Let us not limit our celebration of this great man to the bicentennial of his birth, but remember him always, not just for his accomplishments, but also for his ideas.

It has now seems likely that Democratic leaders of the House of Representatives will break their promise to “delay any vote until the final conference agreement had been posted online for 48 hours.“  Even one House Democratic leader suggested that his Senate counterparts “don’t know everything that’s in the bill.“   And one the boondoggle’s few Republican backers believes it needed more time for hearings.

So, as a Democratic Congress is about to vote on a multi-hundred billion dollar package before most Representatives and Senators are even familiar with its contents, not to mention the American people who will be paying for it, let me provide a clip of Ethel Merman singing what should become the theme song for Obama’s Washington (which I previously provided here).

The song begins at the 2-minute mark:

Just like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland who had only one way of “had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small,” so do Democrats have only way of facing difficulties, great and small. That queen favored decapitation, Democrats increased government spending.

By letting Congress cobble together the signature item of his first hundred days in office, the president has made clear that he’s not calling the shots in Washington.  As Camille Paglia, one of his most enthusiastic supporters, put it, “To defer to the House of Representatives and let the bill be thrown together by cacophonous mob rule made the president seem passive and behind the curve.”

Obama could have demonstrated real leadership had he, together with leaders of both parties in both Houses of Congress, worked out a “stimulus” package.  It might have been just as costly as the current spendthrift proposal, but at least he could have claimed to have taken the lead in crafting it.

Just as Mr. Obama has failed so far as a leader, so too has he failed to bring a new tone to Washington as he had promised in the campaign.  He continues to rail against the “past eight years” and accuse his Republican adversaries of partisanship, yet even his own Transportation Secretary, himself a Republican, sympathizes with his former congressional colleagues’ frustration: they “like to be in the room when these things are put together. And they haven’t been. And so I think they were a bit offended by that.”

So, is this the new kind of politics, criticizing those left out of negotiations of partisanship when they have been excluded from participating in legislation with a near-trillion-dollar price tag?

Pete Wehner sums up Obama’s new partisan politics:

Obama himself never made a serious play at bipartisan cooperation. What he did was allow Nancy Pelosi and liberal House Democrats to write the legislation. Republicans were shut out. And once the legislation emerged, Republicans were asked to come on board.

It’s as if president believes bipartisanship is when Republicans support of Democratic policies.

No wonder his rhetoric has become increasing partisan as a supermajority of Republicans, standing true to their conservative principles, balk at his spendthrift plans. And now, as Jennifer Rubin puts it, “Even liberal and mainstream reporters are growing weary of the president’s partisan rhetoric.”

His partisan rhetoric is a reflection of his governing style.  He yields to the most partisan members of Congress to draft important legislation.  And by letting them take the lead here, by failing to include Republicans before signing on to the Democrats’ proposal while faulting his ideological adversaries for their principled stand, he showed that his politics are not new.  That is, unless you believe partisan grandstanding to be a novel form of governing.

Victor Davis Hanson offers some advice to the president:

Calling for bipartisanship seems contradicted when you then allege that those who disagree are being “partisan”, and you preface almost every major issue with a blanket invective against the past eight years, even when you seem to adopt many of the past policies, from rendition to FISA. Perhaps try to raise the debate from one of your opponents seeking cheap advantage to one of innate philosophical differences, and then try to cease the campaign mode. The election is over. Bush is gone. Like it or not, the executive responsibility of the U.S. is now yours alone.

Leaders of Obama’s party in Congress don’t seem interested in bipartisanship either given how they froze Republicans out of the House-Senate conference committee meeting to reconcile their two different versions of the “stimulus.”

If he were really interested in a new kind of post-partisan politics, the president would publicly take Democratic congressional leaders to task for their partisan shenanigans.  And if he were truly interested in transparency, he could call for “televising the stimulus bill conference committee meetings.”

My two favorite Obama-supporting blogress divas have entered into a kind of blogging cat fight.

No sooner did Camille Paglia praise the president for looking good on Inauguration Day (his “relaxed, natural authority with military officers”) while faulting him for dropping the ball on crafting the “stimulus,” than Ann Althouse took her fellow blogress to task for her “purple piffle:”

Yet read for a few paragraphs and you’ll get hit in the face with the insipidity of: “But aside from the stimulus muddle, Obama has been off to a good start.”

. . . .

The President was able to look decent standing next to military personnel. This is the “good start”? She should blush deep red with embarrassment to have defined the standard of presidential achievement down so low.

Read the whole thing (both of ‘em).

(Tipping my hat to Glenn as he alerted me both to Ann’s post and to Camille’s before I had the chance to check their blogs on my own.)

It’s probably too late to get these three Republican Senators supporting the Democrats’ spendthrift “stimulus” to change their minds, but they could do their party one smaller favor and still vote for this boondoggle.

On the Senate’s web-site, we find this definition of the cloture rule:  “The cloture rule—Rule 22—is the only formal procedure that Senate rules provide for breaking a filibuster. A filibuster is an attempt to block or delay Senate action on a bill or other matter.”  (Emphasis added.)

When the reconciled version of the “stimulus” deal comes up for a vote, they should join their Republican colleagues in filibustering the measure.  They could say they’re not blocking action, but merely delaying it.  With a package of this magnitude and the president’s promise of transparency, they beieve the public should have time familiarize themselves with its contents before their representatives vote dispensing this unprecedented sum.

We could remind these Republicans that the more people learn about this package, the more voters favor the GOP.  Heck, maybe when they hear what the citizens of Maine and Pennsylvania have to say, they’ll realize that their Senate colleagues are out of step with their constituents.

Perhaps, they should promise to continue to filibuster until fourteen days* have passed following publication of the entire text of legislation on the web.

I mean, heck, right now, nearly three-fifths of Americans think even Congress won’t know what’s in the “stimulus” when they vote on it.

*Or the number of days it takes someone reading fifty pages a day to complete the document.

Now that House and Senate negotiators nave reached a deal reconciling “their two versions” of the so-called “stimulus,” will they, in accord with President Obama’s commitment to transparency, give the public time to review the multi-hundred billion dollar package before putting it before their respective houses for a vote?

Given the magnitude of the package and the number of programs it includes, it seems only fair that since it is the people’s money (and that of their children and grandchildren), that we at least get the chance to read it and consider its merits.  So we can have time to share our thoughts with our elected representatives, Congress should delay the vote allowing members to return to their jurisdictions to hear what their constituents have to say.

This is an unprecedented sum for one bill.  While CNN may say it’s “less than” $800 billion, it’s still more than $700 billion cost of the bailout.  Congress had two separate votes on that.

UPDATE:  How’s this for transparency:

Less than 48 hours elapsed between the time the text of the compromise became available for public examination late Saturday evening and yesterday’s 61-37 vote for passage. At that rate, the Senate effectively was spending about $300 million every minute while considering the compromise, and allowing taxpayers a scandalously brief opportunity to discover how the senators were doing it.

UP-UPDATE: John Hinderaker is not confident the House will follow through on its promise of transparency:

Yesterday, the House voted unanimously to make the final text of the bill available on the internet for 48 hours before a vote is taken on it, so that the American people can have some idea what is being voted on. It doesn’t appear, though, that this will be done.

As I’ve noted before one of the advantages of my gym is that its largely liberal membership means that if the TV monitors show a news network it’s almost always CNN or MSNBC.  So, while I can’t claim to be an expert on its content, I can report what I notice when I’m doing my cardio (and I do try to do lots of cardio).

Now, it was yesterday (or perhaps the day before) when I caught a bit of Rich Sanchez’s show (I’m pretty sure he was he).  He was “reporting” on some scandals.  I recognized two of the faces in his little triptych of supposed shame. One was Ann Coulter, the other, Michael Steele, the new chairman of the Republican National Committee

As I was reading Instapundit this morning, I was reminded of that triptych and wondered who that third person might have been.  Could it have been a Democrat?  I mean, just look at all the Democratic scandals Glenn referenced.  Surely, Sanchez must have reported some Democrats in ethical hot water.

With far fewer resources than CNN, Glenn somehow manages to report regularly on Democratic scandals (and he doesn’t neglect the Republican ones).  Let’s see, just today we learn about the declining political fortunes of Connecticut’s senior Senator Chris Dodd.  Has CNN reported the favorable treatment that Democrat got from Countywide, the failed mortgage firm under the purview of the Senate committee he chairs?  His failure to release the documentation of his mortgage (as he has promised)?

Did they cover the raid of lobbying firms with ties to Pennsylvania Democrat John Murtha (and with links to his Democratic cronies James Moran and Peter Visclosky)?  The multifaceted tax (& disclosure) problems of Charles Rangel, the Democratic Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee?

(more…)

Once again, the president has been attacking the Republicans for the last eight years, as if still in campaign mode.  And yet he was in Washington for four of those eight years, so I’m wondering what he did in that time to confront those problems, particularly the deficit.

I mean, here he is blaming the GOP, yet did he ever propose a budget without such deficits?  Did he offer amendments to trim the size of federal appropriations?

And yet in his press conference he acts as if he were not in Congress when the deficits were increasing and debt was accumulating:

. . . when I hear that from folks who presided over a doubling of the national debt, then, you know, I just want them to not engage in some revisionist history. I inherited the deficit that we have right now and the economic crisis that we have right now.

And even as he decries those deficits, he’s putting forward a package which will increase it, as if to leave his successor with an even higher level of federal debt than that he inherited from his predecessor.  So much did I like Ed Morrissey’s thoughts on the matter (that I had linked, but not included, in previous post) that I include them here:

Obama tried a couple of times to lay the deficit off on the Republicans, but more than half of that deficit came from the bailouts of last year, which the Democrats pushed through Congress.  Republicans balked at the massive TARP program, which Obama criticized in his press conference last night.  The Bush administration didn’t partner with Republican leadership to get that passed; they had to get the Democrats to pass it, and Democrats have controlled Congress for the last two years.  And the economic crisis came from the collapse of the housing market bubble created by the kind of intervention Obama proposes.

It’s too bad the president can’t acknowledge his own part in the situation he “inherited.”  And if deficits are truly a problem, why is he seeking to expand rather than reduce them?

As I was eating my dinner last night, I popped in one of my favorite flicks, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and began to think of Mr. Obama’s Washington.

When Senator Smith’s secretary Clarissa Saunders (Jean Arthur) tells longtime Senator Joseph Harrison Pain (Claude Rains) about how Washington has changed her, she offers, “Look, when I came here, my eyes were big, blue question marks. Now they’re big, green dollar marks.”

It took Arthur’s Saunders a few years to become jaded by our nation’s capital where everything turned into a question of the money that was in it for her.  Well, Mr. Obama has barely been in the White House three weeks and his eyes have become the same as those of Miss Saunders.

All he sees is those big, green dollar marks.

The Islamic studies chairman at American University in Washington undertook a study to see “how well this country upholds its ideals in a post-September 11 world.”

As part of that study, Hailey Woldt traveled to Alabama and dressed in “traditional black abaya.” Her “experience was a pleasant one.” And it was unexpected. As Allahpundit put it, “They went looking for prejudice — and darned if they didn’t find it.”

This led Shannon Love to observe:

What Woldt discovered was not the prejudices of the small-town southern white American but instead the prejudices and stereotypes of contemporary leftist academia. Woldt expected to find prejudice not because she had already seen it but because her education indoctrinated her to expect it in others. This little incident opens a window on the insular, elitist and bigoted world of leftist in contemporary academia.

(H/t Instapundit.)

Why is it that the supposedly most broad-minded Americans have the most narrow view of their fellow citizens?

Going through my e-mail, I just read this reflection from Frances Rice, Chairman of the National Black Republican Association, on the election of Michael Steele as chairman of the Republican National Committee:

For the first time in the history of our Republic — since our founders established this nation on Judeo-Christian values anchored on a fundamental truth that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — the fate of our nation rests in the hands of two black men.

The fate of our nation rests in the hands of two black men, an interesting evaluation of the meaning of Steele’s election following that of Barack Obama. And a sign of how far our nation has come from one of the ugliest chapters of our history.

To think that when each man was born, it was hardly possible for a black man or woman to advance to the highest levels in nearly every field of endeavor in America.  And now look where each man is.  Truly a sign of how America is in a constant state of self-repair and self-improvement.

Let’s hope this progress continues.

. . . for the economic mess he inherited after the Gipper had taken office and was making the case for his economic recovery package?

Just curious, ’cause the current president has been attacking his predecessor on a regular basis, even did so last night:

First of all, when I hear that from folks who presided over a doubling of the national debt, then, you know, I just want them to not engage in some revisionist history. I inherited the deficit that we have right now and the economic crisis that we have right now.

Did Reagan say that Democratic opponents of his plan wanted to do nothing about the economic crisis as the incumbent did last night?

As I said, the one concern I’ve got on the stimulus package, in terms of the debate and listening to some of what’s been said in Congress, is that there seems to be a set of folks who — I don’t doubt their sincerity — who just believe that we should do nothing.

Um, the Republicans have put forward alternative plans. Heck, I’m even working on my own, but doubt either of my Senators or even my representative would bother introducing it.

(H/t John Hinderaker who offers a more thorough analysis.)

UPDATE:  Ed Morrissey elaborates on the president’s lies.

Didn’t watch the press conference. Preferred Ann Althouse’s live-blogging. (Personally, I’d label her the best “live-blogress” and Vodkapundit‘s Stephen Green the best “live-blogger.”)

Because I didn’t watch the conference, I’m probably not going to comment on it*, save to note something which William A. Jacobson of Legal Insurrection, a blogger who did, (via Malkin) pointed out:

The press failed. Not a single reporter challenged Obama on the specifics of the stimulus plans, which (contrary to Obama’s statements) are loaded with pork barrel spending (as Sen. Claire McCaskill admitted this weekend) and surreptitious attempts to restructure the health care system.

No questions about the specifics of a several hundred page near-trillion dollar plan?  No questions about the myriad items contained within a proposal drafted by the most liberal members of Congress?  My quick scan of the transcript confirms Jacobson’s observation.

Is he wrong?  Did he, did I, miss something?  Did the media really fail to ask the president about the specifics of legislation costlier than the Iraq?

*Unless I discover something juicy in the transcript.

It’s not just the price tag, especially at a time of record deficits; it’s its ethos.  As the president just said in his press conference, “It is only government that can break the vicious cycle.”

Mr. President, with all due respect, it’s not government which can fix the economy, it’s government which got us into this mess.  Only by removing the heavy hand of the state we can break this vicious cycle.

Just ask Ronald Reagan.  Or take a look at FDR’s spendthrift record.  Just over four years ago, a team of UCLA economists calculated that FDR’s policies prolonged the Depression by 7 years.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, John B. Taylor showed How Government Created the Financial Crisis, echoing a point (but with different data) that Peter Wallison made in the American Spectator about the True Origins of the Financial Crisis.

UPDATE:  Love Althouse’s live-blogging, especially on his conclusion:

“There’s some ideological blockage there that needs to be cleared up.” That’s the characterization of the opposition to the stimulus. Make those of us who are hesitant sound like some kind of disease. “But I am the eternal optimist… People respond to civility and rational argument, and that’s the kind of leadership that I’m going to provide. Thank you guys!” Well, I respond to civility and rational argument, but I believe you just talked about me like I was some kind of disease!

UP-UPDATE: In the comments, Gene from Pennsylvania reminds about JFK’s tax cuts. At least the Gipper could follow the example of a president of the opposing party.

UP-UP-UPDATE:  “The Congressional Budget Office predicted that the current economic recession will end in the second half of 2009 without the trillion dollar stimulus.”

An excellent op-ed in today’s New York Times by Owen West, a Marine and veteran of the Iraq War. Some highlights:

Imagine, if you will, that during the Bush Administration, conservative groups complained that they didn’t trust an incoming cabinet member to administer a program within his Department’s purview.  Onstead of reassuring those groups that he had every confidence in his appointee to do his job without prejudice, the president (or his representative) told those groups not to worry as he would run that program out of the White House.

Imagine further that in accordance with its responsibility as spelled out in Article I of the Constitution, Congress passed a law giving that Department the authority to administer the program.  Moving it to the White House would thus violate federal law.

You’d hear quite an outcry, wouldn’t you?

That’s exactly that scenario which played out last week as the White House “responding to minority groups’ concerns about [Commerce Secretary-designate Judd] Gregg’s commitment to funding the census, has decided to have the director of the Census Bureau report directly to the White House.”

Oh, well, not exactly, there was no media outcry.

At least three bloggers (one of whom a political reporter) seem to be more familiar with the constitution and federal law than the Obama White House staff.  Midwesterner at samizdata citing Article I, Section 2 of the US Constitution, “The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct,” has found that law.  It gives the authority to conduct that enumeration to the Secretary of Commerce (via Instapundit).

Evil Monk at Righteous Rantings, citing the same statute, doesn’t “see a legal base for giving [White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel control of the Census.“  (more…)

Sounds likes it’s back to the days of the Clinton White House in Obama’s Washington.

Partisan dirt-digger joins White House counsel’s office:

Shauna Daly, a 29-year-old Democratic operative, was named last month to the new job of White House counsel research director. Though she is inside one of the most powerful legal offices in the land, Miss Daly holds no law degree and doesn’t list any legal training on her resume.

Her sole experience has been as an opposition researcher for Democratic political campaigns: She helped dig up dirt on rivals, or on her own nominee to prepare for attacks.

Emphasis added.

Some new kind of politics. Remember how the Democrats (& their allies in the MSM) kept accusing former President Bush of politicizing the Justice Department. Now, it looks like Obama is politicizing the White House Counsel’s Office.

Can someone tell me why you need opposition research in that office? Isn’t the job of the White House Counsel to make sure the president act doesn’t violate the law when discharging his duties?

Further evidence that “President Obama appears to be guilty of the sins of which his predecessor was accused.” Or, as Glenn put it, “Everything Bush is Obama Now!”