Rushing to the End of the GOP?

By John LeBoutillier

The "rush" that hurts us all is - not Rush Limbaugh - but rushing into a massive almost-$800 billion spending bill without the proper hearings, time to consider and debate.

Yes, the so-called stimulus is almost the law of the land. But that does not make it the best possible stimulus bill to help revive a sick economy.

In fact, this is the third time in the last 6-1/2 years that a president - twice G.W. Bush and now Barack Obama - has basically held a gun to Congress's head and forced them to short-circuit their normal way of doing legislative business - a 'way' that has served our nation well for over 200 years.

But in the 2002 vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq, the September/October 2008 TARP votes and now this massive stimulus spending bill, the Congress has been "rushed" into making fork-in-the-road decisions that will affect the country for decades to come.

Mistakes are made in this situation. No member of either the House or Senate has yet read this huge over-1,000-page bill; nor will they before they vote on it. Hand-written additions - of huge consequence - will be snuck in, and few if any members will even know about them until it is too late.

Now, the basic thought behind this Democratic-written bill is simple: Democrats and liberals believe that any and all government spending - no matter what it is spent on - is a good thing. The Left loves government spending - on everything!

They truly believe the more government spends, the more it gins up economic activity. Thus, they blatantly put all those pork elements in there because they believed even those wasteful, ridiculous items will help spur a sick economy. They are the true practitioners of Trickle Down (from D.C.) Economics. [more...]