A new book called The New New Deal reveals what you and this blogger may have suspected all along, and certainly has been the talk of African Americans or anyone who has a wide cultural view of America: that GOP Republicans never wanted to work with President Barack Obama, and set up a strategy of obstruction even before “44” took office on January 20th, 2009. In other word, Republicans were set to damage America for voting for Barack Obama, the first black President Of The United States.
This was done in the middle of the largest economic crisis since the Great Depression, and one started toward the end of the George W. Bush Administration, and was just picking up steam when Obama became POTUS. The economic crash of September 18th, 2008, threatened to erase $5 trillion from the World’s economy, and took out $550 billion within less than a day. The result was a collapsed World credit system that was already over-extended. And all of this happened at a time when the economy has grown beyond the ability of many Americans to understand it, in part because of its size, and also because we don’t stress economic education today, unlike the past.
That was the climate within which President Obama had to first craft, then pass, the massive $800 billion Economic Stimulus Package. The New New Deal presents the political climate around the formation of the largest government program since The New Deal itself.
Michael Grunwald, the author of The New New Deal, writes:
In early January, the House Republican leadership team held a retreat at an Annapolis inn. Pete Sessions, the new campaign chair, opened his presentation with the political equivalent of an existential question:
“If the purpose of the Majority is to Govern…What is Our Purpose?” […]
“The Purpose of the Minority is to become the Majority.”
The team’s goal would not be promoting Republican policies, or stopping Democratic policies, or even making Democratic bills less offensive to Republicans. Its goal would be taking the gavel back from Speaker Pelosi.
“That is the entire Conference’s Mission,” Sessions wrote.
Further, the book explains that now Vice President Joe Biden learned that not less than seven Republican Senators would reject the Obama plan, and that was before he took office. In a private meeting, then-House Minority Whip Eric Cantor vowed that Republicans would not support any Democratic recovery plan.
So here’s President Obama taking office at a time when the full weight of the World’s economic collapse was not felt, a new stimulus plan, and GOP operatives ready to oppose him even to the point of wrecking the American economy.
Lousy.
Stay tuned.