Posts Tagged ‘Stimulus’

Omnibus Passes with a Rift and a Promise

Politics | Posted by C.C.Mitchell
Mar 11 2009
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The president signed the Omnibus Spending Bill today that President Bush had left hanging and unfinished. The 2008 budget is now set by the stroke of President Obamas’ pen. The controversial bill has already created a rift inside the Democrat Party between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

The rift was created by a roll reversing statement from Speaker Pelosi that any changes to the omnibus bill would be unacceptable. Historically, the procedure is that The Senate makes the changes to bills to reconcile them with The House of Representatives.

While the Senate debated the elimination of an automatic pay raise for themselves Reid said there could be no changes to the bill or Pelosi would pull the plug.

According to The Christian Science Monitor, several spending bills were purposely held up until after the election under the assumption that they would more easily pass once the democrats held even more seats in Congress The CSM stated:

Last year, Congress delayed voting on 9 of 12 spending bills, thinking it would be easier to reach a consensus this year - with Democrats now holding a larger majority in both houses of Congress.

Yet it remained a tough slog for the bill, which has been criticized as filled with pork. Along with some 8,500 member projects, the bill raises spending for many agencies some 10 percent above 2008 levels.

According to The Heritage Foundation, these 8500+ “member projects”,why dont they just call them what they are earmarks,  total nearly $20 billion.  So much for going line- by-line through bills to eliminate government waste. “The future demands that we operate in a different way than we have in the past, so let there be no doubt: this piece of legislation must mark an end to the old way of doing business, and the beginning of a new era of responsibility and accountability that the American people have every right to expect and to demand.” These are President Obamas’ words I hope he makes good on them; though it would be a day late and a dollar short (no pun intended), as far as I’m concerned. Remember the$787 billion Stimulus Bill?

EARMARK REFORM?

President Obama at the time of the bill signing also unveiled the key components of an anti-earmark initiative as follows:

  1. A requirement that earmarks be open to public scrutiny
  2. That no earmark ever be traded for political favors (good luck policing that!)
  3. That earmarks aimed at a for-profit private company should be subject to the same competitive bidding requirements as other federal contracts.

Here are the provisions I would like to see added:

  1. A requirement that no one votes on a bill of any sort until they’ve read the entire piece of legislation.(the omnibus budget for 2008 was 3417 pages)
  2. No longer will Congress vote themselves an automatic pay raise.
  3. Congress will take a pay cut equal in percentage to those of budgetary spending overages.

The president talked the talk but will he walk the walk?

Already the biggest spender of any president in history and a big getter of pork in his brief time as a senator Pr. Obamas track record doesn’t indicate that he will.

Only time will tell, but I’m not holding my breath.

It’s a Cracked World

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Jobs for Illegals Funded By Stimulus Plan

Politics | Posted by C.C.Mitchell
Mar 09 2009

It looks like another set back for the American Economy, an estimated 300,000 construction jobs funded by the Stimulus Package will go to illegal aliens. The House version of the bill originally called for verification of citizenship of any one to be employed by Stimulus funding. Before the House and Senate versions of the bill were  reconciled to one another this provision was removed by Democrat leaders from both chambers of Congress and The White House.

Construcion Jobs in America

Construction Jobs in America

It is believed that The Big Three: President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Senate majority leader Harry Reid, were pandering to amnesty activists by handing stimulus money to illegals in the form of jobs.

The provision would have required that the names of stimulus workers employed by stimulus funding be sent through “E-verify” a system used to quickly verify legitimate citizenship and employment eligibility. The plan built be The Department of Homeland Security and The Social Security Administration is the quickest and most accurate means to to determine this.

The 300,000 estimated jobs calculation is based on studies by the Census Bureau. These Studies show that 15% of all construction workers in the United States are illegal aliens. When this figure is applied to the 2 million jobs expected to be produced from the stimulus bill, 300,000 jobs is the outcome. These figures could be inflated by fluctuations in the illegals’ population in certain states.

Now we see why President Obama wants to control the Census Bureau.

To add insult to economic injury a sizable portion of income earned by illegals is sent back to their families in their country of origin, making that money no longer available to flow through the American economy. An estimated $22 billion a year is sent back to Mexico  in remittances.

I thought to purpose of spending nearly $800 billion was to return provide jobs for Americans. But instead it’s going to people who do not belong in our country courtesy of the American Taxpayers! Any one with two brain cells to rub together can see this is outright criminal.

Whats next? Giving them vacated Senate seats? I better not give them any ideas.

Figures from various agencies claim around 12 million illegals work in The United States. If 300,000 of them are being paid from Taxpayers’ stimulus dollars then Barack Obamas’ Stimulus bill is curing their unemployment rate better than ours.

What do we have to gain from removing that provision from the stimulus bill?

What were they thinking when the E-verify requirement was taken out of the bill?

Where were the Republicans when this took place and why are we just now hearing about it?

Another example of a Cracked World.

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Stimulus - The 5th Basic Food Group

Politics | Posted by C.C.Mitchell
Feb 14 2009

The stimulus bill, not surprisingly, passed both houses of Congress. I say not surprisingly because our congress is filled with liberal democrats who don’t know how to do anything but tax and spend. Now the White House is home to one of the biggest pork spenders of recent years. President Obama was a big spender during his short lived career as a senator. Hillary Clinton our new Secretary of State is also very high on that list of pork addicts.

The newest pork bi-product of date is a tasty  new meat called “Stimulus”. Obviously high in cholesterol and fat its going to cause many a heart attack in the months to come once people discover what we’ve all been signed onto.

The bill that The House submitted contains increases in discretionary spending by $317 billion; an increase of over 80%. That’s the largest single year increase in the history of our government. And mandatory spending increased by $308 billion for an increase of over 20%.  The vast portions of this spending will not create jobs but will eliminate jobs. Thats right ELIMINATE JOBS! Many of the advancements in technology that the Stimulus bill calls for will end hundreds possibly thousands of jobs.

A prime example of this was spelled out by Carl Rove, a FoxNews contributor. Rove pointed out very clearly that $20 billion of the bill goes for Health Information Technology, this will streamline the process eliminating the need for data entry clerks, receptionists and other hopital office staff.

Another $44 million is to be spent on repairing agricultural buildings in Washington, this would produce a few construction jobs but these are not stable jobs and are here today and gone tomorrow.

In other words lets spend almost $800 billion on government and hope it creates jobs that pay for it all. This is a stupid bill with no hope of accomplishing anything but mortgaging the futures of our children and grand children.

This leap towards socialism is a giant leap backward for our social structure. The false impression that an increase in government spending will create jobs and a stronger economy holds no water or every socialist economic system in Europe would be enjoying a superior performance to ours. They are not. America has been the economic juggernaut of the world for well over a century because we’re not socialists.

Obamas’ staff is proving to be at a loss for a means to explain how this spending debacle is going to save the economy and create jobs. They continually write it off to, “If we don’t do something now things will get worse”, this is not a solution this is a scare tactic.

Sign it or else does not justify the action.

If the Republicans used this kind of tactic they would be accused of being dictators and impeachment proceedings would commence. In fact I see this as a HUGE opportunity for the Republicans, none of them voted for it in The House, not one. And only 3 (soon to be unemployed) republicans in the Senate voted for this mess.

There is no one for the Democrats to blame this on. If it fails it is squarely on their shoulders. I realize that much of this bill was penned by House Speaker Nancey Pelosi, not Barrack Obama, perhaps this will be one of the Presidents bigger mistakes of his presidencey. Although he has defended the controversial bill from the get go so maybe The House Speaker had more direction from The President than previously believed.

Quite clearly, who ever wrote the bill, the President has an appetite for Pork and has now declared it the 5th basic food group.

Meats, Dairy, Grains, Fruits and Vegetables - and Stimulus?

Quite clearly, Its a Cracked World!

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Stimulus Gets the Green Light

Economics, Politics | Posted by C.C.Mitchell
Feb 07 2009

Well,  they finally did it. Much to the GOPs dismay President Obamas Economic Stimulus package has enough votes to move for a final action to pass the bill through the senate. To do so the Democrats that wanted the passage of the bill needed a hand full of Republicans to sign on and they got them.

Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins both republicans from Maine and Arlin Specter from Pennsylvania, gave the green light for the over-bloated spending package the GOP has been fighting to stop for weeks now. In doing so they angered many fellow republicans and their constituents.

This shows a lack of solidarity among the republican base. So many Americans are infuriated by the approval of the bill they may jump ship on the party in search of real conservatives. The republicans had the chance to be reborn in the failure of the controversial spending plan but failed to come together when it mattered the most. I guess I was wrong about the spine I thought they were growing. Caving to the Stimulus plan with the amount of pork it contains goes against the core republican values of capitalism.

The stand they took in abandoning their party and the American people they are supposed to be serving, the citizens who voted them in to office, could prove to be the end of their careers. Any one who votes republican (i.e. their constituents), will remember this day of economic infamy. Come next election they will be easily challenged for their senate seats by any one who is willing to exploit their turncoat position on this pork bill.

Susan Collins defended her decision to brake ranks with the republicans saying, “I hope they will look at the fact that we were able to cut $110 billion of unnecessary spending from this bill. I think that’s a good accomplishment.”

Nice try Suzy but you forget that most of us can do simple math. $800 billion from the  taxpayers most of which has no hope of creating lasting jobs in the private sector. Government spending on infrastructure will eventually come to an end than so will the jobs that came with it. $800 billion to create 3 million jobs. That’s money well spent, over $257,000 per job. How much will these jobs pay? We all know it’ll be a small fraction of that quarter of a million dollars.

The balance is pork.

So What does Pork Look Like?

Here is an excerpt of the 700 page document: Title VI, Financial Services and General Government, says that “not less than $6,000,000,000 shall be used for construction, repair, and alteration of Federal buildings.”

Another example of  lard courtesy of Daniel Henninger of The Wall Street Journal: The House wants to amend Section 2(3)(F) of the Longshore and Harbor Workers’ Compensation Act, which will permit payments to guys employed to repair “recreational vessels.” Under Incentives for New Jobs, we find a credit to employ what the bill calls “disconnected youths,” defined as “not readily employable by reason of lacking a sufficient number of basic skills.”

Translation — Lets pay guys to build and fix Yachts with Tax dollars. And Lest pay people who are deemed to be Not Readily Employable with the peoples Tax dollars.

One thing is for sure, there is a lot of WIENER running around Congress these days.

The passage of the Pork package is a sign of new times in Washington; And costly ones at that. The stimulus (if you can stand to call it that), gets the green light paving the way for reckless spending on everything from A to Z. But not to fear Massachusetts Senator John F. Kerry says its only 60% spending and 40% tax cuts.

Thanks Senator I’m sure now I’ll sleep better in this Cracked World!

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