Who knew politics and relationships could relate so well?

Valentine’s Day is upon us, and much like all the girlfriends wait pondering their boyfriend’s plans for them on the holiday, we all wait, with a little less optimism, for what Congress and the Obama administration have in store for America this week.

This year’s Valentine’s Day season could prove to be as important to the new president’s relationship with America as it is to the common couple among us.

And the key component to America’s Valentine’s Day this year is the economy. However, it appears the newest stimulus package is set to make Obama and Congress look like the guy who bought his girlfriend those wilting carnations instead of the stargazer lilies she really wanted. Only in the political world that is code for giving America a stimulus package that is filled with more pork than the greasiest bacon omelet your mom ever made.

Obama soared into the White House waving the flag of change; however, experts everywhere have charged Congress with putting together a bill that is nothing more than part of an old political agenda. One writer for the Wall Street Journal even went as far as to say the bill was “ghost written by [Speaker of the House] Nancy Pelosi.”

With the large Democratic majority in the house at present, there is no longer as much of a need for compromise as their used to be, and while Obama has talked big about using bipartisan methods it appears his toughest opponent (if that is his true goal) may not be the Republicans. It may be the party that put him in the White House.

Articles have been splattered across the editorial pages of all the major papers this week about the stimulus. Articles about how it promotes the health care reforms Democrats, particularly Pelosi, have been trying to push through for years. That’s evident by the number of Republican votes the bill got when it was put to a vote on the House floor: zero. That’s not easy to do.

There are other reported complaints about how the stimulus does very little to “stimulate” since more of the money in the stimulus will be spent in 2011 than this year, according to Peggy Noonan in her editorial “Looking at the Times” this week in the Wall Street Journal.

New York Times columnist Robert Brooks chimed in as well, saying the stimulus was so big that it wouldn’t be able to do anything well.

Stuart M. Butler, vice president for domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation, agreed when consulted by the Times. He said, “What’s missing from the stimulus package? Certainly very little if you think spending as much as you can get away with on anything you can imagine will spur growth, which it won’t.”

The packaged stimulus bill, which was $819 billion when it traveled from the House to the Senate this week, inflated to over $900 billion before cuts were made to garner enough votes to get the bill passed.

The stimulus bill that was passed on from the House included a number of federal expenditures that led Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger to say the bill wasn’t an economic stimulus at all, but rather a “self stimulus.”

Henninger pointed out the bill included over $9 billion to go into the federal buildings fund among other money which was also given to convert buildings into high performance go-green buildings, $462 million to go to equipment construction for the Center for Disease Control, $75 million to the FBI for salary and expenses, and $427 million to go to construction of research facilities for the oceanic and atmospheric administration.

My personal favorite was an amendment made to section 2(3)(F) of the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act where under incentives for new jobs it cites that there is a credit to employ “disconnected youths.” A disconnected youth is described as someone who is “not readily employable by reason of lacking a sufficient number of basic skills.”

Yet when it appeared that there would have to be cuts made in spending in order for the bill to pass, over $40 billion dollars in state aid was cut and $20 billion for school construction was axed along with other things like the $9 billion given to transform the federal buildings.

Longwood is making financial cuts of $5 million dollars next year due to state requirements, holding back on hiring for almost all open positions at the school, facing rising students populations each year, and giving those students tuition hikes as a result, but when their backs are pushed up against the wall Congress would rather cut money from state aid that could go to these schools in favor of keeping it in their own federal programs. The problems don’t stop there either. Prince Edward County is facing a $1.7 billion cut to its budget as well.

Congress seems to have developed the mindset that we should simply hire all of the “disconnected youths” in America rather than actually spend our money in ways that could help educate them into “connected men.” It seems completely backwards. … That’s because it is.

Ideological policies are running this bill. All the go-green advocates, and nationalized health care promoters have taken their opinions and plowed them into a bill that was supposed to help stimulate the American economy, not help spend on the ideological issues supported by a party that has been suppressed by a president no longer in office.

One can understand why those in Congress are hoping to push these policies through with this bill. After a long time without control, those who now have it want to get as much done as they can while the country is scared for its socio-economic life.

Former president Franklin Roosevelt (who ironically formed the New Deal programs which many point to as the influence for this stimulus, but which many others have said did not do as much as is credited to it to get America out of the Great Depression) once said, “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.” His quote rings true. We should be afraid of how afraid Americans currently appear. When members of Congress are fighting for the passage of a bill based on the fear of what will happen if they do nothing and the fact that the country can’t go another day without help then we should all realize that’s how mistake happen. And those mistakes often come back to haunt Americans and administrations. Our most recent president can attest to that as much as any.

But wait, President Obama, this was going to be different? He promised changes from these political policies. He gave assurances to voters who put him in the White House that he would not give knee jerk reactions to issues and that Washington could not continue to operate as it had been. Unfortunately, those promises are beginning to sound like the boyfriend who promises to care a little more before escorting his lady to the Huddle House for a romantic Valentine’s Day grease burger. (No offense, Huddle House. At 3 a.m. during exam week those burgers hit the spot.)

What’s worse is that this bill may be hurting the generation of voters who had a large impact on getting Obama into office. The debt America will incur from this bill will be affecting the future generations most harshly, and “even if it succeeds,” as Director of Economic Studies at The Brookings Insitute William Gale wrote in the New York Times, “it will have made out over-consumption and over-borrowing problems worse than they already are.”

Clearly, there are problems on both sides of the party lines with this bill. It’s time Congress stopped pushing agendas, blaming past administrations and started dealing with real solutions on the table. Economists agree that both tax cuts and spending are needed in order to pass a stimulus that will be affective in helping Americans. The amount of each in the bill will always be up for debate between the parties, but anyone who is anyone would have to be worried about where the money in this bill is going.

Noonan summed up the bill best in a few words this week saying, “Nancy Pelosi served up old-style pork, Mr. Obama swallowed it.”

Guys get dumped by girlfriends for less. They become the next post on Theworstdateofmylife.com message board for presenting girlfriends with such a disappointing Valentine’s Day.

Who knew politics could be so related to relationships? I wonder what the repercussions will be for Obama and Congress if this stimulus is passed and proves to be what it clearly advertises.

“No, no. It’s not you, it’s me,” right? Let him down easy?

Not likely.

Clearly Valentine’s Day can make or break more than a romantic relationship.