Walt Minnick, Idaho First [1], has a better alternative to the Pelosi/Reid/Obama Porlulus bill, DC Examiner [2]:
While President Barack Obama goes on the road to shore up slipping popular support for the $1 trillion stimulus porkfest that he ordered up from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Walt Minnick, a freshman Democrat from Idaho, is pushing a better idea: The Strategic Targeted American Recovery and Transition Act (START).
Minnick is a member of the Blue Dog caucus of occasionally conservative Democcrats. His START plan is a $170 billion “bare bones” pure stimulus approach that would put $100 billion immediately into the pockets of low- and middle-income Americans, then use the other $70 billion for basic infrastructure projects that create jobs. START requires that all funds not spent by 2010 be returned to the Treasury. START also stops stimulus spending when the nation’s Gross Domestic Product increases in two of three previous quarters, and all START payments are required to be posted on a public website.
Hat tip: Ed Morrissey, Hot Air [3].
Representative Minnock has done what Nancy Pelosi, Dirty Harry Reid and Barack Obama were incapable of doing, developing a stimulus plan which is targeted, timely and temporary.
Tell your representative to dump the Pelosi/Reid/Obama Porkulus package and throw their support to Minnick’s START. The economy you have might to your own.
Addendum:
Ed Morrissey, Hot Air [4], correctly points out that Mimnick’s START bill closely resembles BO’s campaign promises, whereas Porkulus does not even come close:
[C]onsidering Walt Minnick’s START proposal. It spends almost exactly what Obama promised during the campaign, in almost exactly the manner Obama proposed at that time. Shouldn’t Obama seize that as his mandate, since voters elected him on that basis, rather than the Omnibus Pork Package wending its way through Congress? And why hasn’t the media noted this similarity, and asked Obama why he’s not honoring his campaign promise by supporting Minnick’s bill instead of Nancy Pelosi’s?
Then BO seems to have a poor grasp on history, even his own.