Watching Bobby Jindal give the Republican response to President Obama’s address to Congress Tuesday night I was struck by just how defiantly clueless the G.O.P. is with regard to the state of the economy. With virtually every leading economist emphatically stating that we desperately need an infusion of capital to jumpstart the economy, Jindal did his best impersonation of Leslie Nielson in the movie “Police Squad” trying to disperse a crowd looking at a massive fireworks explosion by saying, ”Nothing to see here.” Frank Drebin has nothing on Bobby Jindal. Imagine asking an entire nation to ignore reality and just go home. Yes, that was the gist of the Republican response. The Titanic has hit an iceberg and the passengers have been told to go back to their cabins and get a good night’s sleep!
Jindal was magnanimous in congratulating Obama on his historic rise to the White House and even managed to point out similarities between his family’s story and Obama’s, but, sadly, that was the highlight of the Louisiana governor’s speech. It didn’t take him long to launch into his tirade. “Who among us would ask our children for a loan so we could spend money we do not have on things we do not need? That is precisely what the Democrats in Congress just did.” Seriously, when your opening salvo references “money” and “things we do not need” and your target market is a population that is being ravaged by a historic economic collapse, you aren’t just out of touch, you’re just plain stupid. But Jindal was interminable, “Democratic leaders in Washington, they place their hope in the federal government. We place our hope in you, the American people.” Somewhere in hell, Herbert Hoover and Nero are laughing.
And just when you thought the evening couldn’t get any worse for the Republicans, Jindal outdid himself. “Today in Washington, some are promising that government will rescue us from the economic storms raging all around us. Those of us who lived through Hurricane Katrina, we have our doubts.” So, let me see if I understand you correctly, governor. The biggest single screw up in the history of the federal government, which occurred while a Republican administration and a Republican-controlled Congress were in charge, is your main rationale for rejecting a stimulus package aimed at helping those who were harmed by the very same unbridled free market system that your party has been trumpeting for the last eight years. Have I got you correctly?
Well, so long as we’re throwing out the baby with the bath water, here’s another bit of convoluted logic for you. Seeing as how we got Iraq so wrong, how about we just dismantle the armed forces of America? Preposterous, you say? Exactly! Who, in their right mind, would suggest that just because serious mistakes were made in a particular branch of the federal government that that justifies shunning any benefits said branch might offer us in the future? The Republicans, that’s who. Never mind that the “pork” they keep referring to in the stim package represents less than five percent of the overall bill; never mind that one of the examples that Jindal brought up – the $8 billion for a high-speed railway – highlights an urgent need in the country. Korea, Germany, France, Japan, and China have already modernized their rail transportation network. The U.S. continues to operate the oldest rail system of any industrialized country in the West. And while our railways, highways and bridges continue to crumble, Republicans continue to insist that all our problems will simply go away with a few “targeted” tax cuts, and that Americans once more will just pick themselves up by their own bootstraps and dust themselves off the way their forefathers did so many years ago. Shameful.
But that is the sorry state of the Republican party these days. In the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, their position is steadfast: No to government intervention, no to reinvestment in rebuilding our infrastructure, no to retooling our education system, no to reforming healthcare, and no to alternative fuels. Just yes to the same sorry, worn out record that is about as warped as your grandfather’s old 78 rpm collection. For years they kept spinning it, and for years we kept digging the tune. But this time we hit the eject button. This time we didn’t fall for the hook, line and sinker. As the rock group The Who once sang years ago, “We won’t get fooled again.”
Old ideas die hard, and new ones take time to take root. No one can predict with certainty whether the Obama Administration’s plan will get us out of this mess; a mess that was inherited, mind you. One thing is for certain: doing nothing is a recipe for disaster. As one who has seen his fair share of baseball games, I can tell you this much: no one ever hit a home run with the bat on his shoulder!
4 comments:
Isn't it amazing that Republicans who seemed unconcerned about huge budget deficits during the 8 years of Bush's presidency have suddenly become concerned about deficits? It would be nice to believe that these are just people who have different beliefs about the role of government than the rest of us, but the truth seems more sinister.
Good point. The Bush administration took a $200 billion budget surplus and turned it into a trillion dollar deficit, thanks in large part to an obscene tax break for the wealthiest people in the country that a Republican-led Congress went along with. The Iraq war also didn't help matters. Oddly enough, without those two blemishes, we might actually be talking about a balanced budget. Of course were it not for Iraq and the tax cuts, more than likely John McCain would be the president and Sarah Palin would be .... oh no, oh my God, I think I'm going to be ill!
OK, I'm back, that was close. Anyway maybe I was a bit too optimistic in thinking that not having the Iraq war and the Bush tax cuts would bring about a balanced budget. At most the war is costing us about $120 billion a year, plus what we spend in Afganistan; and the tax cuts probably cost the treasury in the neighborhood of $250 billion in lost tax revenue. Clearly we would still be in the red, but Ray's point is still valid. It all depends on where your loyalty lies; in the end Republicans have not had any problem spending money. That's why we're in the pickle we're in.
Now all of a sudden the GOP have become fiscal conservatives. What changed? The White House. It shows the current lack of leadership in the party that this is the best guy they could prop up to bash Obama. If I were they, I'd shut down, reform and reorganize under a new name.
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