A Stimulating Debate, Part 3

President Obama's call for more job stimulus spending fell on deaf ears n Washington this week as even Democrats are now convinced more spending is bad (as opposed to, you know, higher unemployment.)

Republicans aren't the only ones saying no to more spending. Late last week, several Democrats said they were unwilling to support the jobs package before the Senate, which includes several administration priorities. Among them: provisions to revive emergency benefits for unemployed workers, which expired June 2, as well as $24 billion in state aid that Obama has called critical to averting "massive layoffs" of public-sector workers.

But the package also would increase budget deficits by nearly $80 billion over the next decade. Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said that's too much at a time when the total national debt is $13 trillion and rising. "The more we borrow on these important areas," he said last week, "the more I think we will retard the recovery period dramatically because of more deficit and debt." 

Ahh, good ol' Ben Nelson.  You know, for once I can actually understand his ground game on this, Nebraska's unemployment rate is only 5.0%, half the national number, so why should he go out on a limb for Obama?  You know, other than it's the right thing to do.

Kent Conrad of North Dakota is at least more honest.

"If the White House wants this stuff," said a House Democratic aide, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about intraparty affairs, "they actually have to fight for it."

The administration has offered other, more popular ideas for combating a 9.7 percent unemployment rate, including a fund to promote small-business lending that the House is likely to approve this week. Unlike the state aid package, that measure has a designated funding source and will not increase deficits.

With Republicans hammering Democrats over the tide of red ink, paying for jobs bills may be the only way to pass them in advance of this fall's midterm elections, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said Monday.

"The problem is what's necessary in the short term and what's necessary in the long term are directly contradictory," said Conrad, a deficit hawk who pushed hard to create a special commission to address the nation's soaring debt. "In the short term, however, I believe we need more stimulus, unpaid for, because we continue to have weakness . . . But politically, unless things are paid for, it's going to be hard to get them through." 

The GOP has no intention of paying for it politically.  they win if the unemployment rate goes up because hey, they're not in charge.  Why should they lift a finger when they can blame the Dems?  It amazes me that the people who say "We can't rob from our children's plates" on the deficits are the ones seeing families and children have to go on food stamps and welfare rather than spend money on job stimulus.

Sadly, it's the Democrats saying it.