Prometheus 6

I suppose our Republican Congressfolk can legitimately claim they aren't required to cooperate because they weren't the one who campaigned on bipartisanship and change. And I can't help but wonder how much support they have outside the Conservative punditry circles.

A report by the Congressional Budget Office found that only about $136 billion of the $355 billion that House leaders want to allocate to infrastructure and other so-called discretionary programs would be spent by Oct. 1, 2010. The rest would come in future years, long after the CBO and other economists predict the recession will have ended....

But the CBO analysis appears to confirm the complaints of many Republicans and other critics, who have long argued that spending money on highway construction and other infrastructure projects is ineffective at quickly jolting a sluggish economy. The report was distributed to reporters yesterday by aides to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)

The report also suggests that the House measure would violate Obama's rules for the stimulus package; Obama aides have said they want the bulk of the spending to occur before 2011. Obama has pledged that the measure would save or create at least 3 million jobs over the next two years.

And, of course, there was no such report. It turned out to be a three page table based on a small part of the package.

And here's David Brooks and Mark Shields on PBS' The Newshour.

MARK SHIELDS: If anything -- I think David would agree with this -- we've been overwhelmed by their transparency, I mean, whether it's pool reports or whatever else, everything that's done seems to be open and it's, frankly, getting tedious.

DAVID BROOKS: I don't know about that. I'm trying to figure out what's going on with the stimulus package. I can't get word one.

MARK SHIELDS: I couldn't disagree more. I mean, I think the stimulus package was a perfect example of this. Stimulus package -- the House Appropriations Committee put it up on the Web last Thursday. It was there for everybody to see, not simply Republicans, any citizen of the country. They didn't vote on it until Wednesday.

I mean, that's precedent-shattering in this city. That isn't the way things are done.

Obviously, if President Obama is serious about generating some national unity, he's going to have to figure out how to speak to Republican Party members without going through the Republican Party leadership.