Talking Points Memo | Please Grow Up

The senate Republicans are refusing to give a vote to two of President Obama‘s key (hopefully soon to be) economic advisors — Austan Goolsbee and Cecilia Rouse. So for the moment they’re barred from advising the president at all. The Republicans seem pretty candid about the fact that this is pay back for stuff that happened back in the Bush era. But aren’t we in the throes of a catastrophic economic crisis?

Nothing against Rouse who would probably be a welcome voice, but we have plenty of Goolsbees in the administration already. Do we really need another free market fundamentalist running roughshod over the precious few liberals with whom Obama dressed his windows?

I really don’t get it. I’ve read summaries of the budget, and it seems genuinely positive, but any benefits are going to be washed away by the administration’s unforgivably atrocious double down on the Bush/Paulson Wall Street reverse bank robbery plan. Summers and Geithner already hold enough sway. Goolsbee’s magic free market wand is superfluous at best, corrosive at worst. Instead of reform and re-regulation, we’ll throw another trillion dollars at Goldman Sachs to offset their gambling addiction.