reply from my democratic congresscritter on his vote against the stimulus - confusing?

[spanone]

Dear Mr. Spanone,


Thank you for contacting me about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.



President Obama gets high marks for trying to bring change to Washington, but Congress isn't living up to its end of the bargain. In the face of millions of lost jobs and an economy that continues to shut down, the House passed a bill loaded with pet projects that won't provide the jobs Americans need.



Let me be clear: our economy needs immediate stimulus. That's why I called for Congress to pass President Obama's plan to cut regressive payroll taxes, invest in the nation's infrastructure and extend social insurance for Americans going through hard times. That plan would provide an immediate, much-needed jolt to our economy.



Unfortunately, some longtime House members saw the recovery plan as an opportunity to advance parochial political agendas. Some of these may have been good ideas, some may have been bad ideas-but we didn't get a chance to discuss them, and they weren't designed to help our economy recover in the short term. (Many of them contained new, long-term commitments.) President Obama delivered a bipartisan, win-win proposal, and Congress turned it into the rare lose-lose: a plan that may fail to stimulate the economy while saddling our children and grandchildren with unprecedented debt.



The Senate takes up this bill next, and already its price tag is growing. It will be a mistake to add more ornaments to this Christmas tree. Instead, we should pass the timely, targeted bill President Obama proposed: one that helps America start recovering from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.


Sincerely,

Jim Cooper
Member of Congress

[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. A right wing "Democrat?" nt

[MadMaddie]

2. When is old Jim up for reelection?

[JayMusgrove]

3. Every member of the House of Representatives: every two years!!

Does this guy want to "spend more time with his family"?

Is he on a death wish? Or maybe just stupid.

[MadMaddie]

10. I think we have our roadmap laid out for us

We will have to get involved in states that have Jims and help get him voted out.

[spanone]

11. ...i just want to respond intelligently to his mumbo-jumbo

he's been on the public teat his whole career


he's smart...rhodes scholar, harvard law school

[spanone]

4. i'm tryin' to decipher this. he voted against the house bill but wants the senate to pass the bill?

[JayMusgrove]

5. Okay, we know he's just stupid. He obviously doesn't even know

how Congress is supposed to work.

[last_texas_dem]

6. I think he's saying that Congress should have passed Obama's original bill

without any of the alterations by members of Congress. It sounds like he's opposed to the Senate version passing b/c it will include more spending than the House version that he opposed did.

[spanone]

7. in other words he's against ANY changes to President Obama's original bill?

that hardly makes sense, he's been in congress since 83, he knows how the game works.

but that may be what he's saying....

[last_texas_dem]

8. I agree with you about his expectations being unrealistic

I do tend to agree with the guy about what the priorities of the legislation should be, and regarding the goal of trying to keep as many extraneous expenses out of the bill as possible (though that's certainly a subjective determination to make), but I think he should be more specific about what changes he finds so objectionable; there must be some particular things that he finds very objectionable that would cause him to go from praising Obama's original bill to not even voting for the House version.

[spanone]

9. thanks for that insight...if it's so objectionable, then why did so many of his colleagues vote + ?

[last_texas_dem]

12. Well, he is a Blue Dog, but, then again,

a pretty substantial majority of the Blue Dogs supported the legislation. And TN-5 seems to be a pretty solidly Democratic district, so it's unlikely that his constituents were demanding that he oppose the bill...