The House just passed the stimulus package with no Republican support, and eight “no” votes from Democrats. Rep. Aaron Schock, whose llinois district is home to Caterpillar, spoke on the floor about the president’s speech to his constituents and their telling response. Caterpillar has been a central part of Obama’s stimulus pitch the past couple of days, but the pitch has been bumbled, as the rest of the stimulus message has been. Obama claimed the Caterpillar CEO told him he’d be rehiring some of his 22,000 laid-off workers as soon as the stimulus bill was passed, but Owens later flatly contradicted the President’s claim. Schock’s constituents were urged by the president himself to tell Schock to vote “yes,” but he was not approached by one constituent, Caterpillar employee or otherwise, asking him to support the stimulus. Democrats can pass this monstrosity because they control both houses, but they should never get away with painting criticism of it as unreasonable or purely partisan. Criticism comes from every quarter- even from laid-off workers who are subject to an onslaught of the president’s patented Promises of an Implausible Nature and Grandiloquence of Economic Gloom:
Video is here:
