Obama's Stimulus Strategy More Political Theater

Summary

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WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama, an unbeliever genuflecting before the altar of frugality, is asking Congress, as presidents do, to give him something like a line-item veto. Coming in today's context of his unrelenting agenda of expanding government, his proposal constitutes a counterfeit promise to get serious about controlling spending and the deficit. His purpose is to distract the public while Democrats enact something like Stimulus III.

Obama's Reduce Unnecessary Spending Act confirms the axiom that the titles of bills, like the titles of Marx brothers movies ("Duck Soup," "Horse Feathers"), are utterly uninformative. The act would aggravate a distortion of the Constitution that has grown for seven decades, enlarging presidential power by allowing presidents to treat spending bills as cafeterias from which they can take what they like and reject the rest.

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Obama's Stimulus Strategy More Political Theater

Under Obama's proposal, presidents would list dubious spending, and then Congress would have to accept or reject, by a simple majority, his entire list, which could not be filibustered. This might, or might not, ...

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