I'm literally sick to my stomach. I have been for a few days now. I know this will be unpopular among some here. But I don't care. I see very few facing the reality of what has happened with the stimulus package, and the historical opportunity our Democratic leaders have just thrown down the drain.
Our country is at a crossroads. The kind Roosevelt faced when he entered office in 1932. It is a time for vision, boldness, and courageous leadership. What should have happened was the Democrats put together a big, unifying vision for the future - a Rebuilding America Act.
Like Kennedy's call to put a man on the moon, this act should have inspired Americans to look forward again and see a better future through the clowds of our current crisis. It should have been both far reaching and immediate. 'We will rebuild America and we will start now.'
It should have been almost entirely dedicated to converting and rebuilding our nations infrastructure. 800 thousand million dollars is a lot of money. We could have launched a massive plan to build high speed rail across the country. Build solar and wind farms. Build thousands of new, smaller schools to keep kids in their communities and allow parents to get involved in their children's education.
A grand vision to mobilize millions of Americans to not just get out of our rut, but to actually create something better than we've known before. That's what we could do with almost a trillion dollars.
Instead, we got a spending bill. I've actually read the Senate version version of the bill. I agree with much of what's in it as a spending bill. By all means, grow the government. It's a big country and we need a big government. Sorry Bill. And Ronnie. And yes, growing the government will create some jobs.
But as a stimulus bill, it is a joke. Both economically, and politically. Let's talk about the politics for a second. Obama and the Democratic leadership should have known that they would have to have the support of the public to pass an 800 billion dollar plan. Surely they didn't think that they could pull another stunt like the TARP, slipping it through before the public even had a chance to figure out what had happened.
This stimulus package was always going to be different. It's one thing to bail out powerful bankers. Quite another to bail out the people. Surely we've learned that by now. Opposition to any big spending bill that goes to voters was always guaranteed. An idiot could have told you that.
A massive spending bill like this could create generations of dedicated Democrats. Mudcat Saunders likes to talk about how in the old days, people had two pictures on their wall, Jesus, and FDR. My grandparents on had one picture on their wall. It wasn't Jesus.
This is why it was imperative for the Democrats to have a powerful, uniting vision. Something that would give the American people a beacon of light in this dark era. A big bold rebuild America plan.
Instead, Nancy Pelosi and liberals in the House decided to make this a catchall for pet Democratic programs they've been wanting for years. I know, I know. It's "less than 1%", as Obama said today.
But this completely fails understand the political calculation here. One minute Obama's hopping TV interviews expressing the urgency of this bill. And the next, Republicans are talking about a provision for condoms.
'What is so urgent about condoms', I'm sure many less informed Americans are wondering. And they would have a point. How is that going to create jobs and stimulate the economy. For someone who has just lost their job, they may think that the Democrats are insane.
On the economic side, almost all discussion of the inflationary aspects of borrowing this money and spending it on things that don't create real wealth when you're done. By using the money to invest in infrastructure, you create real value assets like bridges, rail lines, dams etc. As much as we on the left love our government programs, they are far less counter-inflationary.
Again, however, I support the increases in government programs. They would have been great in Obama's 2010 budget. And with the political capital he would have gained by moving the country towards a bold and exciting new vision, he could have gotten many of them passed.
But there's another missed opportunity here that may be an even greater loss. And it concerns the philosophical. To my sheer amazement, I have seen little or no repudiation to the failed economic and political philosophy that allowed this calamity to occur in the first place. Alan Greenspan himself conceded that "there is a flaw in the model."
But you won't hear anything resembling that from Obama's economic team. To the contrary, they appear to be doing everything possible to preserve the corrupt, greedy system of Wild West capitalism that has led us here.
In fact, that appears to be the reason why Democrats have failed to provide a bold vision - they don't want to engage the argument, first laid out by Reagan, that government can do nothing right and the free market's invisible hand will lead us to prosperity.
They don't want to defend a government of the people that the Founders fought, died, and killed for. They don't want to concede to the American public that the reign of laissez faire, conservative, market as god economics is a failure.
This is perhaps the greatest failure. This act was an opportunity to make a correction. To say to all the Greenspans out there, we tried your way now twice, and both times, it resulted in economic disaster.
No, there will be no change today.
The neoliberal Marie Antoinette's love the current order of things. They get their cake and eat it too. And the Democrats are unwilling to take them on. This bonus pay order is nothing but a cheap stunt. Make everyone feel that some accountability just happened while preserving the very system that allows the parasite class to feed off the public trough. I love Clair McCaskill, but please, CEO bonuses are the least of our problems. Our entire financial and monetary system is an elaborate ponzi scheme. And bonuses is all you can muster the nerve to attack?
The monied classes know full well how a major crisis can affect things. Naomi Klein's shock therapy can go both ways. The New Deal proved that. But this is not the 1930s. And the monied elites control the most powerful mass persuasion tool in the history of humans - television.
And incredibly, the Democrats have allowed the Republicans and the corporate media to put them on trial. According to Think Progress, Republicans have dominated the airwaves by a ratio of 2-1. You can blame the corporate media, and I do. But, as usual, Democrats have just bent over and taken it.
Yes, I feel sick. If there was one area for the Democrats to stand up and show some spine, to finally take on the failed ideology of the Right, and to set our country on a new, different path towards economic justice and accountability, this stimulus bill was it. They failed. They will always fail. They're working for the other team.
I'm sorry. I know we all had great hopes. But it's up to us.