Often, our own U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., gets criticized for his moderate stances, irritating those on the left and the right with his willingness to try to get something done.
He has come out in favor of the stimulus bill, albeit a compromise bill hammered out by a small group of senate moderates.
He explains his position in a Washington Post op-ed piece here.
It begins: "I am supporting the economic stimulus package for one simple reason: The country cannot afford not to take action.
"The unemployment figures announced Friday, the latest earnings reports and the continuing crisis in banking make it clear that failure to act will leave the United States facing a far deeper crisis in three or six months. By then the cost of action will be much greater -- or it may be too late."
Arlen gets it. How come the right-wingers, whose fiscal policies of the past 28 years have led to this disaster, don't?
Still, Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman argues that the centrist approach doesn't go far enough to fill the hole we've dug ourselves. Krugman, who has been right in calling the shots in this economic disaster, says President Obama erred in trying to forge a bi-partisan coalition in favor of the stimulus bill and that his attempts to do so watered down the Senate version to the point of reducing its effectiveness.
Krugman writes: "So has Mr. Obama learned from this experience? Early indications aren't good.
"For rather than acknowledge the failure of his political strategy and the damage to his economic strategy, the president tried to put a postpartisan happy face on the whole thing. 'Democrats and Republicans came together in the Senate and responded appropriately to the urgency this moment demands,' he declared on Saturday, and 'the scale and scope of this plan is right.'
"No, they didn't, and no, it isn't."
Read his piece here.
