Well, it finally passed… the economic stimulus bill, that is. It passed the House with ZERO Republicans voting for it, while in the Senate only three Republicans voted for it. Will it work? We’ll have to wait and see.

 

According to whichever poll you read, going back to late December, 2008 through the end of January, 2009, between 51% and 54% of the American people opposed—and supposedly still do—any stimulus based on massive government spending programs.

 

They support tax cuts instead, even though economists, both Republican and Democrat, agree that an immediate stimulus package is necessary involving BOTH: government spending AND tax cuts.

 

Besides, if we add up all of the tax cuts over the past eight-years with the Republicans in charge, the total is about $1.3 TRILLION. So what happened?

 

It’s been nothing but a “blame game” since the bottom ripped out of the economy last year.

 

There is more than enough of it for EVERYONE. I’m not going to repeat it all here. Doing so would not fix the problem.

 

However, I disagree that President Obama faces an economy just like that of then President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. He doesn’t.

 

There are striking differences between Roosevelt’s reality of yesteryear and Obama’s of today: something that our current crop of stalwart individualists should consider.

 

In 1933, the financial devastation was not only far-reaching, but also highly visible, even without TV footage.

 

Millions saw the soup lines, tent cities, and cardboard villages right in their own cities and towns. Unemployment was epidemic. People stood on our nation’s street corners selling whatever they could to survive.

 

The nation didn’t need TV footage. They could see it… experience it… up close and very personal. There were no cable TV or radio talking-head windbags to “guide” the national opinion.

 

There was no Liberal and Conservative bloggers telling the country how stupid the other side was and passing around all the hype of partisan blame.

 

Oh, and some other things were missing, too. No federal or state unemployment insurance! NO FDIC insured bank deposits, either. And, NO welfare of any consequence.

 

No job? Tough break! If your bank closed because it went broke, so did you! Your money was gone and that was the end of it.

 

Find yourself an empty refrigerator carton and try to stay warm; that is, of course, if you didn’t starve first. People were majorly pissed and NOT in the mood for partisan bickering.

 

They wanted ACTION… real action taken in the bests interests of the country and NOT those of the financial services industry.

 

Our grandparents were raising their families as the depression peaked. It was personal. A living hell and not just something they heard about on the radio.

 

Our parents, while still growing toward adulthood, nevertheless experienced related hardships directly. They lived them. Many watched, helplessly, as their parents grew tired, wrinkled, weary, and often died from the stress of it all.

 

To me, however, the Great Depression is a bookmark in our history books. A bleak period that we studied in school that conjured up mere clinical feelings of concern.

 

But it’s not the same as having lived it… personally, while trying to raise a family. As I wrote above, it’s a different story when the devastation is up close and personal.

 

As an adult, I’ve never been unemployed. I’ve never known a time without both state and federal unemployment insurance.

 

I’ve never deposited money into a bank account that was not fully FDIC insured, up to $100,000 per account.

 

I’m now retired with a very secure PENSION, not a 401k. It’s mine until I die, no matter what happens.

 

And, while millions of people today are nowhere near as financially secure as this, unfortunately, their numbers are still not quite high enough to call this mess another “depression.”

 

In fact, Congress passed the Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2008 to extend benefits for those affected by the economic meltdown that began rearing its ugly head last year.

 

It’s still “merely” a recession to many people. But this is about to change for millions more of us. That act expires at the end of next month (March 31). When it does, let’s see what the polls say then.

 

So, it’s been more difficult for President Obama to get HIS bill passed simply because the country has yet to witness the full impact of the financial meltdown.

 

No, the full reality of the problem has not yet hit a sufficient number of the “right” people. But, fear not; it’s coming.

 

So far, the United States Congress has not felt the full fury of the nation. If they keep conducting business as usual, they’re soon GOING to feel it. Yep, ego-driven blind ideology is still the order of the day.

 

It’s still a matter of argument for its own sake. Ideological process is still trumping national substance. One side hoping that the other side fails.

 

It’s a continuing game of show and tell where the grand prize is still perceived as being the satisfaction of telling the other side; “We told you so!”

 

We cannot accept the fact that, INDEED, we, including most of our political leaders bought that ever-famous parcel of “unseen” swampland.

 

What’s even tougher? We have to swallow the facts that we can’t get our money back; we can’t sue anyone over it; and we can’t criminally prosecute anyone over it.

 

It’s the same old proposition. It isn’t enough for most people simply to win; SOMEONE must LOSE… but who? It’s driving us crazy!

 

Until ALL of us fully accept the fact that we cannot do a thing to reverse what has happened to us, we’ll never be able to move forward toward a solid solution.

 

Until ALL of us fully accept the fact that we cannot solve our problems if we remain welded to the same level of mental acuity that caused them in the first place, we’ll never be able to move forward in any sustained way.

 

While it can and will get worse before, or even if, it gets better, I cannot understand why the Republicans are so diametric in their opposition to everything the President wants to do.

 

They could be right, but we’re already trillions of dollars in hock. If, as they tell us, the pit of national bankruptcy is yawning before us, what’s a couple of more trillion? If we’re going to go bankrupt, we might as well go BIG!

 

Ask any competent banker. If a debtor owes a bank $10,000, the bank has that debtor in its power. But, if the debtor owes the bank $10-billion or $10-trillion, the debtor has power over the bank.

 

So, if the Republicans in Congress truly believe the President’s stimulus is fatally flawed, wouldn’t it be smarter to vote for it in the interests of bipartisan cooperation?

 

They’d just need to make sure all of us know about their reservations and that they’re only cooperating as a matter of hope for the best outcome. Then, if it fails, it becomes a “we went along with you” scenario.

 

The next off-year election is less than 2-years away. The next presidential election is less than 3-years away!

 

Surely they must know that a President that bankrupts the entire country is something we voters will DEFINITELY remember the next time we enter a voting booth.

 

Wow! I sure hope there isn’t any party line disingenuousness involved in all of this.

 

Still, though, I can’t help but fear that there is only truly effective thing we can do to turn this country around.

 

We have to awake from our collective malaise and show the United States Congress a citizen revolt the likes of which they’ve never dreamed possible. We modern day voters have never really scared the folks in Washington and it’s time we did.

 

Joe Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. You may comment on his column by clicking here.