Some congressional Republicans who voted for a massive $700 Wall Street bailout, billions each for just a handful of banks and investment firms, are now trying to block a bailout for Main Street.

For example, Republican Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) urged his House Republican friends to vote yes for the Wall Street bailout last October. This time around, however, he corralled his much diminished caucus in unanimously opposing President Obama's economic recovery package, which experts estimate will create or save between 3 and 4 million jobs over the next two years.

Even moderate Republicans like Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-Mich.) are hard-pressed to explain their support for Wall Street but their refusal to help boost Main Street. This problem could pose a reelection problem for Ehlers, a Western Michigan member of the House whose demographically changing district voted for a Democratic presidential candidate for the time since 1964 when it handed Barack Obama a majority of its votes on November 4th.

Ehlers is explaining to his constituents that he opposes the president's economic recovery package because he is worried about high deficits. According to government data, Michigan, which has the highest unemployment rate in the nation, could see as many as 150,000 jobs saved or created as a result of the economic recovery package.

Further, Ehlers, and dozens of other Republican members of the House who voted for the Wall Street bailout bill, failed to put forward the same reservations about deficit spending last fall, despite knowing full well that the Wall Street package would lead directly to a $1 trillion federal deficit.

Despite winning easily in 2008, Ehlers, and other Republican members of the House who made a similar decision to side with bankers and vote against Main Street, could face stiff primary challenges and tougher general elections in what were once considered safe Republican seats.

If one were to ride the hypocrisy train back into the near past, one could probably dredge up voting records of Republican House members of people like Ehlers who refused to take a stand against any of the Bush administration budgets that wiped out a surplus in 2001 to explode the national debt to more than $11 trillion.

Now Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kent.), who also pressed for Republican votes in 2008 for the Wall Street bailout, has threatened to filibuster the economic recovery package. McConnell wants more tax cuts for the wealthy and less financing for job-creating programs.

The Republican political calculation, steeped in a discredited 'trickle-down' economic ideology, comes as even worse economic news alarms the country. Government data revealed earlier last week that the whole economy (GDP) shrank by almost four percent in the final three months of 2008, and people seeking unemployment benefits stood at record numbers. Business investments collapsed by 19 percent over the same period. Consumer spending shrank at a record pace.

Experts are predicting, that the economy will shrink by between an additional 4.5 and 5.5 percent in the first quarter in 2009.

If Republican opposition is overcome and the president's economic recovery package is put in place, the Congressional Budget Office estimates, the economy will likely grow twice as fast and see about 1 million of additional lost jobs in 2009 than without it. The differences in 2010, when the most jobs will be created or saved, would be even more dramatic.

If Republicans are concerned about long-term issues like the federal deficit and the national debt, they should work with Democrats in a bipartisan way to eliminate the Bush tax cuts for the rich, impose windfall profits taxes on oil companies, promote federal investments in new productive industries in renewable energy here in the US, support a proposed 10 percent cut in the Pentagon budget, bring the war in Iraq to a close sooner rather than later, rethink the need for an expanded (or any) military occupation in Afghanistan, and call to account the Wall Street players who are wasting taxpayer dollars with expensive vacations, corporate jets, huge executive bonuses, and stockholder dividends. Even further, the waste and expense created by the patchwork health care system (as broken as it is) could be remedied and billions saved if a national system of universal health care were put in place.

These are things Congress can work on in a bipartisan way now to save taxpayer dollars and help working families face the tough economic times that lie ahead.

It could happen.