Okay, and many of our Republican political leaders are right there with him with their pet projects. Which was my point. You painted this as the Republicans standing up to the out of control spending, I simply pointed out that as a "politics as usual", many Republicans are standing shoulder to shoulder with the Democrats on this massively out of control bill. They lack ONE Republican vote to make this happen. And that vote can be bought for about a dozen amendments or less.
Yeah, Republicans are standing up to Obama's wasteful spending alright.
Your point is a good one, and the very fact that both parties are ultimately concerned only with their own prosperity, and everything else being a secondary concern is not only obvious to anyone willing to actually pay attention without bias, but also the underlying cause of how we got to the disaster we are in today.
Still it seems most are only too happy to sit back and root for their team, and almost everyone else just accepts trying to find the least of the evils to vote into office.
Problem is that there is an unbelievable amount of power and dollars involved here, and this seems to overshadow any initial good moral intent of any lawmakers.
So though it may seem to save us all a few hundred million in spending if there is opposition to the rampant spending we are seeing today from the democratic party (who seems to view their new majority and current economic conditions as a license to steal from the American public) is not only a laugh in comparison to the amounts being discussed, but also may end up being a total laugh as the opposition is "bought" with inclusions of their own desired pork.
You can debate socialism all you like (I do not even care if you agree on the definition or not) but what we are seeing here is not truly socialism, and though it is obviously a move in that direction and a very serious attack on the very make up of our country and government it has many more potential problems than many are willing to admit to.
The question should be is adding to the power of government and ever increasing its size while creating many new programs that are popular in socialist countries a good or bad thing for America, capitalism, and the American people?
I believe to properly answer this question one needs to have a good understanding of just how our government works, how our tax system works, all the other ways our government creates revenue (I would be surprised if the majority of money used to support government came from income tax, or if the working class was not supplying the majority of this income), how things are actually done in politics (like how the ordeal with IL Gov. Blago is only politics as usual, and absolutely the norm and not the exception), how corporations have a large amount of clout in the creation of new laws, where the BIG money has gone, why two family members need to be working to achieve less than our grandparents, and exactly what is the long term plan for our country and who is making and going to prosper from this plan and who is not.
Sound like a lot to think about all at once? I think it is as well, but if we want to be able to help ourselves improve our future we will need to understand all of this and more, and though we do not have to agree on every point etc we do need to accept the basics and why we have found our way to where we are if we are to expect to have any chance of making things better for the future.
One other issue is that nothing worth having will come easy, and all sides and ways of thinking will need to give up something.
Remember that those who have the advantage now have fought to get it, and will fight to maintain it to extremes I do not believe many would accept, and if we (the working class, and working poor) are to expect to get back anything we will need to fight for it.
Now the question is just how hard are you willing to fight, how much time are you going to invest, and just how seriously are you going to attempt to fight for your way of life?
This may sound a little odd (it did to me at first as well) but unless you like your wife having to work to be able to pay your bills and not live in the street, and love the idea of strangers raising your children, having the government run school system instill their beliefs into your children, risk losing everything you have managed to earn by allowing the current system of he with the most $$$ gets the laws he wants passed which will only lead to additional wasteful government spending (will trillions only be the beginning?) which will continue to whittle away at the American dream while our government continues to pander to the various communist and tyrant run countries that hold our debt.
Too many people on both sides of the political divide, and way too many corporations have been selling the US down the river for too long while realizing gains for themselves that the average American would find unthinkable or unbelievable.
Our system is and has been out of balance for a long time now, and it seems neither party is able to bring things back to being balanced. If our politicians can not or are just unwilling to make the hard choices to fix this problem (the one they engineered in the first place) then the responsibility will ultimately fall on the American public.
If the politicians or the American public do not stand up to the challenge then we can expect more of the same of what we have today and whatever the balance of the river we are rolling down throws our way.
How are you going to make a difference?