Aside from rap music, fast food, bad sit-coms, and garbage, America no longer produces much of anything. Our industrial and manufacturing bases have been disassembled and our technological services have been outsourced.

Most of what we consume comes from overseas---telecommunication gadgets, textiles, furniture, toys, household appliances, automobiles and even the (non-fast) food we eat.

Moreover, America’s edge in education and innovation has dissipated. The poor condition of K-12 science and math education is well documented, and increasingly difficult to find an American student enrolled in graduate program in engineering or science at one of our own Universities.

Indeed, we are at a turning point in history. America faces an $11 trillion debt, an annual budget deficit of $1.2 trillion, a devastated dollar, crumbling infrastructure, two unwinnable wars, and a major recession that will get even worse.

Despite all this, President Obama’s economic stimulus plan was oppose by Republicans, who continue to attack any effort to address the crisis. Ironically, these same critics, have yet to demonstrate humility over their complicity in bringing about the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression or genuine empathy toward struggling Americans.

We have seen this before. In 1993, President Clinton was fighting for his own deficit reduction and economic stimulus package. It passed without a single Republican vote and over their warnings of doom. The bill helped launch seven years of record economic growth and four years of budget surpluses.

Republicans are within their right to dissent. Political opposition is an essential component of democracy. Look what happened, for example, during eight years of Republican control with no tolerance for debate or criticism, much less bipartisanship.

But Republicans today are acting less like an opposition party and more like an obstructionist party.

Opposition to everything except tax cuts is an economic position that has been utterly discredited and is not a solution to our problems. Our economy needs a lot of things including monies to develop new technologies, streamlined hospital recordkeeping, a new generation of schools, state fiscal relief, and clean energy.

Tax cuts for the wealthy do nothing to address these challenges.

Would capital gains tax cuts retrofit a bridge overdue for repairs or modernize a polluting and inefficient power plant? Are we to believe additional tax write-offs for the largest corporations would somehow bring broadband Internet across to classrooms?

Obviously, Republicans opposition is based, in part, on ideological disagreements about the role of government. Yet, governors of both political parties along with the nations’ mayors support the stimulus.. There is also a little ideological debate about federal infrastructure spending, which is the main thrust of the stimulus and produces the most "bang for the buck" in terms of job creation.

Another possibility is that, because so many moderate and independent-minded Republicans either retired or were purged by Bush/Cheney, the party is in the clutches of its radical wing who are out of touch. Their complaints about government spending are, after all, counter-intuitive, given that most towns and states have "shovel ready" project waiting to put people to work.

Even though Republican radio shock-jocks have said as much, it is difficult to imagine the other possible explanation---the "party of patriotism" wants America to fail!

As we now turn to the task of implementing the stimulus, Obama must continue his effort to forge bipartisanship, even if he encounters further opposition and contempt.