I hope for our sakes that Obama is better than the 819 Billion Dollar stimulus plan which is loaded with paybacks to unions and special interests, as well as pork barrel politics. Spending our way out of this mess? Who will pay all of this back? The Chinese are practically done with buying our debt securities. The Saudis have no money unless the oil price per barrel rises above $80. Our country is broke and we will print more FIAT money that has no basis on anything but what we say it is worth. At some point, other countries will not accept our currency. The writing is on the wall for an economic collapse. But, I hope not. I really hope we can pull out of this.

>http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/01/stimulus.next/index.html

>Despite what some of you may think, I am not an intense partisan. I don't think the first version of President Obama's first major proposal is perfect. It is larded with riders and agendas. He can do better than this and I believe he ran with the intention of doing better than this. If he lets himself be steamrolled by special interest groups we are no better off than we were before.

>The Senate is putting out strong signals that the bill will not be approved in its proposed form; Republicans voted against it 200 whatever to nothing in the house. And they're right. This is not a good bill. Our economy and our country are in a tailspin and we deserve better than this.

>I have not given up on Barack Obama. I believe he will grow into his role, as Roosevelt did, as Lincoln did. I believe without reservation he is a transformational president. I just want a better bill than this. The Senate is sending signals it will play the role our founders intended. They are not supposed to be swayed by money or celebrity.