Weak Weak Nancy Pelosi on the Stimpak

Whatever you want Mr. Bush.

The stimulus package bill, defective as it is, is probably as good as we can get thanks to our frienemies the Republicans (emphasis added):

Pelosi's decision to drop expanding unemployment payments and more money for food stamps — which many lawmakers had assumed would be included in the package — could prove very controversial with Democratic constituencies, who were already stung by a decision to deny states more money for their Medicaid programs.

Many Democrats had pressed to extend unemployment benefits for people whose 26 weeks of benefits have run out, but Republicans resisted.

In light of the WaPo article this week on growing long-term unemployment among the well educated, the Republican Party just stuck it pretty damned hard to the middle class.

Pelosi dropped some key demands to keep the tilt of the package toward the middle class and to include the working poor. In addition to the unemployment and food stamp benefit extensions, she set aside proposed funding increases for low-income heating assistance and aid to state and local governments in the form of either Medicaid assistance or infrastructure funding.

Bush made Pelosi drop off the package help for people who need to heat their homes this winter. This is a classic "fuck the Blue States" tactic. The side of the civil war that won is in the middle of winter - this is what we get for winning. Scared of her shadow, she caved to Bush.

The whole point of the "stimpak" is then not to help anyone, really. It's designed solely to get people who don't have credit, or are already maxed out, to buy more stuff, thus keeping the consumer spending machine humming a few more quarters until Bush is out of office.

Then we'll officially be in recession, and suddenly everyone on the Hill will rediscover fiscal responsibility, saddling the next President with either deep spending cuts or higher taxes, and God help the poor bastard who has to deal with this big shitpile.

All of this is designed to give Bush CYA so that the Republicans can come roaring back in 2010 and 2012 with the promise of more tax cuts. It's a goalpost move, nothing more, nothing less.

Just as the emptying the treasury and enriching the rich was the best way to deal with the Bill Clinton surplus (Bush's tax cuts of 2000), and just as emptying the treasury and enriching the rich was the best way to deal with the shock to our economy after 9-11 (Bush's tax cuts of 2001), now we learn, of course, that the best way to deal with recession is to, guess what: empty the treasury and enrich the rich. As the Post reported:

"Another element of the plan is a package of tax breaks for businesses that could cost as much as $70 billion, far more than had been expected, a senior House aide and a Democratic lobbyist said."

The stimpak is corporate welfare in two ways; one, it's a direct corporate hand-out, and two for retailers, it gets people out to buy more shiny crap for a few months.

What if everyone took the $300 checks and paid down credit card debt? What then? My guess? More tax cuts.

"We've tried tax rebates before, but they haven't worked as well as they should because previous rebates left out those at the very bottom of the economic ladder -- the families struggling every day to pay their bills, heat their homes and pay their mortgages," Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) said on the Senate floor. "Now the president wants to do the same thing again. He's proposed a tax break in his stimulus package that would completely leave out the poorest Americans."

And what happens when we are so in debt that the dollar isn't worth the paper it's printed on? When our infrastructure is crumbling? When the elderly are freezing to death in winter, dying of heat stroke in summer, starving all year, when schools close, when local governments shut down due to lack of funds?

Who cares? They'll blame it on the Democrats. And cowards like Nancy Pelosi will offer to share the blame.