I Was Not Present

It seems the Republicans are not happy with the latest theft from the taxpayers.

President Barack Obama got the $825 (or $1.2 trillion over a decade) stimulus package through the House of Representatives but the 244 to 188 vote is a hollow victory indeed. Without a single Republican voting for the bill, his high-profile visit to Capitol Hill on Tuesday came to exactly naught - at least on the House side.

They didn't even get all the Democrats to vote for the bill. Eleven of them defected. And what was the Republican objection? Not enough tax cuts and too much directed spending. Better known as pork.

The Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill badly miscalculated by treating the bill as a victor's charter. Not that it seemed to bother Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, who grinned from ear to ear as she announced the result of the vote.

Obama said yesterday he did not feel he had ownership of the bill. Be that as it may, if it goes through the Senate in similar fashion and is signed into law then - the efforts of Pelosio and Senator Harry Reid notwithstanding - it will be his and his alone.

Senator and now President Present says the buck stops over there. And Congress spending like drunken sailors? That unfairly maligns drunken sailors. The sailors use their own money.

H/T Instapundit