Mark Kirk Comes Out Against Stimulus Bill

He was good with bailing out wealthy wall street investment bankers and insurance company CEOs who as it turned out used the money for CEO bonuses, lavish office makeovers and managment spa retreats, and of course good with dumping billions down the Iraq War rathole, but when it comes to you and me, Kirk says there's no money left in the till. Today, Mark Kirk sent an email to constituents saying that he doesn't want to spend any money on economic stimulus. It's in the form of one of his push poll questions, but it's clear, he wants recipients to join him in a resounding no:

Should We Borrow $2 Trillion to Spend on a Stimulus Bill? Congress Thinks So, How About You?

Dear Friend (how sweet, he thinks of me as a "friend" and he should because I'm always helping him out with sensible, solid advice):

Congress is poised to borrow over $2 trillion in just one year to pay for a stimulus bill. We know the economy is in tough shape - is this the right solution?

Last year, I supported the $700 billion bailout bill. We were told that we faced a national emergency and had to respond quickly. We did.

Today, we see things have not worked as advertised and now Congressional leaders want to borrow $2 trillion more. We are already scheduled to borrow $1 trillion to cover the current federal deficit. Congress would add another trillion for the congressional stimulus bill.

Remember, it took 40 Presidents - from George Washington to Ronald Reagan - just to build $1 trillion in federal debt. Under the current plans in Congress, the United States would borrow another $2 trillion next month.

Kirk forgot to mention in his email that it was his president and policies that Kirk himself supported that let the original stimulus money be misused. He also forgot to mention that he supported all of Bush's deficit budgets that sold our country to China for a failed and unnecessary war in Iraq. He got the number wrong too. They aren't voting on $2 trillion. It's $825 billion.

Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman thinks that we need a large stimulus package, the bigger the better. Krugman quoted then President-Elect Obama earlier this month and commented:

"If we don’t act swiftly and boldly,” declared President-elect Barack Obama in his latest weekly address, “we could see a much deeper economic downturn that could lead to double-digit unemployment.” If you ask me, he was understating the case.

The fact is that recent economic numbers have been terrifying, not just in the United States but around the world. Manufacturing, in particular, is plunging everywhere. Banks aren’t lending; businesses and consumers aren’t spending. Let’s not mince words: This looks an awful lot like the beginning of a second Great Depression.

Then, Krugman predicted guys like Kirk and associated him with the nightmare scenerio (Well, that isn't all that hard. I've been doing it for years.):

In reality, the political posturing has already started, with Republican leaders setting up roadblocks to stimulus legislation while posing as the champions of careful Congressional deliberation — which is pretty rich considering their party’s behavior over the past eight years.

Here’s my nightmare scenario: It takes Congress months to pass a stimulus plan, and the legislation that actually emerges is too cautious. As a result, the economy plunges for most of 2009, and when the plan finally starts to kick in, it’s only enough to slow the descent, not stop it. Meanwhile, deflation is setting in, while businesses and consumers start to base their spending plans on the expectation of a permanently depressed economy — well, you can see where this is going.

So what is it that Mark Kirk is trying to stop? Green spending. Health care spending. Jobs. Solutions for bad mortgages and people who cannot afford to pay them.

On Tuesday, President Obama asked us all to "proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics," but Kirk decided he'd rather stick to worn out dogmas and old childish tricks like push polling to convince constituents using misleading statements and fact omissions to conclude that the future of our country is not worth the investment.

Just a couple of months ago, right before the November election, Kirk and his supporters ran around the district with Kirk/Obama posters convincing district voters that he was going to support the Obama agenda. It was what probably saved his congressonal seat. Not a full week into the Obama presidency and he's already positioning himself as an obstructionist. I wonder if the voters who relied on those Kirk/Obama signs are sorry now.