THE STIMULUS BILL….Tim Fernholz points to this Bloomberg piece about Mitch McConnell’s reaction to a massive stimulus bill:
“A trillion-dollar spending bill would be the largest spending bill in the history of our country at a time when our national debt is already the largest in history,” McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said in a statement. “As a result, it will require tough scrutiny and oversight. Taxpayers, already stretched to the limit, deserve nothing less.”
McConnell called for giving lawmakers and the public at least one week to review the legislation once it has been written. He also said he wanted Senate committee hearings on the measure, rather than immediate floor consideration.
Italics mine. Obviously McConnell is just trying to rustle up opposition to the bill, and his tired invocation of “fraud and waste” harkens back to equally tired Republican opposition to the WPA in FDR’s day. It’s pretty weak tea. Still, I’ll give him a pass on this. If the public stance of the Democratic leadership during a Republican presidency was a request for one week of hearings and review on a $700 billion measure, that would seem pretty reasonable to me. Coming from a Republican during a Democratic presidency, it seems pretty reasonable too. I’ll bet McConnell gets that and more. Hopefully, the days of thousand-page bills coming out of conference and getting sent to the floor within 24 hours died when….
….Mitch McConnell’s party lost control of the Senate. I say, let it stay dead.
