A Major Milestone?

The Stimulus bill passed and it is being called “a major milestone” for President Obama. But I do not see this as any significant effort. The simple fact was that a stimulus bill was going to pass as Republicans could not have stopped it. The best they could have done was influence it, but the Democrat’s response to any Republican input was “we won the election.” Sure they wanted Republican support, but not if it meant Republicans had any real input on the end result.

Nor did they need Republican support. The Democrats have a lock on the Congress, something Republicans have not had in a 100 years. Neither did Clinton have this. In fact you have to go back to Carter to find the last President who had the luxury of being able to effectively ignore the other party.

Yet with such a majority, and the opportunity it gives to a president to enact their programs and policies, Obama seems to have voluntarily stepped to the sidelines and let Pelosi and Reid handle the stimulus bill. He didn’t seem to care what was in the bill, as long as it was called a stimulus bill, and it was about $800 billion. Obama’s leadership was essentially little more than asking politicians to spend a huge amount of money. Getting politicians to spend money is not a significant accomplishment.

This is a far cry from the leadership of previous presidents of both parties as very few had been in the position of Obama. To get their policies enacted into law took a lot of skill and work to craft a bill that met their goals and yet still had enough support to pass both the house and the senate. Obama’s leadership on the stimulus bill was akin to taking some children to a candy store, handing them a lot of money, and they taking credit when they were able to spend it. I am afraid that the end result will be not be that much different than for kids who have gorged themselves on candy.