It’s time for President Obama to play “partisan hardball” on his stimulus package, said E.J. Dionne in The Washington Post. While he has been trying to act as a “benevolent referee” in the untidy legislative process, Republicans have been "winning the media war,” using “minor bits” of the bill to tarnish the whole package, and “often casting logic aside” to score political points. Obama needs to respond.
He could start by admitting that “his effort to ram most of his spending agenda into a must-do economic stimulus bill” is a political failure, said Investor’s Business Daily in an editorial. And it’s not just “a tiny amount of waste in an otherwise good bill.” It’s that he’s trying to marry short-term stimulus to long-term spending he was pushing for before the recession hit. That’s “a marriage that shouldn’t be saved.”
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