Standing Athwart Recovery

Conservatives are never ready to stand athwart history, yelling Stop when faced with sending troops to war or bailing out a financial system they destroyed. But when it comes to government spending that might help out ordinary people they consider bad apples, conservatives go all Jack Benny and complain, "I'm thinking it over!"

On the economic stimulus package, they’re thinking it over.

In Sunday’s New York Times, Frank Rich called the stimulus bill "an inevitably imperfect hodgepodge-in-progress." Granted. But even as we stare into an economic abyss, conservative critics complain that the stimulus bill doesn't contain enough capital spending. Once they get more, of course, they'll reject it because capital projects do not inject money into the economy fast enough. No one is fooled.

Only tax cuts will satisfy them. The right’s patent medicine salesman are out in force calling for more tax cuts in the stimulus bill because, like the scorpion told the frog, it is their nature.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) pushed back against back Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) Sunday on This Week:

“No tax cut builds a road. No tax cut puts a cop on the street. No tax cut educates a child…

I don't understand why, from some of my conservative friends, building a road, building a school, helping somebody get health care, that's -- that's wasteful spending, but that war in Iraq, which is going to cost us over $1 trillion before we're through -- yes, I wish we hadn't have done that. We'd have been in a lot better shape fiscally.”

Obama was right not just about "the Muslim world," but about his own congressional critics, "your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy." In the next few months Americans will judge who can build and who can just say No.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future