On Spending $3.6 Trillion

While everyone is still grinding their teeth about how some corporate pigs are having their latest repasts at the taxpayers’ trough, out comes Barack Obama in a media blitz including a night with Jay Leno, finishing with a whopping $3.6 trillion budget placed before Congress for its consideration.

No! will cry the Republicans. No, no, no, no, NO!

But that’s OK. We all expect that. That is what a minority of Americans will say as well.

Let’s make that abundantly clear. A minority of Americans would oppose this budget on philosophical grounds, let alone economic ones (but let’s be honest here, one hand does wash the other here). And they convey their thoughts and feelings to their representatives, who vote accordingly.

That’s how representative government works.

But this time, we have a Democratic president and a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress elected by Americans of all political flavors. People who feel a little differently than those who elected those from the Grand Obstructionist Party. People who told all of our countrymen last November that what they wanted was fundamental change.

Well, change is here. No more hiding the costs of war on another set of accounting books. No more avoiding the issue of getting proper healthcare in America in a world where healthcare is becoming less attainable and more costly. No more throwing our tax dollars down oil wells. The oil and gas industry is in its sunset years. Now, after all this time, is the time to steer our tax money (and tax breaks) toward the energy sources that our children and grandchildren will be depending on 50 years from now.

On his radio message today Barack Obama said this:

“I realize there are those who say these plans are too ambitious to enact. To that I say that the challenges we face are too large to ignore. I didn’t come here to pass on our problems to the next president or the next generation — I came here to solve them.”

You don’t have to agree with Barack Obama. All you really have to do is take a look around. Do you know someone who was laid off? Do you know someone without health insurance or someone who can’t afford the healthcare they need to stay alive? Are you willing to surrender to corporations who demand the right to continue to pump greenhouse gases into your atmosphere? Are you tired of the ruling class in your country taking more and more for themselves, leaving less to you and yours?

This budget isn’t a be-all end-all. It will not fix the monumental problems we face. It is only the beginning. There is more to come and always more to do.

This budget will be uniformly opposed by the shrinking monolith that represents what is left of the Republican Party. Opposed not because it is wrong, but opposed because if this budget is allowed to pass and allowed to succeed, the party of the Dark Side has no hope of making a comeback any time in the foreseeable future.

I know, I know. We Democrats are a fractious lot, each with our own agendas. The last thing we want to do is stand in some darn fool line. The last thing we want to do is speak with one voice. The last thing we want to do is spend $3.6 trillion.

But now more than ever, the times demand that is just what we must do.