What Republicans Don’t think Americans Need
via Clammy C at Daily Kos notes that every single republican in the house voted NO on Obama’s proposed stimulus:
So here is a partial list of the programs that republicans think America doesn’t need (and I will say that there are alternative proposals by House republicans, including one by my own odious Representative, Scott Garrett, that consists of cuts to corporate and capital gains tax rates instead):
* An increase in the maximum benefit under the former food stamp program (now called the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program or SNAP);
* An expansion of broadband internet access to rural areas of America;
* Programs to improve infrastructure and develop rural communities;
* Improvements to the criminal justice system;
* funding for science and technology research;
* Funding for the Community Oriented Policing Services;
* Funding to repair, maintain and renovate the Department of Defense (DoD) facilities;
* Energy efficiency projects and modernization of heating/cooling and electrical systems at the DoD;
* Improving Army barracks;
* Energy related research and development (renewable energy programs and expansion of existing weatherization activites);
* Funding for the Army Corps of Engineers (remember the levees in New Orleans that weren’t funded?;
* Modernization of the nation’s electrical grid;
* Construction and repair of Federal facilities;
* Funding for clean water programs and water infrastructure projects;
* Capital improvements and maintenance for Forest Service and National Park Service, the Superfund program and wildland fire management;
* Funding for the Department of Health and Human Services;
* Funding for labor and employment training programs/Department of Labor;
* Renovations to elementary and secondary schools;
* Pell Grants and other student financial assistance;
* Educational programs aimed at elementary and secondary education;
* Defense construction projects – including hospitals, barracks and day care centers;
* funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to be used on maintaining VA medical facilities and cemeteries;
* Funding for Information Technology projects at the State Department;
* Funding for highway construction;
* Funding for housing assistance programs administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development;
* Grants to states and cities for community development;
* Refundable tax credits for middle and lower income families;
* Increase tax credit for higher education;
* Extension of tax credit for renewable energy production;
* Increase the earned income tax credit for lower income families with three or more qualifying children;
* Increased funding for emergency unemployment benefits for those who exhaust the amount of benefits they collect;
* Temporary increase in amount of unemployment benefits;
* Assistance to states for spending on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program;
* Extension of Medicaid coverage to certain unemployed workers;
* Assistance with COBRA premium payments for certain unemployed workers; and
* Incentives for health care providers to use “health information technology” which would reduce health care costs for providers and lower premiums.Granted, this is not something that I would expect anyone to memorize, but if you look at these programs, they are geared towards jobs, education, infrastructure and emergency assistance to lower and middle income families. This is what republicans voted against. This is what the republicans feel is not as helpful to American families as capital gains and corporate tax cuts.
And this is why Obama, the Congressional Democrats and Americans should (if they already don’t) realize that the republican party is negotiating in bad faith. They would have voted against this bill regardless of what was in it or not in it. They simply do not care about helping American families. As Rush Limbaugh said, they want America to fail.
Exiled conservative Andrew Sullivan asks How’d you like to be a Republican member from Michigan or Indiana or Ohio, where the unemployment rate is climbing steadily?
or Maine, which voted for the Democrats, facing its highest unemployment since 1992? think Olympia Snow and Sue Collins need THIS on their constituents’ TV?
They are between a rock and a hard place: support Obama’s plan, and the mouth-breathing ideologues at Club for Growth and the Sean Hannity show will eat them for breakfast. Rebuke the plan, and face the voters, who no doubt “will be stunned to learn their member of Congress voted against [saving or] creating 4 million jobs” :
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the lawmakers will have to answer to their constituents.
“I do believe that there will be people in districts all over the country that will wonder why, when there’s a good bill to get the economy moving again, why we still seem to be playing political gotcha,” Gibbs said.
The conservatives and their standard bearer have laid it all out on the table: they want Obama to fail, and by extension for America to fail. that’s because for Republicans and conservatives, the Party is more important than the nation. They have no class, no patriotism, and no sense besides.
It’s going to be a fun four years. All they have is complaining and spitballs, and very little in the way of ideas beyond tax cutting.
You lost. WE won.
January 29th, 2009 at 10:20 pm
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