Tomorrow's National Joke (or) Cat Stuck in a Tree Once More

It Would Be Funny, If It Weren’t So Pathetic:

Tomorrow, Wednesday, the Republicans will release an alternate budget proposal to the Nation.

And Tomorrow, April 1st, as Every American Schoolboy Knows, Is:

April Fool's Day!

These Are Serious Times in America. Millions of Americans find themselves and their families in straitened circumstance.

And Yet the Republicans Keep Working to give us the laughs. Such as last week's Republican budget-that-wasn't-a-budget.....disputed by another Republican, Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin....who will release another Republican budget—that may or may not turn out to be an actual budget. Tomorrow.

Sadly, Republican Humor Is No More Successful than its economic ideology and its empirically flawed ideas.

And We Have No Evidence Even that these humorous episodes are deliberate.

One Can Hardly Help Feeling Sorry for these illegitimate scions of America’s long-dead political past—

But Then, That Is in the Nature of Liberal-Minded Americans: to feel sorry for others, regardless of how much they are responsible for their folly.

A Republican/Cat Analogy

In the Hearts of Mainstream Americans, the Republican Party is like the cat caught up too high in a tree:

• The cat’s independence gets it into these messes.
• The cat’s intransigence makes it refuse assistance, from even the most-public-minded firemen rescue team.
• And yet society in general has to expend the time and the money to send out the firemen, and put up the ladder, and try to rescue that darn cat.

The Cat’s Little Secret—which every good Conservative Republican knows—is that she can either be rescued or left alone.

Either Way, That Cat Is Going to Land on its Feet, back down on the ground.

The Cat’s Mews That We Hear—from former Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson pleading for the rescue of the banking “cats” on Wall Street....

....to the auto-industry “cats” in Detroit....

....and from Congressman John Boehner announcing an alternate budget proposal that isn't a budget....

....to Congressman Paul Ryan insisting that the announced budget proposal is not the real budget proposal....

—Don't Mean Anything in terms of the health and welfare of the cats.

These Republican Fat Cats Are Going to Land Just Fine.

It’s All of the Rest of America—the fire-truck mechanics who repair the trucks, and the workers who build the fire-trucks, and the firemen themselves—who could stand to be rescued.

So Here It Is, Our Best Hope: that we leave those Republican “cats” up in the trees where they’ve climbed. We can leave them meowing away as loud and as whiny as former Republican Congressman Phil Gramm once said that Americans are....


It’s Time We Just Forgot about These Republicans—alternate budgets and whining about bailouts and laments of “Terror” and all. Let’s turn our attention to the urgent business of rebuilding the American economy and restoring order in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But First, Let's Take One Last, Good Look at the Republicans and their alternate budget proposal. Coming tomorrow:

April Fools!

NEWS FLASH! American President Says Nation Needs to Focus

DATELINE: Washington, DC–If he had been speaking earlier today at a previously disclosed location known as “the White House,” the nation’s newest president might have issued a statement similar to this:


What America Needs Right Now Is Jobs, and the security that a regular paycheck provides. Give Americans jobs, with some sense of job security, and we can all get back to work. We can put this recession thing behind us. As we focus on this together, we move forward together—now.

But Today, I Want to Address Three Issues related to partisan concerns, as the branches of American government work together to stimulate the economy, to create jobs, and to get the American economy back to work.

In This Process of Economic Stimulation:

□ First, We Want to Avoid Creating Inflation via excessive spending.

□ Second, We Want to Give the American People Tax Cuts whenever it is prudent to do so, while avoiding tax cuts that continue to redistribute wealth—whether from the poor to the wealthy or the other way around.

□ Third, We Want to Give States and Local Communities the Revenue Benefits that their Senators and Representatives know best for them, while avoiding the reckless growth of the earmarks and pork-barrel spending that make government look like a reckless waster of our hard-earned pay.

Here Is the Way My Administration Sees these various issues:

The Time of Inflation Is Not Now

Inflation Cannot Be Our Dominant Concern Right Now. Historically, shortages of goods in relation to an overabundant money supply leads directly to inflation. Fortunately, our problems right now are not supply and production, but demand and the flow of capital. Thus we can afford to spend money to create more jobs. More jobs in turn will put more money into the economy, creating a trickle-down effect to keep other businesses going.

What Concerns Us the Most Is the Lack of Job Security, the threat to American paychecks, and the ability to keep our homes. The time to fear inflation is not now.

The Time for Tax Cuts Is Not Now

At a Time When the Price of Everything from Houses and Automobiles to groceries and gasoline is going lower, Americans do not especially need more tax cuts. When millions of Americans are not getting a paycheck, tax cuts won’t help them, anyway.

At a Time When the Nation’s Leading Corporations are laying off employees by the thousands and teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, the nation’s businesses have no need for tax cuts, either. Right now, tax cuts are not the most-relevant cure for the economy. It’s the people without jobs who need help the most. Not those with jobs who continue to struggle along as they have over the recent past.

Tax Cuts for Near-Bankrupt Corporations and the Unemployed are not what we need right now. For the time being, we should forget about it.

The Time for Earmarks Is Not Now

At the Same Time, Now Is Not the Time for Earmarks, even though they represent only about 1% of the current spending, and the spending both by Democrats and Republicans is pretty much even. It is Congress’s job to know what their folks back home need. And for the current stimulus bill and budget, it seems safe to say that what Congress has done has been its job, on both sides of the aisle.* But the American people are clear in their concern over the concept of earmarks. And regardless, now is generally not a good time for such projects.

Now Is the Time to Squeeze Out the Earmarks, no matter how much individual Republicans and Democrats need to carry something to their folks back home. Later, Congress may get back to business as usual. But for the time being, we should forget about it.

America Needs to Focus

Over the Past 49 Days, My Administration has been getting to know the other branches of the government. We walked into the middle of the economic crisis and we also walked into the end of the Federal budget process. The stimulus plan and the Federal budget needed to move forward, with the assistance of our leaders in Congress, whose job it is to approve these measures. And this is what your government has been doing.

But Now Is the Time to focus our very best efforts.

Going Forward Over the Near-Term, we need to be as single-minded as we possibly can be—to stem the loss of jobs, to turn the job situation around—so that Americans get back to taking advantage of the abundance of supplies in America—including those new homes and those new automobiles.

Now Is the Time for America to Focus:

Now America Gets Get Down to Work

_______
*Of course, all Americans are welcome to contact their individual Senators and Representatives with comments on earmarks in general, as well as on any particular item that they find objectionable.