| The heightened rhetoric reflects White House frustration that Obama's earlier efforts, which included high-profile visits to House and Senate Republicans last month, yielded not a single House GOP vote for the legislation. In the Senate, Obama and his allies were battling Friday for just a handful of Republican votes to avoid a bill-stopping filibuster. "He's going on offense," Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., said after listening to Obama's more combative speech Thursday at a House Democrats' retreat. "I think the president decided that it's time to lay out the facts to the American people, as he did going into the campaign, and take control of this debate." "We can't sit back and just let them define us," Clyburn said. ....Obama and his Democratic allies agreed to kill a few such provisions, such as money to resod the National Mall, in hopes of winning some Republican senators' support. Around midweek, however, Obama began changing his tone. Democrats need not apologize or compromise further except on small items, he said. Some critics, he said at Thursday's retreat, contend the bill "is full of pet projects. When was the last time that we saw a bill of this magnitude move out with no earmarks in it? Not one." Ratcheting up the sarcasm, the president said: "So then you get the argument, 'well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill.' What do you think a stimulus is?" "That's the whole point," he said, as the audience hooted and applauded. |
You have poll results showing a sharp decline in approval of the bill since details became known, Obama needs this to pass quickly. But all this drama exposed Obama and gave Republicans new life because it showed Obama is thin-skinned with his talks of bipartisanship being great as long as its on his terms.
If he doesn't get his way , here comes a hissy fit. The GOP realizes its not the end of the world and they can go after Obama using what the Dems did to Bush which was snipping and cutting at him bleeding his support by a thousand cuts over time.
The next step when this bill passes is to keep on where, how and why the money is being spent in the various states. The type of programs it will be spent on and create is ripe for the typical wasteful and corrupt spending that can be used at a later date to point out that critics were right about it.
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