| So the stimulus bill -- HB 645 -- sailed through the House yesterday, but "not without naysayers," as the headline on Mike Dennison's report declares. And whoever wrote the headline wasn't kidding.
Tom McGillvray: "I just have to make the point that this may be the beginning of the end of our society as we know it."
Joel Boniek: "I have a sense that we're presiding over the demise of the Republic."
But it's Michael More who earned the prize for the most amusing rhetoric in his outburst against the stimulus spending bill:
More rose to speak on the bill and began by saying a Judiciary Committee hearing that morning on a bill to define a person as beginning at human conception had been "cut short" by the call to begin House debate on HB645.
Committee members had been discussing issues of God and conception, yet then were called to the House "to the sound of money falling from the skies, for all of us to roll over in and lap up," More said. "I have to ask, what of this question of God? What God do we serve? Is this all pretense? The pledge of allegiance, the invocation, every time we come to the (House) floor?"
Two observations. First, those opposing the stimulus spending bill make no mention of our current economic crisis, offer no mention of economic policy or theory, offer no counter solution to the crisis, and seem to lack any coherent vision of how a viable system would operate. Instead we are treated to angry rhetoric and dumbed-down talking points from a now-defunct 1990s political movement.
There are real reasons to be concerned with the federal government's stimulus spending. There are real reasons to be concerned with a massive federal deficit. But this stimulus spending bill is the least offensive of the federal spending bills aimed at curbing the current recession. And the state legislature is hardly the place to change federal policy.
Second, while a number of House Republicans joined Democrats in supporting the stimulus spending bill, most did not. And given that the rhetoric of the Republican majority is apocalyptic (to say the least), I'm guessing we'll a lot more action by the radical element of the party to ditch its moderate wing. That won't be good for Montana -- we all saw the fruit of that strategy play out in the last legislative session with an angry, combative, and radical leadership among House Republicans driving the legislature almost to a standstill.
Whee. |
