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We all know that the stimulus is going to crash and burn. Even the Congression Budget Office knows. The bill was not created to stimulate the economy or create jobs — it was a liberal dream bill, filled to the brim with pork and earmarks. While we won’t see any new jobs or economic stimulation from this bill, we will see plenty of abuses, lots of corruption, and tons of waste.
And the House GOP is right there waiting.
House Republicans are setting up “a stimulus-watch program” that will allow watchdog groups and private citizens to report findings as contractors and agencies start spending billions of dollars on roads, schools, renewable energy projects and other initiatives, said House GOP Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia.
“We’ll be taking a look in detail” and “really providing accountability and transparency,” Cantor said in an interview Wednesday.
House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio said in a statement: “House Republicans are concerned about the potential for abuse of taxpayer funds in the massive trillion-dollar spending bill that the president signed into law this week. … We will remain vigilant in our oversight efforts.”
With each little effort like this, I’m getting more hopeful about our Republicans in Washington. They certainly seem to be on the right track anyway.
This kind of watchdogging is exactly what the GOP needs to be doing, and they need to be vocal about it. They need to let their constituents know that Democrats in Washington rammed this thing down our throats, remind them that nearly every Republican in the House and Senate (except those three spineless traitors) voted against it, and then show them the kind of abuses and waste have come with it.
If the GOP does this, they might just be able to recover some of our losses in 2008 when 2010 rolls around.
Hat Tip: Redstate
Last weekend there was a wonderful skit on SNL about the Republicans planning what to do next. The theme of the skit was that Republicans in Congress think very highly of their political acumen, which is so deplorable that they’d be better off if they had none at all. I say it was “wonderful” because it had all of the characteristics SNL skits are supposed to have…
1. Made a play at poking fun of events we’ve all experienced, when in actuality, none of us have experienced the events, and the skit existed to generate them;
2. It echoed — sometimes word-for-word — arguments I’ve heard “everyday guy in the street” liberals use on me before, arguments that, when challenged, they weren’t able to defend;
3. The skit had just one single point to make, and in making it, ran on several minutes too long. This has become a SNL tradition, I’m afraid. The bit about “it’s a political winner to go after the Obama daughters” was worthy of a half-hearted chuckle, but since it has little basis in reality, no more than that.
The point is, this chasm between reality and the latest Manhattan-blue-blood talking point is so yawning, and the nation is so hungry for the kind of swindle-us-watchdoggery you’re reporting about here, that these two nuggets give real cause for hope. The victors in last year’s election are acting like this is a vindication of, or a mandate for, liberal CULTURE. I’m no political genius by any stretch but that seems to me the worst thing they can do. The most giddy Obama supporters I’ve spoken to, have very little support for liberal culture, and what support they do have is soft and rotted. They just hayt-jorj-boosh-n-dik-chainey…and that is *it*.
Cassy, I got a feeling 2010 is going to make 1994 look like a Sunday picnic. The party-of-dissent has such a low threshold to meet, and the Republicans have generally been stepping-up to the plate on this swindle-us bill, in a way they never did when they were in charge. Thanks for lifting my hopes.
I wonder what we have to do to put the grown-ups back in charge and get them to behave like grown-ups once they’re there? You know, it seems like so little to ask.
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