Republicans: “I got a list of demands”

There’s been a lot of debate about the stimulus bill lately, composed of both legitimate complaints and hilariously transparent partisan nonsense. After unanimously voting against the bill, House Republicans have published a list of provisions that they find objectionable- totaling an astonishing 2% of the overall amount. That’s right: Republican efforts to shoot down the entire thing were based on finding less than 20 of the overall $900 billion to be unacceptable. Even many of the things on the list are highly debatable, such as:

• $500 million for building and repairing National Institutes
of Health facilities in Bethesda, Maryland.
• $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges.
• $150 million for Smithsonian museum facilities.

Money dedicated to maintaining NIH? Upgrading community colleges with modern electronics? Improving the Smithsonian? I’m outraged at the idea of taxpayer money doing any of that, these institutions are supposed to magically fund themselves!

In all seriousness I thought this was a pretty sad attempt at a list of objections- until I made a shocking discovery. Logging onto TrainNet this morning I saw that an anonymous informant had delivered a second list of GOP complaints, which they plan to release to the press soon. The first list must have been a warm-up, because this one exposes the unreasonable demands Obama has made of the American taxpayers:

• $750 million for finally building the Bridge to Nowhere-
out of solid gold.

• $1.6 billion to create and maintain a database of useless
provisions included in the stimulus bill.

• $30 billion to engrave a transcript of the Finkelstein &
Cockburn debates on the surface of the moon.

• $10 billion in singles for Obama to burn in the White House
Furnace while he cackles fiendishly at the plight of frozen
white southerners.

• $1.73 missing from the stimulus bill, found later beneath
the cushions of the Congressional Couch.

• $900 million for replacing every school lunch served in
the city of Plano, Texas during the week of February 23rd
with expensive (yet poorly cooked and shoddily served) filet
mignon.

• $25 billion for developing Holo-Gore, a malevolent
holographic Al Gore which will relentlessly chide
carbon-emitters.

• $290 billion for purchasing the finest colored sand in
the world, which will be used to create the largest
mandala in the history of the universe.

• $35 billion to create a huge underground swimming pool
beneath the White House. It’ll be a state of the art
facility, but Republicans have objected because President
“Bipartisan” Obama only plans on inviting Democrats over
for a swim once it’s complete :(

• $800 million to a bank account in Nigeria, where Congress
has just been informed via email that they’ve won the
national lottery. All they have to do is place the money in
a Nigerian account to establish their claim on the prize,
and then this provision will pay for itself!

These all do represent a huge waste of money, other than that last one of course. Hopefully Republicans will stick to their guns on this one and make sure that helping the economy is as difficult and politically wrenching as possible. They just have to tell the Democrats that they have a list of demands written on the palms of their hands, gonna ball their fists and let everybody know where they stand.