The GOP “Elections Have Consequences” Party Votes Unanimously Against Fiscal Stimulus Bill
This evening, Democrats in the House of Representatives passed H.R. 1, a fiscal stimulus and tax cut bill. With only 11 Democrats voting against the bill, Republicans – in a display of their likely brand of 111th Congress “bipartisanship” – voted against it unanimously (one, Rep. Brown-Waite (R-FL-5) not voting). They opted instead to offer their perpetual solution to everything, the failed bromide of the exclusivity of tax cuts. To see how your M.C. voted go right here.
One vote demanded by the GOP prior to the final vote actually sought to strip out all spending measures in the bill. Quashing this absurdity even attracted some GOP votes, and it
lost 320 – 116, again, all votes to pass it and thereby reduce fiscal stimulus to nothing but tax cuts were Republican. To see how your M.C. voted, and to get the best roster of ultra GOP wingnuts, go right here. As reported by Huffington Post, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, David Obey (D-WI), stated it with pinpoint accuracy, “‘They don’t look like Herbert Hoover, I guess, but there are an awful lot of people in this chamber who think like Herbert Hoover,’ he said, referring to the president whose term is forever linked in history with the Great Depression.”
Earlier today, employing the verbal spin so well-developed by the GOP in recent years, Republican Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) bloviated. “Cantor said that Republicans objected to what they saw as excess spending in the bill. ‘I think we demonstrated here that the kind of bill they put together without any input from us was not a stimulus bill. You can call it a safety net bill, a relief bill. It was a spending bill.'” Imagine, Republicans – who ballooned a Clinton Deca-Billion dollar surplus into historic deficits through profligate tax reductions and massive spending f
inanced via debt – lecturing about “spending.”
Nearly $550 Billion of the bill is devoted to both immediate and ongoing job creation that would stretch well into the future, modernizing infrastructure, expanding broadband, improving health care delivery systems, and assisting now radically underfunded state and local budgets, preventing layoffs of state workers. Without batting an eyelash Cantor, though, went on to imply that all this was no stimulus at all, “I think that if you have infrastructure programs that are meaningful, impactful, and put jobs back into place immediately within the first twelve months, you have a legitimate case for that to be a stimulus.” As usual, logic aside, he called upon “entrepreneurship” – and tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts – as the answer, as if entrepreneurship provides a truly quick and easy method to stimulate the economy while “shovel ready” projects do not. (See October 2008 chart of “shovel ready” projects ready to go within 90 days of funding; click on for a larger version) In fact, the bill offered both tax cuts (about $300 Billion) and primarily quick job-creating projects ($550 Billion). If there was even a modicum of compromise in the GOP, the bill would have satisfied a fair sized portion of the caucus.
Keep it up, GOP! With the economy in free-fall, keep on voting to deny anything but tax cuts to your own constituents. Although most of the remaining GOP in the House are in safe GOP districts, perhaps in some of them constituents will catch on – the GOP represents a failed supply side (“Voodoo”) economic theory that offers tax cuts only, whether the economy is booming or swooning. In other words, they offer the nation, now in its direst straits since the 1930s. a ride to nowhere on a ship with even fewer lifeboats than the Titanic. And, by their vote against a bill that provides both generous tax cuts and fiscal stimulus, they are showing that they will not compromise in any way. Who was it who kept telling Democrats that “Elections have consequences”?
Stimulus bill moves us closer to nationalized health care and rationingThe House of Representatives approved an $819 billion economic stimulus package Wednesday. The party line vote was a blow to Barack Obama's alleged desire for bipartisanship. All the Republicans and 11 democrats voted against the bill. One thing in the bill that went mostly unnoticed was a new bureaucracy called the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research.
The Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research (FCCER) provision simply coordinates the Quality Improvement Organizations (QIOs) and the massive amount of outcomes and effectiveness research that is conducted within these entities. QIOs include, for a few examples, the HHS Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)(see http://www.ahrq.gov/); the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS); the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP); the Food and Drug Administration (FDA); and the many components of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). As a method of effective coordination of QIOs the FCCCER ought to appeal to fiscal conservatives; its costs will likely be more than recovered by cutting down on duplication of research efforts, etc. FCCCER coordinates these longstanding and ongoing activities. For example, AHRQ has been around for more than a decade. Effectiveness and outcomes research has been an accepted practice for much longer, of course, and benefits everyone. Moreover, it differs substantially from the UK's National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE). See http://www.tjols.com/article-1065.html for a good balanced and cautionary article about NICE and the foundational ideas behind effectiveness and outcomes research, in general.Ultimately, of course, this all begs the question. I happen to believe that a nationalized health care system would benefit us enormously, not merely by reducing costs enormously, but also by extending health care to all Americans regardless of income. Yes, there will be ethical questions about fair distribution of health care; however, we ALREADY "ration" care under our present inefficient system – we ration by income, the poor (including the working poor) get little or no care whatever. That's a form of unethical rationing that dwarfs the distribution problems found within the UK and other nationalized systems, don't you think?