Sunday, February 08, 2009

McCaskill Touts Senate Compromise on Stimulus

Appearing on NBC's Meet The Press this morning, Sen. Claire McCaskill touted a stimulus compromise reached in the U.S. Senate with a group of moderate Republicans late Friday.

"We did compromise in the Senate," McCaskill said. "We had a group of Republican Senators in a room and we worked hour after hour and by the way that door was open to every Republican in the Senate."

"The building is on fire, and what we typically do in Washington is argue what color of fire truck do we send to the scene," she added, noting that lawmakers need to "quit playing games," avoid procedure votes and pass the package early this week.

ON THE SPENDING IN THE BILL: "The vast majority of this bill will spend out quickly. It's not going to be enough . . . but to do nothing, do we really think we can sit around here in Washington watching this job loss and just try another tax cut for really wealthy people like George Bush did. I don't think so."

BUT ACKNOWLEDGES HOUSE DEMS MAY HAVE OVERREACHED: "I do think there was some spending in the bill that was makeup for a starvation diet under the Bush administration. I think some of the money that we cut . . . was in fact, spending that more appropriately should go in an Appropriations bill.

Notes the bill is 40% tax cuts, 60% spending.

CALLS DASCHLE'S DEMISE A WAKE UP CALL BUT OBAMA'S RESPONSE REFRESHING:"He looked in the camera and said I screwed up. That doesn't happen very often."

2 comments:

boyd said...

Nothing ever changes in Washington. These same people were crying about the rush to pass the home land security bill. Remember that? The logic of this simulus bill is goofy. If 800 billion of newly printed dollars will save the economy, why not spend 800 trillion and we can all retire!

Paul Seale said...

Talking to three Republicans and actually increasing the money spent (much of which will be added back in during the conference version) does not constitute bipartisanship.

Would like to see where you get your numbers on the tax cuts versus spending. What I've seen at from the Heratige foundation and other institutions say other wise.

There is a reason the bill is named "porkulus."