How many Republican votes did Obama get from the House after he significantly altered his own economic plan?  Zero.

You know that things are serious when you see economic reporters yelling at their audiences.  Don't believe me?  The host of CNBC's Mad Money was happy to do this on yesterday's broadcast of Hardball. 


If you were to listen to the remaining Republicans in Congress, all you would hear is an echo chamber filled with the cry "Tax cuts!"  Seems that they would rather rally their own base then do what is right for the economy.

Go ahead and ask any economist you can find, or a CNBC reporter, and all that you'll hear is that the government needs to spend "More! More! More!"  Why?  Because right now we are sitting on an economy that could go up at any second.  Americans took out record levels of credit card debt in order to maintain their standard of living while wages stagnated under the Bush Administration.  If too many Americans can no longer pay back their debt, Jim Cramer projects the magic number is around 10%, then you'll see the economy tank even more.

So what do republicans have to do with this?  They seem to have forgotten that it was the Bush policy of tax cuts, less regulation, and less oversite that got us into this mess in the first place.  They seem to ignore the collective wisdom of economists in favor for their own outdated principles. 

Tax cuts may work to stimulate the economy in times of plenty, but right now, there is an increasing number of Americans who don't even have jobs upon which to pay their taxes.  No, in times of serious crisis, it takes defecit spending to get the job done.  That got us out of the Great Depression, and it will get us out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.  All Obama has to do is realize that he will find no help from Republicans; all they can do is make it worse.