Signing An Entire Generation Away

Barack Obama today signed the single largest bill ever and one that by many accounts will accomplish very little. Claudia Rosett notes that he has broken yet another of his campaign promises:

Today, Obama returned to Denver, and with elaborate ceremony signed the $787 billion “stimulus” bill passed last Friday by Congress, which runs to more than 1,070 pages. That left fewer than 96 hours between passage and signing (thus also violating his promise about posting legislation for five days on the internet before signing, to allow for transparency and comment).

When did Obama even find time to skim this monster bill? Let alone go through it “line by line?”

Obama enjoyed an intervening weekend heavy on R&R. Carbon-emissions-notwithstanding (personally I don’t care how much carbon he emits, but Obama wants all the rest of us to sacrifice on this front), on Friday Obama flew with his family and entourage to Chicago, where he helicoptered in from the airport, to spend time at his Chicago mansion and — as The New York Times put it — see a few friends and “reconnect to the rest of the country.”

Today marks the day that we as a country sentenced our grandchildren to a life of paying for our collective sins. we spent when we didn't have it and allowed a government to pass legislation that allowed encouraged business to run roughshod over the populace. But we citizens didn't exactly curb ourselves and we now face the result.

The problem I have is that we suffer no consequences; Barney Frank and Chris Dodd colluded with Fannie Mae and Countrywide respectfully allowing them to grant loans that should have been denied. Business doesn't suffer because they've gotten a bailout but we the people get essentially nothing from this bill unless you are a lobbyist or a union member.

The correct action should have been to do nothing or at the very most a stimulus package based on tax cuts and basic spending. Call it our penitence for irresponsible behavior. Anyone with kids knows that they learn a hell of alot more responsibility when they have to suffer then when they get exactly what they wanted when they performed the bad behavior in the first place.

American government and it's citizens needed to be grounded or at the very least been issued a timeout; instead we were rewarded for our bad behavior big time.