Some lawmakers seem to have forgotten about Barack Obama's mandate for change, said Mike Madden in Salon. Obama has had to go beyond the "normal political smooth-talking" and make a hard sales pitch to get Congress moving on his massive $775 billion economic stimulus plan. But it's not Republicans who are threatening to block him—it's fellow Democrats who think he's spending too much on tax cuts and not enough on creating jobs through public spending on roads, bridges, and other infrastructure.
There's a reason Obama's plan might go over better on the right than on the left, said Robert Kudlow in RealClearMarkets. The president-elect has revised his stimulus since the election—instead of just $100 billion in tax credits he's now offering $300 billion in tax cuts, including a big new piece for business. So it would be hard for conservatives to deny that Obama's plan is "pro-growth."
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