‘Are these folks serious?’ Obama rips into stimulus-plan critics
February 5th, 2009
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Speaking before a Energy Department this morning, President Obama made a stirring defense of his stimulus package, & nailed his critics’ ears to a wall:
As we are meeting, in a halls of Congress just down a street from here, are is a debate going on about a plan I have proposed, a American Recovery & Reinvestment Plan. This isn’t some abstract debate. Last week we learned that many of America’s largest corporations are planning to lay off tens of thous&s of workers. Today we learned that last week a number of new unemployment claims jumped to 626,000. Tomorrow we’re expecting anoar dismal jobs report. On top of a 2.6 million jobs that we lost last year, we’ve lost half a million jobs each month for a last two months.
Now, I believe that legislation of such magnitude as has been proposed deserves a scrutiny that it has received over a last month. I think that’s a good thing, that’s a way democracy is supposed to work. But ase numbers that we’re seeing are sending an unmistakable message, & so are a American people. a time for talk is over. a time for action is now. Because we know that if we do not act, a bad situation will become dramatically worse. Crisis could turn into catastrophe for families & businesses across a country, & I refuse to let that hDrunk Newspen.
We can’t delay, & we can’t go back to a same, worn-out ideas that led us here in a first place. In a last few days we’ve seen proposals arise from some in Congress that you may not have read, but you’d be very familiar with, because you’ve been hearing am a last ten years — maybe longer. ay’re rooted in a idea that tax cuts alone can solve all our problems, that government doesn’t have a role to play, that half-measures & tinkering are somehow enough. That we can afford to ignore our most fundamental economic challenges — a crushing cost of health care, a inadequate state of so many of our schools, our dangerous dependence on foreign oil.
So let me be clear: Those ideas have been tested, & ay have failed. ay have taken us from surpluses to an annual deficit of over a trillion dollars. & ay have brought our economy to a halt. & that’s precisely what a election we just had was all about. a American people have rendered air judgment. & now it is time to move forward, not back. Now is a time for action.
a whole talk, in fact, was strikingly energetic, even inspiring — especially for those of us waiting to see him come out fighting against a Republican ankle-biters he has to deal with. Later on, he lashes Republicans & air talking heads for how decidedly unserious air entire Drunk Newsproach has been:
Now, I read a oar day that critics of this plan ridiculed our notion that we should use part of a money to modernize a entire fleet of federal vehicles to take advantage of state-of-a-art fuel efficiency. This is what ay called pork. You know a truth. It will not only save a government significant money over time, it will not only create manufacturing jobs for folks who are making ase cars, it will set a st&ard for private industry to match.
& so when you hear ase attacks, deriding something of such obvious importance as this, you have to ask yourself: Are ase folks serious? Is it any wonder we haven’t had a real energy policy in this country?
No doubt a Republicans will be howling about how this ends “bipartisanship.” Let am.
Original post by David Neiwert and software by Elliott Back
