| Now he tells us ... |
Mr. Obama is spending the holiday weekend in Chicago and is expected to sign the bill on Tuesday in Denver, kicking off another campaign-style trip to drum up support for the stimulus package. “There will be signs of activity very quickly,” David Axelrod, the White House senior adviser, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “But it’s going to take time for that to show up in the statistics. The president has said it’s likely to get worse before it gets better.” He added that the economy would most likely not begin gathering steam until the second half of the year.
| Note he doesn't say which year ... |
Lindsay Graham, one of the Republican senators who voted against the stimulus bill, said the nationalization of the banking industry should not be taken off the table as Congress looks for ways to shore up the teetering financial system. “This idea of nationalizing banks is not comfortable,” Mr. Graham, who is from South Carolina, said on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.” “But I think we have gotten so many toxic assets spread throughout the banking and financial community throughout the world that we’re going to have to do something that no one ever envisioned a year ago.”
Republicans, bolstered by their coordinated opposition to the package, remained on the offensive over the weekend. On CNN, Senator John McCain continued to brand the stimulus bill a “generational theft,” and accused Mr. Obama of not reaching across the aisle despite promises of bipartisanship. The measure gained the votes of only three moderate Republican senators in the Senate. No Republicans voted for it in the House.
“Let’s start over now and sit down together,” Mr. McCain said.