republican party to go and get a quote/unquote easy scalp in the name of bob bennett. bob bennett did a terrible job, didn t go back home, didn t visit utah enough. didn t do his own politics here and got caught with his pants down. you sit there, and, yes, it s hard to believe a guy like bob bennett not exactly the definition of a liberal republican would somehow get pushed out by a more conservative wing of the party, but they re pushing him out because they can. it s easy to do. florida, same thing. and, look, crist also had the added issue of being governor at a time when it s not easy being a governor of any state right now. you have to make unpopular decisions. what i m saying here, chris, is a series of purges. not that the party is moving to the right, it s incumbents like governor, five-term senators like specter, party leaders like john mccain, conservatives like bob bennett, all being pushed out of the party. told to go away, end your
i think there are two reasons. one, because the republicans clearly won the spin war on stimulus at the very beginning. they polluted the american people s minds about a bill that s been tremendously beneficial. you cited a statistic earlier that pennsylvania is one of three states that had significant job gains, almost 20,000 new jobs created in the last six weeks? well, stimulus has been responsible for 15,200 of the jobs in this first quarter. so we re not getting the credit for what was a very good bill and has had a very good effect in many different ways, because we lost the spin war. on health care over the summer last year, we got the living daylights kicked out of us. so number one, the republicans have done a good job spinning and they ve been really dishonest about it and hypocritical about it. all these republicans who voted against the stimulus show up at every highway ground breaking or every ribbon cutting at a rebuilt bridge even though they voted against the funds. we
republicans have done a good job and we ve done a poor job, all of us democrats in explaining to the american people what health care is going to do, what the stimulus has done and so many of the good things the president has done. i agree with t.j. let s stop coworring behind the shower curtain, let s be proud of what we ve accomplished. i think you ll see between now and november, as for example health care sets in and in pennsylvania, 140,000 sick people who don t have health care will be covered by high-risk pools because of the health care reform bill. 400,000 seniors because of the health care reform bill will get a $250 check this year to help them with the prescription doughnut hole. 150,000 pennsylvania businesses, 25 employees or less that employ 650,000 people, will get a 35% tax credit this year. when that news sinks in, i think you re going to see a change. well let me go to something here. i know you don t want to be self-serving and i m not being sarcastic here. but yo
investigati motivations are good. the minority leader isn t paying attention to them. i put the frank luntz memo in the senate record the other day and compared the language between the minority leader s speech and the frank luntz memo. the memo was written long before i wrote a bill. he was talking about how to defeat the bill before he s a spin meister. he used to be considered somewhat nonpartisan, now clearly looking for one party, political party. lupts. he comes up with phrases like the endless taxpayer bailout. is there a smidgen of truth to the fact your bill you re pushing has more money for wall street? will any wall street baron get a nickel out of this and still keep his job? that s a key question i d like answered. can you keep your job and get more government money? no. in fact the last thing you re going to see in this bill which has been a common determination is the implicit guarantee if you re a financial firm and get in trouble the taxpayers are