I hope President Obama doesn’t plan to take his bipartisan shtick too far. As he said in a meeting with the Republican cry-babies yesterday, he won the election. More important, Mr. President, we your supporters, won the election. With respect, that means we should get what we voted for. And we did not vote for tax breaks to big business and handouts to the richest of the rich.
I am troubled, Mr. President, by some of your key players – Tim Geithner, who was one of the whiz-kids who got us into the financial mess we’re in, Larry Summers, an old supply-side guru from way back, and Raytheon lobbyist William J. Lynn III, to name a few.
Most troubling of all is the stimulus package wending its way through Congress. It has been watered down to the point where I can hardly recognize it as a stimulus package. Less than 20 per cent is now assigned to the rebuilding of crumbling roads and bridges, construction of a modern electrical grid, and so on. The biggest slice of the pie consists of tax breaks (see New York Times chart below), and while some of the breaks go to po’ folks like me, the lion’s share of it is designated for Big Business and “the upper classes.” If you allow Republicans to dilute the stimulus package, my response would be to echo Hillary’s old war cry: “Shame on you Barack Obama!”
I understand that you are trying to be “the President of all Americans,” not just those who voted for you, but what’s the point of having elections if the losers get their way?
