Whistling Past the Graveyard

I wonder if we, starting with our leadership and moving down to our communities, are in collective denial about this economic challenge, just as we have been about climate change, and indeed, about our own mortality. The phrase that is the title of this post comes from our discomfort with fear and our attempts to tell ourselves not to be afraid. 

I think that's what we find with the Republican and Blue Dog Democrat attempts over the past several days to curtail spending that is in the Stimulus Package. Thinking we could continue with the same approach employed by Bush and the Republican Congress that got us into this mess - Tax Cuts - and somehow get a "stimulus" effect is wishful thinking on their part, or worse, a cynical attempt to play to their conservative base, regardless of the consequences. Sink the Stimulus and Save the GOP? What the Hell are they thinking? President Obama laughed in the clip last night that I saw, as he explained (I paraphrase): "No to Spending? What do you think Stimulus means? It means Spending!! How can you have a Stimulus Bill without Spending??" 

Paul Krugman, always wise, is getting more and more serious. In On The Edge (as in "edge of the abyss"), he writes today: 

A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to economic recovery. Over the last two weeks, what should have been a deadly serious debate about how to save an economy in desperate straits turned, instead, into hackneyed political theater, with Republicans spouting all the old clichés about wasteful government spending and the wonders of tax cuts.

It’s as if the dismal economic failure of the last eight years never happened — yet Democrats have, incredibly, been on the defensive. Even if a major stimulus bill does pass the Senate, there’s a real risk that important parts of the original plan, especially aid to state and local governments, will have been emasculated.

Somehow, Washington has lost any sense of what’s at stake — of the reality that we may well be falling into an economic abyss, and that if we do, it will be very hard to get out again.

It’s hard to exaggerate how much economic trouble we’re in. The crisis began with housing, but the implosion of the Bush-era housing bubble has set economic dominoes falling not just in the United States, but around the world.

It's time to call a Spade a Spade, put lofty post-partisan goals back in the closet, and kick some conservative rear ends. Let's force the Senate Republicans to put on the adult diapers and stand in front of the cameras on the floor of the Senate and be shown for what they are - Hoover obstructionists and reality deniers. Let them take public responsibility for putting the brakes on the stimulus package and enjoy the consequences. Even if we don't get a package, maybe in our abject misery in 2010 we can then elect overwhelming Democratic majorities and move forward. 

It is a far worse crisis that awaits us if we don't pass the stimulus package, than if either a) we have some wasteful spending buried in the stimulus bill  - GOP ARGUMENT; or b) we have a failed bipartisan approach out of the gate - EXEC BRANCH ARGUMENT - let's face it Mr. President, they don't want to play in your sand box, they are having too much fun throwing sand in your eyes.  I say don't fight back, banish them from the playground. They're not worth your time and you only lose ground trying to get them on board. Recess is over. It takes two to move into post-partisanship, and they've told you "no thanks."