PrintFebruary 7, 2010
White House playing 'gotcha'
ABC News' Ann Compton reports: The White House has the names, dates, and even photographs to challenge Republican members of Congress who voted against the Recovery Act and its spending last year, but who also went home to claim credit for projects the stimulus brought to their districts.
"A lot of you have gone to appear at ribbon cuttings for the same projects you voted against," President Obama chided the House members to their face at a policy conference one week ago.
Let's remember it was Obama who tried to act like a Washington outsider during his State of the Union address as he spoke about the public's pain from the partisanship and pettiness coming inside our nation's capital, yet here he is compiling what amounts to a "gotcha sheet" of Republicans who voted against the stimulus, but celebrated individual projects for their states/districts. If that isn't the usual partisan behavior we would expect to see coming from Washington, I don't know what it is.
But how stupid are the Republicans? The stimulus is nothing but a bad apple, we know it, and they were right to oppose it, but by taking pictures of checks that came to their respective states/districts as a result of the bill, they're acting as if there are some good parts of the apple as long as they just avoid the worms.
President Obama says even the Recovery Act spending will not be enough to bring jobs back after the deep recession.
If Obama has conceded that he spent more than $1 trillion on stimulus and it didn't get the job done, then why he doesn't he stop presenting stimulus as this great feat that's saved or created millions of jobs and saved us from the brink of collapse?
