Personally, if I am going to be @$%#ed by the government, I'd like the courtesy of a reach-around.

They need to be spending trillions, not billions, and they need to have done it yesterday. This reminds me of the limited debate over how much the Iraq war would cost before the war. They speculated it would cost 7 billion. That number quickly changed to 50 billion. It is now well over 600 billion.

In the near future we are going to consider these amounts they are dickering over humorous. At the end of the day, we are spending borrowed money, in a national Ponzi scheme, hoping that the bottom doesn't drop out. Free Bernie Madoff and make a statue in his honor. He is the bellwether and forefather of our economy.

Because they're afraid the stimulus bill won't really do anything to help the economy, and they want to share the blame. That's all there is to it.

Squat. Why are Republicans still controlling the agenda? Reid must go.

ikuiku,

I am not a whiner. I pay my bills and I am responsible.

I am saying if the government want to really give a stimulus to the economy, then give a substantial break to working families in order to free up money and make this same people buy products and services. Simple.

but some things just scream for a response and this is one of those times:

If Bill (and Hilary) Clinton hadn't made such a hash of the healthcare initiative it is likely that the republican would not have taken back congress - for the first time in forty years - during the midterm elections. If that had gone differently then there likely would not have been a shut down. The shutdown itself was a disaster and Clinton only got credit later because Gingrich revealed himself to be a bullheaded selfish prick motivated by spite and not politics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_government_shutdown_of_1995

But the basic problem with your argument is that Bill Clinton was learning on the job too. Neither the Clintons nor their staff had any understanding of the power held by the lobbyists that would defeat them on healthcare. They bungled it terribly because of their inexperience and lack of familiarity with the ways of DC (which is a strength in that they were not indebted but also lack experience navigating how business was done there – the same arguments people made for and against Obama’s lack of experience.) Their failure on that issue alone not to mention ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ and other debacles gave the republicans a majority, helped them usher in the bankrupt ‘contract with America’ and opened a new and poisonous chapter of partisan rancor and ineffectual governance.

At any rate, Obama will need to learn on the job just like any president would – even if Hilary had won and had bill whispering in her ear - there is nothing but on the job training for the presidency and you can expect each one to make mistqakes. I liked the Clintons too but yours is a false revision of history and a distortion of the present:

You said:

Obama has to do is to go to the people and explain WHY this bill is not adequate to address the financial crisis, then tell them that he is not going to coopereate with extremist partisans who are willing to hold the nation hostage to their failed political philosophy. He won't, though.

And he has done exactly that. He has gone on tour with town hall meetings and help a press conference just Monday where he said

And I'm happy to get good ideas from across the political spectrum, from Democrats and Republicans. What I won't do is return to the failed theories of the last eight years that got us into this fix in the first place, because those theories have been tested, and they have failed. And that's what part of the election in November was all about.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/02/10/stimulus/index.html

several Senate and congressional GOPs this afternoon, including Collins and Snowe (Arlen Specter's comment form was down).

Amounts to nothing, I'm sure, but I felt I had to do *something*.

Wait 'till liberals find out about the $50 billion in nuclear loan guarantees. -- agore

Even with loan guarantees, no one's going to be rushing to build any nukular reactors. They cost too much and you won't find too many states all that interested in approving them. Furthermore, you can be generating electricity with wind turbines or an intensive solar array in a matter of months. It takes hundreds of millions of dollars and years to build and test a nukular reactor. Then there's that tiny problem of deadly waste with a half-life contamination of 20,000 years.

Actually I'm a Liberal and don't mind at all.

The problem is that no bill will be produced. If the House adds so much as a nickle back into the bill for school construction the Senate Republicans will declare themselves "betrayed" and threaten to filibuster the bill.

Harry Reid, the worlds only human capable of walking upright without even the vestage of a spine, will immediately pull the bill out of consideration, without forcing the Republicans to actually give one single speech, and hand the Senate over to the Republicans to run for the next two years, just as he has for the last two.

...the $50 billion in nuclear loan guarantees.

I want a reduction of the mortgage interest rates. I currently pay 5.875% on a 30 year fixed loan. I heard republicans were pushing to lower the rates to 4.5 to 4%. That would be a nice savings every month. -- gugy

Interest rates haven't moved that much in almost ten years and they are much lower than they were for the previous 25 years.

He shut down the government to get his way, and the Republican Party listened. All Obama has to do is to go to the people and explain WHY this bill is not adequate to address the financial crisis, then tell them that he is not going to coopereate with extremist partisans who are willing to hold the nation hostage to their failed political philosophy. He won't, though. He doesn't know how to lead. He is learning on the job. Maybe in a few years he'll figure out that you can't compromise on basic issues. Leaders make tough decisions, including when to deal and when not to.