I think it needs to be borne in mind that for the Republicans this is in effect a free vote. These measures have *no* chance of adoption, so it's not as if these votes have consequences. On the other hand, they stroke the base. If you're thinking solely in political terms, that's all upside, and no downside, even if you know better. Note as well that it's still up in the air whether the stimulus will actually work; it may fail for a variety of reasons [like, as Krugman points out, not being big enough]. Refusing to take responsibility for a policy that entails some risks could well be smart politics, whatever it lacks in responsibility.

The GOP caucus should take to wearing togas and playing fiddles, while drinking heavily. Think cross between Nero and Animal House. They can even call themselves the Animal House Caucus. After taking out the economy at ramming speed, they can fight to keep their jobs.

Nearly every single Republican in both houses of Congress have hermetically sealed themselves into a right Wing ideological Cocoon. When you think about it, it's their only chance to regain power any time soon. Or, IOW, Obama and dems MUST fail, or it's off to the political wilderness for at least a generation. Of course, there must some chaff sent out to draw away fire claiming their obstructive belligerence isn't really obstructive belligerence, and to let critical bills in a crisis get passed. So the small, but necessary Trojan Horse is deployed with 2 or 3 expendable RINO's to accomplish this mission. Making Susan Collins, Spector, and Snowe the most powerful people in DC, outside of Obama, or maybe more powerful than Obama on key legislation.

Seemingly, for 206 of our elected Congressional representatives they are not there to be part of the economic stimulus solution, but are merely serving as dismantlers of government.

WTF do they think their job is to stop taking the people's money to help do the people's business?

Here, we need to fix that pot-hole - well give someone a tax cut! Here, we need to help middle-class families keep their jobs and pay their morgages - well, give tax cuts to the financial sector! Here, we need to stimulate credit lines and consumer spending - well, give tax cuts to businesses!

Just typing the above rot out makes me get a headache, so I wonder, what is in the minds of 206 of our duly elected officials - playdough!?! -Kevo

We should use part of the stimulus funding to pay the costs of relocating non-Republican individuals and families out of heavily-weighted GOP districts. Once that's completed, we simply acquiesce to the GOPer demands by acknowledging their vote---that they don't see the need for any stimulus---and then leave those districts to their own devices. I'm certain that they can build their own infrastructure from the ground up (they obviously don't need access to the national electric grid, or telephone network, or highway system), and rebuild their own schools and bridges, develop their own international import/export authority, and fight off the godless evil wave-hordes of berserker islamofascists that they keep invoking

I think David in Nashville is on to something. As much as we might agree with Krugman that its irresponsible to propose a measure that makes no sense economically but does cater to Right Wing fantasies, it's probably better for actual policy-making to take the GOP's ideological needs as a given and work around them or in some way accomodate them. You can also further isolate them by not giving them easy victories -- such as stimulus proposals that don't pass the pork smell test.

One tax cut idea that does make sense to me because it's what we do anyway is think about a cut in the FISA payroll tax, at least temporarily. The reality is that we raise these monies from middle class workers and then raid the Social Security Trust Fund anyway to pay for on going costs of government. That's how Bush paid for his upper class tax cuts. He raided Social Security, filled the vault with Treasury Note IOUs -- and then cynically campaigned against a Social Security system that was "broke" and filled with IOUs. But the reality is that whether you raid the trust fund or cut the FISA tax you are pretty much doing the same thing -- using Social Security tax receipts for other purposes. So might as well give Republicans a win and give them a tax cut. We're going to take the money anyway for other purposes so why not stop collecting it in the first place.

Ted Frier, I think you mean FICA, not FISA.

Minnick even had the nerve to write an editorial where he lied to his constituents about what the CBO said about the bill. Lying to your constituents after only a few weeks on the job is disappointing to say the least.
http://www.newwest.net/city/article/minnick_stimulus_plan_creates_burdens/C108/L108/

One tax cut idea that does make sense to me because it's what we do anyway is think about a cut in the FISA payroll tax, at least temporarily.

Haven't you heard? The payroll tax isn't a real tax like income tax, so cutting it would be exactly like handing out welfare checks.

I'm serious -- I've seen conservatives on this very site make that argument.

Childers and Minnick are blue in deep red territory.
Cut 'em some slack.

You know how mothers used to tell their daughter to asct dumb because boys don't like it when girls are smarter than they are?

Same rationale, but maybe not as foolish.

Kudos to Cao (Welcome to Washington, sir. I hope you go far, despite your lack of lobotomy.) and Frank Wolf who has once again struck me as one of the most principled Republican Congressmen in office. I am often pleasantly surprised by his votes.

David, the answer to that is to make sure it ISN"T a free vote.

For whatever reason, these people voted overwhelmingly for absolute economic idiocy.

They need to be punished for that -- electorally, and by being roundly ridiculed, or ignored, whenever they speak on economic issues.

With most moderates having been purged from the GOP, all that's left are the hard-core conservative representing deep red districts and states.

Anybody expecting them to make sense is going to be sadly disappointed. To use the analogy of a previous poster, pretty much all that's left in the GOP are the flat-earthers.

I would never have thought this possible, but Steve Benen makes me desperately miss Kevin Drum. I have a question, Steve. What in your background, academically or professionally, qualifies you as an authority or an opinion of merit on matters of economics or finances. If, as I suspect, there are no such qualifiers, then what are you other than just another highly partisan bloviating hack?

Considering who they represent I am fine with that. Mississippi and Idaho are lost causes. We can't give up on them of course, but I continue to avoid those states whenever possible, in some cases out of fear for my own safety since I am not white.

msmolly -- yes, thanks, I meant FICA. Although a tax on illegal surveillance does sound promising!

mnemosyne -- yes I've heard the same argument, and from the GOP point of view was important for ideological reasons to stereotype the middle class tax cut offered by Obama as just another typical liberal welfare state giveaway. You laugh, but its just another example how Republicans govern by "framing" issues to fit a predetermined ideology rather than dealing with the reality of a situation.

Following up on David of Nashville's point: one of the important ways to defeat ideologues is to deny them the opportunity to turn a debate into a he said/she said, both sides do it equally ideological contest. Ideologues win when there is no one that anyone trusts who has the credibility of objectivity. Ideologues and extremists need extremists on the other side to justify their bad behavior. That is why Bill O'Reilly and his "No Spin Zone" and Rush Limbaugh devote a portion of nearly every broadcast toward painting the mainstream media as just as ideologically biased, subjective and extreme as they are. Media Matters does practically nothing more that reprint verbatim transcripts of O'Reilly's broadcasts under the reasonable assumption that O'Reilly's own words are more than enought to hang him. That does not prevent O'Reilly from calling stenographic Media Matters "a left wing smear site."

Once you, as a listener, have bought into this worldview it's easy to just stick with your conservative or liberal tribe no matter what the evidence or facts because you've already lost your critical faculties for distinguishing sheer propaganda from a good faith effort to get at the truth. Limbaugh is more than willing to be called a right wing ideologue just so long as his listners believe that nothing but left wing ideologues exist on the other side.

So, Obama and the Democrats, if they want to build public support for their program, must work also to deny Republicans the opportunity to paint events with a partisan ideological brush. It's not easy to do -- there are lots of good programs in the stimulus that Speaker Pelosi hammered together and the House passed. And at some point they ought to pass. But the manner it was put together did give Republicans ammunition -- and was a good lesson that despite losing two elections rather convincingly, and being confined to a Southern base, conservatives still possess the ability to sting. But long term, Democrats will build stronger public trust and credibility -- while further isolating and marginalizing Republicans -- if they work at looking at their actions through a Republican ideological lens so as to deny conservatives the easy comeback that liberals are just as knee-jerk and extreme as are conservatives.

Pause for a moment and contemplate the fact that out of 219 congressional Republicans, a grand total of 13 are willing to forgo fanticizing or posturing on the economic crisis, the most urgent public-policy issue the country faces.

One-party government is a bad idea, but right now only one party inhabits the real world. We desperately need it to succeed. We just as desperately need a second party that doesn't live in cloud-cuckoo land.

Maybe I parsed this wrong, but:
A total of 10% rejected obvious nonsense in the Senate, but only half that did the same in the House.
Eh, if only 10 % rejected nonsense in the Senate, then for half to do so is an improvement, not an "only half ..."

Reps. Childers (Miss.) and Minnick (Idaho)

They may be labeled Democrat, but there is one thing for sure: They ARE conservatives, that don't believe in Obama's agenda.

Reps. Childers (Miss.) and Minnick (Idaho)

They may be labeled Democrat, but there is one thing for sure: They ARE conservatives, that don't believe in Obama's agenda.

Well, duh. Try getting elected as a Democrat in Idaho without pandering to the 90 percent white conservative Republican vote. I lived in Idaho's first congressional district for five years in the 90s. You do realize Minnick is filling the seat formerly held by Helen Chenoweth, right? Minnick only won the seat from Bill Sali because a few sane people in Ada County (where Boise is located) finally realized Sali is nuts.

Re: "accommodating" the needs of Republicans to stroke their base. We've been doing that since 1994, and it doesn't work. How about "No" instead? We should make these idiotic votes cost them something. And it's as easy as pie: identify their party with those positions. "The Democratic Party stands for stimulating the economy with important programs; the Republican Party stands for tax cuts and only tax cuts, aimed at making the wealthy more so." Stark comparison. Until we brand them, they get to play a double game: insane-tax-cuts-only over here, and sane-amendments-to-Democratic-overspending over there. They get to send 2 messages to 2 audiences. If we cut that down, we don't let any Republicans look reasonable or thrifty. They have to pick a position. In the meantime, no voters are misled by GOP the two-faced Republican Party.

When did the House get its 436th member???[270+166=436] (I know you copied this from the NYT, but you'd think their staff would know how many bleeping Representatives there are).

I just read a really good post on Salon, urging Democrats to call the Republicans' bluff on filibusters. Basically, it says bring it on! How good are Republicans (mostly white Southern males), going to look after 36-48 hours of blathering on C-Span, CNN, You-Tube, Twitter, etc., when every day more economic disaster is revealed? What are the odds that in this time span they will say something really destructive, stupid, and plain wrong. The risk of the filibuster should be theirs if they want it. Here's hoping.

Dianaw

Oh right, half of "that" 10% not half of "them" - I suppose I couldn't imagine only 5% of even the R's voting against such crap. Just too stunning.

Steve sounds querulous about the fact that the Republicans do not take responsibility for the actions they have caused the government to take that have led to this collapse in employment and consumer demand.

Sure they are refusing to approve the government stepping in a trying to alleviate the economic mess the conservatives and created. Face it. They value money (for the propertied upper classes), and they value personal freedom above economic opportunity and jobs for the working classes. Their solution is to try to increase the rewards for innovative work by lowering taxes and they value removing all restrictions on the motivated individual who can succeed (among which groups most of them consider themselves. They look only at individuals and consider all the talk about "economic systems" that will not permit a capable ambitious man to succeed to be the only part of the economic system the government has any right to be in.

Their ideology is built on those priorities. Tax cuts are equated to greater personal freedom. A successful person can make money flow to him as long as he is well-motivated, and the more motivation he gets (lower taxes) will motivate him to earn more money no matter what some egghead economist says about an absence of consumer demand.

The Great Depression drug on long enough to prove that view is simply wrong for most people who are not already wealthy or in wealthy families. The conservatives have spent the last fifty or more years attempting to impress that set of beliefs on the nation in good times and bad (financed in part in the fifties and early sixties by five conservative Texas and Oklahoma oil men, apparently.)

Just because those conservative beliefs don't work doesn't matter. They have "Faith."

I seriously doubt that they will ever change. They simply have to be removed from office somehow. And the conservative think tanks will continue to propagandize the public.

Overspending and tax cuts are the same thing: borrow and spend liberalism. Bush proved borrow and spend was a dead end.