The Democrats hold fast to their Keynesian economic excuse that stealing a dollar from the private sector and giving it to someone who will spend it on something -- anything at all -- will stimulate the private sector by increasing demand. This theory has been at least twice discredited: first by FDR's failure to jump start the economy in the thirties, and now by Obama's almost identical failure in 2009.
Only the Republican-controlled House stands against the Democrat desire to enlarge government by spending and taxing more.
The House Republican leadership, their backs stiffened by the Tea-Party response of the American electorate to Obama's first stimulus, at last seem ready to make their stand against this fiscal insanity.
Eric Cantor this week withdrew from the sham talks chaired by Joe Biden, causing their final collapse under the weight of the silliness that is Biden.
Now John Boehner, like Gandalf at the bridge in the mines of Moria, stands against a flaming Balrog of spending*, a never-before-envisioned threat of an ever-expanding tsunami of government.
Now, he holds high his staff....
And now he bellows "You shall not pass!"
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* You can find the figure that James Pethokoukis's blog displays in Appendix B of the CBO report he links to here. It shows the cost of Federal health subsidies roughly doubling in 20 years from 5% of GDP today to about 10% thus forcing Federal expenditures to rise from 20% of GDP to about 25%, a level unheard of in time of peace.