So Now They Vote For A Stimulus

Amid all the squabbling about President Obama's compromise with Congressional Republicans to prolong the Bush administration's tax policy and extend unemployment benefits and tax breaks for the middle and lower classes, few have called it for what it is: another stimulus package. Considering its size -- about $858 billion -- and general purpose -- sending people more spending money, albeit at a disproportionate rate to the wealthy -- it qualifies. (To give them credit, Paul Krugman and John Cassidy have seen this; the former, to criticize it as weak medicine, and the latter, to mildly accept it as needed.)

Republicans chose to use the first stimulus, way back in January 2009, to define themselves as the "Party of No," intransigently opposed to Obama's presidency because he's a socialist and to federal spending because it irresponsibly adds to the U.S. deficit. Economists' general consensus since then, including the opinion of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, is that stimulus measure worked by grabbing the national economy by the collar and saving it from sliding off a cliff. Without it, the alternate course is easy to see.

That's far from why Republicans support the second one, though, meaning their rationale falls on at least one of these two explanations: 1. They don't really care about the federal deficit as much as they profess; or: 2. They really don't care about the federal deficit when the top 0.1 percent of the country's wealthiest benefit the most as a result of the added debt. Obama shouldn't now start skewing policy toward the wealthy to earn Republicans' support on other priorities of his, but it's certainly frustrating that it took us so long to arrive at this point, especially when there wasn't anything particularly principled about the GOP's stand from the beginning.

On a related note, after Republicans made a great show of their decision following the midterm election to stop putting earmarks in the federal budget for pet projects, it turns out many of them still put earmarks in the federal budget. So, as much as I dislike this cliche: They were against them before they were for them. Or is the other way around?