Yesterday the Obstructionist Party of a Vengeful God kept California from accepting over $2.5 Billion in Federal stimulus money which would have extended unemployment benefits for 20 weeks. California’s unemployment rate is 10.1%.
The vote in the California Assembly was one vote short of the super-majority needed to accept the money. All Democrats and 2 Republicans voted for the measure.
The Republicans swear that they love the idea of helping the unemployed. They were just afraid that there might be flaws in the bill or, in my favorite comment, worried that the aid for people hurting NOW, “might raise costs for employers by eventually forcing a hike in payroll taxes.”
Yes, let’s not help families eat today when there is a maybe possible, in-the-vague-future, potential for higher business taxes .
Horse manure. Tax increases are a completely different subject — and would require their own impossible to get super-majority.
The Republicans seem fixated on blocking programs that will help the economy. I struggle to come up with a motivation. I suspect that Republicans really don’t want President Obama and the Democrats to get political credit for fixing the economy. They’re sabotaging everything they can so they can roar back into power saying “We told you so.”
But, their actions are evil. Evil. Straight out of the Bible, or directly from humanist philosophy, Evil.
Evil!
It’s a calculated and risky gamble. The reasoning goes: if we oppose everything and the economy doesn’t turn around, then Obama will look bad in 2010 and the Republican party can win back substantial seats in the off-year election.
However, they run a grave risk that the economy will have substantially recovered by the next election; at which point the Dems will remind the voters that the Republicans obstructed every recovery option, and had nothing to do with the recovery itself.
Politics at its worst.