February 19, 2009

Hurry Up, and Wait

Thomas Sowell with another brilliant assessment.
Nothing in the amateurish way the current administration has begun suggests that they have mastered even the mechanics of governing, much less the complexities of the huge national problems looming ahead, at home and abroad.
...as Sowell reminds us, Congress couldn't take two days to review the bill before they voted but the President allowed it to sit on his desk for three. An administration with a clue would have had the timing better coordinated.
There is far more to fear from this administration than its amateurism in governing. The urgency with which it has rushed through a monumental spending bill, whose actual spending will not be completed even after 2010, ought to set off alarm bells among those who are not in thrall to the euphoria of Obama’s presidency.

The urgency was real, even if the reason given was phony. President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, let slip a valuable clue when he said that a crisis should not go to waste, that a crisis is an opportunity to do things that you could not do otherwise.
The longer the stimulepork bill sat under the bright sunshine, the more it wreaked. Since the "opportunity" window was closing, debate was stifled; they had no time to listen to dissent.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

and many Republicans took full advantage of the urgency to put many "pork" programs in that had nothing to do with the immediate needs to help the national economy. They knew what they were doing. What a great time to slip all of those programs past the noses of the public.

page13 said...

When every House Republican and all but three GOP Senators voted against the bill, how exactly did they slip in pork?

Anonymous said...

Anonymous #1 said: "and many Republicans took full advantage of the urgency to put many "pork" programs in that had nothing to do with the immediate needs to help the national economy."

I concur with page13- can you please qualify your statement?

Anonymous said...

They put the pork in because they knew it was going to pass. Voting against it was one huge political game. They couldn't stop it, so they voted against it (so they could play the game saying that THEY didn't support it) and then the Rs jumped on the "waste the taxpayers money with pork programs" train...and then went home and boasted about the new programs they got for their own state. Most of which had nothing to do with rebuilding the national economy.

You want to stop waste, bring back the line item veto.

----Anonymous #1