IMHO, they spent it on the wrong things... It only ended up increasing gubmint jobs and paychecks and did little to help the rest of America... It "created or saved" few jobs, and the numbers are all made up anyway... not a good measure of success...
I don't think it increased government jobs. And I haven't seen anything to suggest it did. Government has been thebiggest employer in the U.S. for a very long time. Sadly, Walmart is second.
on the other hand, i do think they spent it less appropriately than they should have. they put too much into tax cuts for business and,instead, should have gone to those shovel ready projects i was talking about. i think obama was too moderate onthe issue and thought by being moderate, he'd get some moderate repubs on board.
Republicans forced nobody... They have a 60 vote majority, but acted like the minority party... The reason is obvious... Make it a bipartisan effort and they don't eat the blame...
or maybe Obama was keeping his promise to try to end the partisan BS... personally, I thought once Rush said "I hope he fails", that Obama should have realized it wasn't ever going to happen. You don't trade things away at the beginning even before you start.
and maybe he wanted people to do the right thing. you can't be so blinded by partisanship (or general distaste for government) that you can discount the possibility that he wanted to be a certain type of president for legacy reasons.... and not for blame.
Every President should be judged on his actions - there is no grace period... Barry hasn't just been atending events and getting awards and peace prizes and such...
That is your opinion... I have seen that democrats don't like playing with others...
I agree that every president should be judged for his actions...which is why I laugh when people talk about how "bush kept us safe". (living here in NYC, I have kind of a funny view of bush's safety record).
democrats are used to fighting with each other... you might recall a famous quote by Will Rogers, saying "I don't belong to any organized political party -- i'm a democrat". it's one of the reasons i don't understand the whole "libs" thing... you think I'm a lib... but when people talk about certain issues, i sound more conservative... of course, then you get to "social issues" like reproductive choice and marriage equality for gays".... at which point, you might think I'm a lib, but they're really classic libertarian concepts.
the repubs, however, are so used to marching in lockstep since the ronald reagan/lee atwater/ karl rove days, that they don't have any room in their party for disagreement or diversity... the whole "RINO" phenomenon... To me, the republicans were always the smart, rich guys... they were never anti-intellectual, radical religious right, neo-conservative extremists. and you might not like it, but if that's not how the party is really, they're sure creating that perception for people outside of the party.
