Well, the chorus has now started singing “too small, too small” about the stimulus. What was obvious to Paul Krugman, Joe Stieglitz, Dean Baker, Jamie Galbraith, Robert Reich. Robert Kuttner, and a host of other economists is now becoming so clear that the MSM, which not very long ago, wouldn’t even cover the opinion that it was too small, preferring to cover the stimulus story as a two-valued conflict between the Administration’s inadequate proposal, and the ridiculous views of the Republican tax cutters, can no longer ignore it.
So now the problem is, how can President Obama get another $800 Billion or larger stimulus through a Senate that requires 60 votes to pass a bill, when roughly 35 probably want to see him fail, and when perhaps as many as 15 – 20 others are controlled by Republicans and Democrats who are more worried about the Federal debt our children and grandchildren will have to pay off than they are about the destruction of jobs, wealth, careers, and hopes, they are seeing every week?
I’ve answered this question before, and I’ll answer it once again. It is to use the “nuclear option” to get rid of the filibuster and remove the power of the Republican Minority to dictate whether or not there will be a recovery at all. Or, if there is one, whether it will be robust enough to bring full employment and a restructured economy.
Ending the filibuster may not be the only way to get another stimulus bill. Perhaps another “compromise” proposal diluting the stimulus with more ineffective tax cuts, along with a vigorous campaign by the President, mobilizing the ObamaNation, and beating “blue dogs” and “moderate Republicans” about the ears, will, in the presence of continuing bad economic news, scare enough of them to produce the 60 votes needed to pass another round of half-measures. But then, later, there will be a struggle over health care, a struggle over energy, a struggle over education, and continuous bleating about the deficit and the importance of being fiscally responsible, even if it requires depressing the economy and destroying national wealth or slowing its sustainable growth, so we can just grow our way out of the deficit.
Why do something like that? Why not run a national campaign against the holy filibuster to get Harry Reid and the Democrats to just get rid of it? Why not restore the constitutional requirement of a majority vote in the Senate? Why not, at long last, take our country back from those who prefer the pain of other people to the need for they, themselves to change a little?