REPUBLICANS in Congress are generally upset with the new stimulus package. They are continuously attacking it with claims of “partisanship” and “irresponsible spending” on the part of Democrats. Comments like these from individuals like Senators Lindsay Graham and John McCain, along with recent polling evidence that the American people disagree with these sentiments, truly demonstrate how the Republican Party has little appreciation for what the American people expect of the federal government in this time of economic crisis or how to go about pulling our country out of the ditch that the Bush administration left us in.
Whereas Americans anticipated the government would put together a stimulus package in the early days of Obama’s administration, Republicans apparently believed that a stimulus package would involve budget cuts or non-intervention by the government. Or something. It’s not exactly clear what they expected but the GOP’s outright opposition to the Democratic majority’s efforts to rejuvenate the economy indicates that they fail to appreciate that this stimulus package was never going to embrace the Reaganomic tendencies of the previous administration. In true Keynesian form, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is supposed to jump-start the economy by creating employment, as the $787 billion stimulus package that Obama signed on Tuesday chiefly intends to do to the tune of 3.5 million jobs, with the aim for 90% of those to be in the private sector.
A stimulus does not include: cutting the taxes of the top one percent of wage earners, removing the capital gains tax, encouraging banks to continue trading mortgages or any other foolish methodology that got us into this mess to start with. To spur the economy, one has to “prime the pump,” a concept that has been attacked by conservatives. Commentators like George Will always say the New Deal, which utilized this same concept, “failed” but one only has to look at the overall picture to see that is a conservative distortion. If the economy recovers at a similar rate to how it did during the course of the New Deal, we’ll be back to where we were only a few years ago. Moreover, the New Deal had many important accomplishments, like creating a safety net for all citizens with Social Security and funding important public works like the Hoover Dam and the Tennessee Valley Authority, all while maintaining American faith in democracy during a period that saw rise of fascism. We can only hope the new stimulus package, along with additional legislation that is sure to follow on issues like preventing home foreclosures, will manage to come close to the New Deal’s achievements.
Not only did the American people expect action when they elected Obama, their opinions of the key players who brought the stimulus into effect have gone up, despite their mixed opinions of the final product. Reasearch 2000 polling shows that the American opinion of Speaker Nancy Pelosi has ticked up slightly in light of the legislation being finalized between early February and Congressional Democrats in general have seen a positive bump in their approval rating.
On the other hand, the same polling shows the GOP is thoroughly disliked across all of the country except for the Solid South; en lieu of its strong disapproval of the stimulus, the poll shows a continuous decline in the approval of Congressional Republicans since late January to now. Maybe in the future Republicans will moan less about the loss of bipartisanship, and work within a reality where they are obviously in the minority and will have to accept Democratic expectations on many issues.
Having the entire GOP House caucus vote 176 to zero in opposition to the stimulus package is not how you show the American people you’re interested in trying to accomplish something. Rather, it shows that the GOP is full of partisan hacks; this is not a good way to recover seats in the 2010 midterm elections. Look out for larger Democratic majorities in the near future as the party’s net approval rating is at plus-twenty whereas the GOP’s has fallen to negative-thirty.
Recent comments and actions by the Republican Party demonstrate just how out of touch its members really are to the seriousness of this economic situation. Government must act to aid its citizens in times like this, something the Democratic Party is fervently trying to do. Whenever the Republicans come to the realization that screaming and yelling empty rhetoric about “pork this” and “wasteful that” isn’t helping the huge number of people affected by the economic recession pay the bills or find work, it will benefit everyone working to reinvigorate our economy.
As former President Roosevelt said of his hyper-conservative critics in 1936, “Never before in all our history have these forces [the right] been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.” If the Republicans are going to moan about the government’s attempts to aid downtrodden citizens, they can continue being a non-entity because the American people are frustrated with them right now.
Geoffrey Skelley’s column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at g.skelley@cavalierdaily.com.
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