Republican governors on the stimulus

Three of our nation’s most interesting governors happen to be Republican, and were among the most prominent of that party to speak out over the weekend on the controversy du jour – to wit, whether the president’s stimulus bill is likely to help rescue our economy.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, laden with the curse of the old Proposition 13 legislation that gutted the California economy so many years ago, had just won a significant victory in the matter of his own state’s budget. Gutsy California legislators had managed a compromise that included some tax increases and some spending cuts, driving away the prospect of California’s imminent demise.

The good governor said that he believes President Obama “needs team players,” and that any money the other governors wanted to turn down, well, he’d be happy to accept it for his state.

Schwarzenegger, unlike some, is not rumored to be thinking about running for President in 2012 because, simply stated, he can’t, because he's not a natural-born citizen. Much to the regret of Sen. Orrin Hatch and perhaps even Mr. Schwarzenegger himself. The Republicans' most obvious ticket out of oblivion is out of reach.

Rumored to be very much in reach, on the other hand, is Gov. Bobby Jindal, wunderkind of Louisiana, who has made very strong statements against the stimulus. I’d call them “trophy statements,” for, as New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin suggested, it seems likely that the governor is choosing his words very deliberately because he is an up-and-coming possibility for the Republican nomination in 2012 and wants to keep the base happy.

Jindal said he will not accept any funds designated to extend unemployment benefits; he explained that “I represent the taxpayers of Louisiana.” Of course, the Louisiana legislature can override his refusal, which he knows, so if and when the funds ultimately come to the aid of his unemployed citizens he won’t have too much to account for.

Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida, on the other hand, actually met with President Obama when the president arrived to promote his stimulus plan. Not only did Crist make it clear that he expected the plan to help Florida, he made it clear why: Tens of thousands of jobs and funds for local and state transportation projects.

Crist had an outlook somewhat different from Jindal’s: “I represent the people of Florida,” he said, making it clear that this includes the poor.

On cable TV a stockmarket guru named Rick Santelli delivered a rant (why do so many of these money guys shout?) in which he proclaimed that the president’s plan for the mortgage crisis would only help people who had bought more house than they could afford.

“It’s not fair!” he shouted, that taxpayers should be asked to help a neighbor who had “an extra bathroom.” (I’m not kidding; you can google it.)

Well, this is a road we’ve been down before.

America has the commitment to fairness in its DNA. We care. The exception may prove the rule, as shown by Jack Kennedy's remark, in a context long forgotten by me, that “life’s not fair.”

But “fair” has nothing to do with how we handle a national crisis, because the other essential quality in our national DNA is “fix it!”

If your neighbor’s house is aflame and you are called upon to help, as I’ve said before, it’s obviously in your interest to bring your water hose to try to put out the fire. And now I add this: Do you really want to stand there calculating the cost of your water bill before you turn on your hose?

The repeated claims by opponents of the administration that it’s all about helping people who should “never have bought houses they couldn’t afford” are unsustainable.
People who are losing or about to lose their homes include hard-working folks who have lost their jobs; just a couple of months out of work can mean getting behind on the mortgage payment. There are people hit with huge medical bills that cause them to fall behind.

Many of the people who are losing their homes are veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, who came home to find there were no jobs available, or who came home disabled and unable to work. What about them?

And there are people who believed, when they bought a home when times were good, that they’d be able to refinance in a few years because the home’s value would increase, not to worry, no problem, and they believed the lender who sold them that bill of goods.

After all, you want to believe your lender, who is the only expert available. And who was there to tell you that everything was going to come crashing down?

There is another strand of American DNA: Charity. Taking care of one’s neighbor. We always stand together in a crisis.

We are proud of the way we stood together after 9/11. In every community in America people come together to help families who have experienced tragedy, to assist a dying child, to salute a fallen hero.

Let’s not be talked down by the cynics; let’s keep on doing the American thing.

Unleash the dogs!

Back in the sixties, a political friend of mine – Irish-American Chicago politics background – told me that whenever you hear a politician worry in public about something happening, you can be certain that he is working his very heart out behind the scenes to make it happen.

Which brings me to Dick Cheney.

“Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?” The question asked by England’s Henry II about Thomas a Becket almost a millennium ago comes to mind unbidden but irresistibly.

In case you missed it, Cheney gave an interview to Politico in which he said, essentially, that if the Obama administration didn’t conduct matters of security exactly the same way as Bush had, we would be struck again on our homeland by terrorists. He offered chemical, biological and/or nuclear attacks as possibilities.

What on earth could be the purpose in trying to scare us to death again? It’s a rhetorical tactic left over from the campaign of 2004, but why? Dick Cheney and his ideas were disavowed by his own party way before the recent election made it clear that it’s time to move on.

Who knows? Maybe he just wants to be loved.

For the good of the country, it’s time for Cheney to follow the example of his old boss and go quietly into that good night. Head back to the ranch in Wyoming, or Texas. Wherever.

With friends like him, the American people don’t need enemies.
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In other developments, I am so furious with Tom Daschle that I can hardly see straight. How dared he be so cavalier as to think the errors of his judgment would be overlooked? And what on earth are accountants for, anyway?

His failure to act honorably helped deliver a humiliating blow to the Obama administration.

He knew last June that the unpaid tax matter could be a problem, and yes, there might be perfectly acceptable explanations for his situation. But he KNEW it was there when he was vetted by the Obama people and he didn’t tell them until last month.

Tom Daschle has been around long enough to know that unpaid taxes can be a problem for any potential cabinet member – heaven knows, we’ve seen enough go down in flames in the past. What was he thinking?

Add to that the extraordinary amount of income – almost $5 million -- he had received as a consultant since he left the Senate. “Consulting” is a more discreet form of lobbying than Jack Abramoff and friends practiced. It’s legal, but it raises questions and, to make matters worse, he received some of those consulting fees from companies in the medical community.

The dogs of war were let loose: Not just the usual puppies, like John Cornyn (R-TX) and John Ensign (R-NV), but then the pitbull Grover Norquist, the anti-tax guy, emerged from whatever kennel he has been hiding in since he and Abramoff fell out of favor a couple of years back.

(Norquist was a big player in the White House during the Republican years; most famously, he has said he wants to reduce taxes in order to shrink government to a size small enough to flush down the bathtub drain. D’you think he’d get rid of the White House, too?)

So here they were, yapping and snarling again – just like the good old days. As if they never had a scandal in the world . . .

Not only did Daschle embarrass the administration and Obama personally, but in the matter of choosing a Secretary of Health and Human Services he consumed precious time and perhaps even damaged the chances of success for health care reform.

Thanks, Tom.
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Finally, while we’re talking about such things, remember the old adage mentioned here before: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.

Along those lines, President Obama’s repeated efforts to work with the Republicans in Congress — traveling up to the Capitol to meet with the Republican caucus, meeting with individual Republican leaders, inviting them for cocktails at the White House, or to watch the Super Bowl game; yielding on one point after another in the stimulus package only to have them reject it again and again — all came to naught.

Toward the end of last week, though, he proved he hasn’t lost his mind. Describing the Republican opposition, he said, “Then you get the argument, well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill. What do you think a stimulus is? That’s the whole point. No, seriously. That’s the point!”

So here we are, after years of Republican tax cuts that helped get us into this mess, with the Republican leadership in both houses now insisting that only tax cuts will get us out of it. They have claimed they want bipartisanship in Washington, and yet to date only three Republicans — none in the House, all in the Senate — are willing to support the legislation that even most of them acknowledge will provide jobs and tax relief to the American people and small businesses.

Another bit of psychology comes to mind: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the light bulb has to really want to change.

Some things I just don’t get

Reasonable people can disagree, that’s a popular given. The operative word, of course, is “reasonable.”

But some of the most passionate arguments in our world today have less to do with reason than with conflicting religious beliefs – that, I get. Others are territorial but also understandable; even when the observer thinks resolution is obvious it may not be so to those who are passionately engaged. Forest, trees, that sort of thing.

The more complicated quarrels involve both religion and territory, like the array of struggles throughout the Middle East, not to mention between India and Pakistan, China and Tibet, and in Ireland, just to name a few.

I get those.

And I get petty theft, tax cheating, failure to pay parking tickets, and all the other small-time stuff that is part of life.

But I don’t get Rod Blagojevich, now former governor of Illinois, who became so by impeachment. Here is a guy that everyone agrees is a pretty smart fellow, who became stupid after he was elected and turned corruption into a circus.

Why would he do that? Did his reason become disengaged along the way?

I just don’t get corruption; it doesn’t make sense.

And how about Bernie Madoff, who carried off what may have been the greatest swindle in financial history. Now he’s locked up in his penthouse without any apparent remorse about the havoc he has wreaked. I get wanting to be fabulously wealthy, but if you're that smart, why not get rich the old-fashioned way?

But I still don’t get rich folks so desperately wanting more.

Meanwhile, back in Congress, we have the matter of the President’s proposed stimulus legislation being held up by a smattering of obdurate Republicans who survived the November 4th decision by a majority of Americans to turn the business of governing our country over to the Democrats.

Remarkably, Rep. Darrell Issa asserted, in a recent interview, that his constituents in Southern California wanted to “return to Republican values.” Maybe so, but there weren’t enough of them to make that happen. That’s democracy for you.

I don’t get the Republicans this time around, though I have in the past. I heard one Congressman say that the best plan for resolving the crisis we face is “the Bush system.” I would suggest that has been tried, but doesn’t seem to have worked.

What is that definition of insanity? To keep doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result?

Do the Republicans, like Rush Limbaugh, want the President to fail? What does that say about what they want for our country?

Alternatively, do they really think they have a better plan? Tax cuts? Who has any income left to tax, anyway?

Seems to me the best plan for the Republicans would be to go along with the Administration’s plan, for if it fails, it fails, and they can blame it on Obama anyway. But if it succeeds they would get a huge part of the credit.

As it stands, they are taking a terrific chance, for if it succeeds without them, then Obama and his people will get all the credit and the Democrats will be stronger than ever.

By the way, I don’t get the Republican claim that putting money into the hands of the taxpayers would not stimulate the economy.

Granted, some folks are now living so close to the edge that it's likely the money would simply go for food, rent and utility bills. But others may spend the money to replace a broken washing machine (with a new one purchased from a dealer who will need to order another from the manufacturer, whose employees will be happy to keep doing their jobs) or for car repairs (making it possible to continue looking for work, not to mention providing work for a mechanic who use what he earns to buy new shoes for his kids) or for a babysitter (making it possible to take the job offer while providing the sitter with money to spend).

I’d call that a stimulus, wouldn’t you?

This is not a matter of reasonable people disagreeing. Republican steam about the proposed stimulus package simply is not reasonable. They have everything to gain by supporting the plan, from good will to future votes – not to mention a shot at fixing our broken economy. I don’t see what they have to lose.

I suspect, as they probably do, that the bill will be passed with or without them because of the urgency of the times.

So c’mon, guys. Enough with the posturing. Time’s a-wastin’!