|
The club complained that his "support for pork projects in the Omnibus [Budget Act] is a sad statement about the priorities of the Republican leadership in the Senate."
Certainly nobody can say that the senior senator from Kentucky has failed to make his mark with those projects. His campaign for a sixth term last autumn might as well have been a tour of the many federally funded sites that literally bear his stamp. In Owensboro, residents can stroll through Mitch McConnell Plaza, an urban renewal project that is the pride of that riverfront town. In Lexington, students can take advantage of the wonderful Mitch McConnell Distance Learning Center at the university's law school. In Louisville, joggers can stretch their legs along the Mitch McConnell Loop Trail in the city's new $38 million park.
There is all that in the Bluegrass State and much, much more -- thanks to taxpayers across the country whom McConnell is so eager to protect.
None of that means the minority leader is unique among all the other politicians in either party, although he is plainly worse than average in avarice and hypocrisy. Nor is it wrong, obviously, for political leaders to propose safeguards against waste and abuse in the enormous stimulus package.
Yet the budgetary concerns professed by the Republican leadership, whether feigned or sincere, must be balanced against the urgency of action. On Jan. 2, The New York Times explained what is at stake with admirable clarity on the front page. According to a survey of 50 top professional economic forecasters, the recession could reach bottom before the end of the second quarter in 2009, and growth slowly resume.
America could, in other words, avoid the most frightening scenarios of mass unemployment, ruin and hunger that now confront us -- but only if "the Obama administration and Congress É come through with a substantial public stimulus package, as much as $1 trillion over two years." And for the optimistic scenario to be possible, that package must pass within weeks, not months, after the new president's inauguration.
In other circumstances, the fiscal fakery of Mitch McConnell and his friends would be just another funny scene from the decline and fall of the Republican right. But it is hard to laugh when they seem determined to take the rest of us down with them.
© Creators Syndicate
Comments? Send a letter to the editor.Albion Monitor January
9, 2009 (http://www.albionmonitor.com) All Rights Reserved. Contact rights@monitor.net for permission to use in any format. |