Enough bi-par already

Bipartisanship is overrated -- at least the way it is construed in Washington by the minority group to mean "you have to let us help write the bill." Obama insists that it means listening to the other side with civility and respect and adopting their ideas when they are an improvement and will work. It does not mean letting them write 50% of the bill.

Think of it this way: you're climbing a path up a steep hill when a huge boulder comes rolling down the hill and will crush you if you don't get out of the way. Some in your group yell "jump to the left" and others yell "jump to the right." If you try to give both equal voice, you stay in the middle and get crushed.

To extend the analogy: we should say to the Republicans, "The last time you convinced us to jump to the right, we got crushed. And the American people have just elected us to use our judgment, so we're going to jump to the left." End of argument.

If the Democrats had let the Republicans have an equal voice in the Economic Recovery bill, it would have had too little spending to be effective and not enough tax cuts to be effective either (from their point of view). It needed to be largely spending with targeted tax cuts for those who most need them. The bill we wound up with has less spending than needed, in order to entice Republicans by changing the alternate minimum tax -- and then they didn't vote for it anyway. The AMT needed to be fixed, but it shouldn't have been in this bill.

We should not be swayed by Republican's phony outrage. They didn't really want to have a part in the bill because then they'd have to share the responsibility when it's less than miraculous. With very few exceptions (like the 3 Senators), they're playing politics, not trying to solve the problems of the nation.

Ralph