While I was sleeping

In a Washington Irving short story, Rip Van Winkle was a man who fell asleep under a tree and awakened 20 years later to discover that things around him have changed greatly. Like Van Winkle, I feel I’ve been asleep but only for the eight years George W. Bush was president.

I must have been asleep because I’ve missed all the supposedly great things former Bush did. Why else would conservatives and a large number of Republicans find so many faults with the way President Barack Obama is attempting to rebuild America’s economy?

I won’t regurgitate what Bush didn’t do but it seems that, at least from e-mails I get and published letters to the editor I read, Bush fans believe that Obama is leading America to ruin.

After Obama’s election it became obvious that not only Democrats but also most of the world’s citizens could barely wait for Bush to vacate 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Bush realized it, too, because he appeared to give up leadership of the country.

The news media and the majority of Americans gravitated to Obama. Almost everyone realized the U.S. needed a change from the Bush years.

Obama has been president for six weeks and as he’s noted on several occasions, he inherited this economic mess from Bush (and a Republican-controlled Congress for six of Bush’s eight years). Now the overwhelming majority of congressional Republicans have suddenly decided that Obama’s economic plan can’t work. They love saying that his plan will place a debt on our grandchildren and great-grandchildren that they’ll never be able pay.

Excuse me, but didn’t the current economic crisis begin during the Bush years? Giving a tax cut to the wealthy while engaging in two wars began our descent into the current economic freefall. 

Looking back, it seemed that it was OK that Bush and his Republican supporters favored the rich. Now because Obama favors the working class and the poor, it’s time to cut wasteful spending and not raise taxes on those who can most afford it.

When lenders and financial institutions were on the verge of folding in September, the Bush administration and Congress – Republicans and Democrats – enacted a bailout in three days.

Four months later, Obama believes a massive stimulus package is needed to get America’s economy jump-started. He wants to create jobs. Jobs for millions of laid-off workers and the purchasers who bought homes they couldn’t afford.

He’s also added health care and education initiatives to his plan.

As I write this, AIG, the mega-insurance corporation wants an additional $30 billion more in federal money (totaling $180 billion in bailouts). I’ll bet AIG will get it, too.

But heaven help the laid-off homeowner behind in mortgage payments or the welfare mom who needs food stamps. They’ll just have to lose their homes and send their children to bed hungry.

Nelson Graves, of Augusta County, is a columnist for The News Virginian. E-mail him at .