February 14th, 2009:

via Congress Passes Stimulus Package – washingtonpost.com.

After Voting Largely Along Party Lines, $787 Billion Bill Goes to Obama

By Shailagh Murray and Paul Kane Washington Post Staff Writers

Saturday, February 14, 2009; Page A01

President Obama honors Lincoln at banquet

With the final vote coming late in the night, Congress yesterday approved a $787 billion stimulus package that aims to spur millions of jobs through massive new investments in energy, transportation, education and health-care projects, while reviving social safety-net programs that have been shrinking for nearly three decades.

The bill passed the House 246 to 183 and, in a vote held open for several hours, the Senate 60 to 38, both largely along party lines. President Obama is expected to sign it into law early next week.

The legislation represents the start of a new ideological era that places the federal government at the center of the nation’s economic recovery.

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The passage is an early triumph for Obama, even though he was able to attract only three Republican senators to sign on…

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Republicans were scornful of the legislation, depicting it as pork-laden and ineffective. “This bill is supposed to be about jobs, jobs, jobs, and it’s turned into nothing more than spend, spend, spend,” said House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio).

Are the Republicans in Congress stubborn or are they just plain stupid? Jobs, jobs, jobs are created by spend, spend, spend. There’s no other way. The massive economic lift seen during the build-up to war in the early 40s was caused by unprecedented government spending on the war machine.

From the International Herald Tribune, Roosevelt’s slow embrace of government spending, January 2009:

It would not be until the early 1940s, with the beginning of World War II, that a strong dose of Keynesian medicine was administered to the American economy. By 1942, total government spending as a share of the economy rose to 52 percent, and peaked at nearly 70 percent in 1944, when unemployment fell to 1 percent.

The economic boom in the 1940′s was accomplished through heavy government spending. Tax cuts failed. They have failed to produce economic growth in the past and they will fail in the future.

Along with that, Republicanism failed. They have doubled down on a failed policy. Republicanism has failed for the last thirty years, and Americans are just now waking up to that fact. Republicanism will fail in the future. Republicans were promised an “permanent  majority” by Rove and Nordquist and Gingrich. But Republicans have turned out to be the LOSERS! Did they think Americans are so dumb they couldn’t see beyond spin?

Bush thinks he left a gift for the corporations and money men. He thought Republicanism would rule in the 111th Congress. His trick backfired. Now Obama can take a progressive agenda forward because of Bush’s failures. President Obama can push this anti-Bush agenda for years because Bush’s failures go so deep. This stimulus bill is the beginning. The tide is still turning.