It's All Maine's Fault Vice President Joe Biden blames Maine's Republican Senators for not letting the $862 billion stimulus be even larger.
Vice President Joe Biden is President Obama's gift to journalism, and Sunday he was in top form on ABC's "This Week." We were especially taken by his answer to a question of whether the February 2009 $862 billion stimulus was "too small."
The veep averred that many people thought so, though we'd note that at the time he and the President sold it as the perfect amount.
"There was a reality," Mr. Biden explained yesterday. "In order to get what we got passed, we had to find Republican votes. And we found three—three. And we finally got it passed."
ABC's Jake Tapper then asked, so "if you didn't have the legislative reality, it would have been bigger?" Mr. Biden: "I think it would have been bigger."
Hmmm. So the stimulus is creating what the veep calls the "summer of recovery," but the reason it isn't working even better is because three Republicans insisted that it be no larger than nearly $1 trillion. In other words, had Democrats had their way, they would have spent hundreds of billions of dollars more.
That's gratitude for you. Maine's Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins joined Arlen Specter to break GOP ranks to make the stimulus possible, and 18 months later Mr. Biden blames them for the fact that it hasn't stimulated enough. Maybe if the Maine Senators vote this week to extend unemployment benefits, Mr. Biden will blame them for the 9.5% jobless rate.
