“America competes“, what a novel idea!

I can recall a time, many years back, when the Democrats were still playing on Team America, when they hadn’t yet sold their souls to far left liberals and begun monkeying around with the marketplace and the education system, that America was Numbah One, Numero Uno, Ichiban, da bee’z kneez. So what changed all that? Certainly not conservatives who maintain a deep respect for the Constitution and abhor big government and big government spending, government interference in private sector business practices, tax-and-spend policies that generate still higher taxes and promote massive foreign debt…

Now, we need to be able to compete, or so says Representative from Tennessee Bart Gordon, a Democrat who is reminiscent of a lean, unctuous version of Tommy Lee Jones playing a bad snake oil salesman.

So we have HR 5116, which would “invest in innovation through research and development, to improve the competitiveness of the United States”.

I watched the debates on C-Span yesterday, and it was plain to see that The Wicked Witch of the West Nancy Pelosi does indeed know how to deploy a Democrat majority, committee by committee, to advantage.

It wasn’t much of a debate, but then, to today’s Democrats, a debate is already over before it starts, so what we C-Span viewers got to see was a series of sales pitches by Democrats with an occasional break for a Republican point of view.

“The gentleman from Texas…”

Rep. Ralph Hall (R): “I reserve the balance of my time.”

“The gentleman from Tennessee…”

Rep. Bart Gordon (D): “I yield one and a half minutes to…”

And then, for ninety seconds, a Democrat representative would wax Utopian on the America Competes Act.

Then Hall yielded five minutes to California Republican Representative Dana Rohrabacher, who spoke of the additional massive debt our country would have to accrue in order to support HD 5116, and let on as to how he opposed the bill, in part because it would further put the burden of paying the tab on futuire generations.

Then another ninety second yield by Gordon for another Democrat, and for several rounds, Ralph Hall, gentleman from Texas, reserved his time so that one Democrat after another, on Gordon’s dime, had the floor yielded a minute and a half at a time.

They managed to work in, between them, grants, loans, benefits for disabled veterans, what, exactly, they weren’t clear on, manufacturing jobs, jobs and more jobs, even “green” jobs, education, technology and even, I kid you not, local fire codes.

Somewhere in there, Rep. Hall yielded another five minutes, this time to California Republican Rep. Brian Bilbray, who expressed concern that among other things, the bill didn’t feature any realistic safeguards against monies evidently to come from HR 5116 being used to finance employment of illegal aliens.

Then more ninety second yields by Gordon and more pitching by Democrats.

Maybe a dozen of them had their minutes and a half, from Arizona, Texas, North Carolina, Wisconsin, New Mexico, New York, Illinois, Ohio and a couple from California.

To listen to them talk, all of America’s ills will be miraculously cured with the passage of HR 5116, there will be a permanent rainbow, birds will sing in the trees and all will be right with every American.

What I actually heard was a typical Democrat cram session — take a basic bill and invite every Democrat on the committee, in this case the Science and Technology Committee, to stick in whatever his or her Lah Dee Dah cause of the moment happens to be, until it’s impossible to figure out what the purpose of the legislation was to begin with.

I will heartily admit that I’d have gotten a lot more information out of watching Lucy reruns on another channel than I did out of the “debate”, as I came away having very little idea what the Democrats were talking about during the entire time; It sounded a lot to me like sales pitches rather than statesmanly/stateswomanly advancement of principled and considered thought.

Rest assured, whatever they finally pass and Obama signs will be yet another left wing blitz in their assault on our Constitution, on America and all our great nation stands for.