Via TPM comes this great move by Claire McCaskill which every House and Senate Democrat should emulate as quickly as possible.
Senator McCaskill penned a letter to the MO GOP in which she essentially said (paraphrasing), "If you hate the stimulus so much, give it back":
I pay close attention to what is happening in Missouri and Jefferson City. I have noticed that you and many of your colleagues have been highly critical of some of the emergency spending that has gone on since the financial meltdown in September 2008
Then it gets good:
You are about to use almost a billion dollars in stimulus dollars in your current budgeting process. Please advise me as soon as possible what cuts you would recommend to your committees and the rest of the legislature to make up for these funds if we decided to rescind the unspent stimulus funds.
I love it. Coming on the heels of the Washington Times piece which revealed the hypocrisy of so many GOPers when it comes to stimulus dollars, there should be a concerted and organized effort by the Democrats to make this hypocrisy apparent to the wider public:
McCaskill gets even stricter, going into the past:
I'm aware that you will have spent $1.5 billion in stimulus funds by July. How was that money allocated? Did it go to education, economic development, corrections or other needs of the state? I'm also aware that you are spending $625 million of additional highway and transportation money that comes from the stimulus.
This letter is a work of political gold, and every Dem should be mining it as campaign season gears up in 2010. But more importantly, very few people will hear about this one individual effort on McCaskill's part. But if combined with many other Dems, then it will make an impact.
Let's hope we see a lot more of this: "Hey GOP, if you hate the stimulus so much, give it back!"