Legislators need to read long appropriation bills before voting on them
Guess who read the stimulus bill before voting on it? Answer: no one! Congress just passed the 1,000-page, $787 billion stimulus bill. It is the most expensive piece of legislation in our country’s history, and it looks like very few, if any, of the senators and representatives even read it before they voted on it. To make matters worse, the people didn’t have a chance to look at it, either. By routinely failing to read what they are voting on, members of both houses of Congress have given the American people many excessively long, sometimes incomprehensible and burdensome laws. It has allowed unpopular measures, earmarks, pork-barrel amendments or hidden provisions for special interests to be attached to very popular legislation that few in Congress would be willing to oppose publicly. We need a “Read the Bills Act” requiring legislation to be publicly available for review by the people, which would also require that each legislator certify that they have read and understood the bill — including any amendments — before voting on it. A “Read the Bills Act” would not only eliminate a lot of poor legislation, it would also encourage elected representatives to propose legislation that is brief, understandable and to the point. The openness of the process would help reduce, or possibly even eliminate, the current practice of adding billions of dollars of unrelated pork-barrel amendments to must-pass budget measures and other key legislation.
John, the real truth is that the legislatures don't care about what's in the large bills they pass as long as there's something in there for their area to insure that they get elected. The taxpayer isn't even a consideration to these arrogant lawmakers who believe that they're jobs are secure no matter what they do.
It is disgraceful. They say that a government is a reflection of it's people. So it clearly appears that the majority of the nation does not mind paying billions of dollars for pork. Ya know, saving lighthouses and saving the polar bear. The majority of the nation wants big government, universal health care, control of the banks. People have become worse than sheople...they have become BRAINLESS IDIOTS!!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Barack Obama speaks of how he wishes to halve the federal deficit and reduce wasteful spending. Sounds great, but the reality of his actions tell a different story. Eight hundred billion dollars for a pork-filled stimulus that a disturbingly large number of economists say won’t work. Four hundred billion dollars for an omnibus spending bill with over 9,000 earmarks. Billions for bailing out people who bought houses they couldn’t afford. Six hundred thirty-four billion dollars for overbearing health care plans. Even if you ignore the rights violations inherent in any government-run health care system, that figure alone should give you pause. Obama is looking to spend nearly $4 trillion in fiscal year 2010 and run a $1.75 trillion defi cit. This is not a reduction of the deficit, this is a significant expansion using money we don’t have. Then there are the side bonuses. Provisions hidden in the stimulus bill have gutted the welfare reforms of the mid-1990s, so we have another generation of government dependents to look forward to. The Bush tax cuts will be allowed to lapse, so we can all look forward to more of the money we earned and worked for going into the pockets of the politicians who helped create this mess. Military spending is to be cut, even though we’re at war with an enemy whose stated goal is our extermination. If any of these slaps to the face brought about an elimination of the deficit, then they might at least merit some discussion. But they don’t. We end up paying more, subsidizing the failure and bad behavior of others, all while being made more vulnerable to an increasingly deadly world. No wonder these “tea party” tax protests are springing up all over the country. We’re being led by people with no conception of functional economics.
THE PRESIDENT'S AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT PLAN
With each passing day, families across America are watching their bills pile up and their savings disappear.
President Obama believes that if we do not act quickly, this recession could linger for years – and America could lose the competitive edge that has served as the foundation for our strength and standing in the world.
That's why the President has put forth an American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan that will jumpstart job creation and long-term growth by:
Doubling the production of alternative energy in the next three years. Modernizing more than 75% of federal buildings and improve the energy efficiency of two million American homes, saving consumers and taxpayers billions on our energy bills. Making the immediate investments necessary to ensure that within five years, all of America’s medical records are computerized. Equipping tens of thousands of schools, community colleges, and public universities with 21st century classrooms, labs, and libraries. Expanding broadband across America, so that a small business in a rural town can connect and compete with their counterparts anywhere in the world. Investing in the science, research, and technology that will lead to new medical breakthroughs, new discoveries, and entire new industries. On January 8th, 2009 -- less than two weeks before taking office -- President Obama spoke on the need for urgent action on his American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan to save or create over 3 million jobs while investing in priorities like health care, energy, and education that will jumpstart economic growth. The plan represents not just a new policy, but a new approach to meeting our most urgent challenges.
Create a crisis to make the sheeple believe what you want them to believe even if it is a lie to get all the pork filled projects passed and all the liberals agenda enacted that couldn't be passed in the last 30 years.
I believe Raegan once said............... 'Conservatives believe every day is the 4th of July, while Democrats think every day is April 15th.'
The only thing is that these days, the conservs and reps don't practice what they preach. They spend and tax just like the dems.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Charles Krauthammer Obama’s trying to pull a fast one
Charles Krauthammer is a nationally syndicated columnist.
Forget the pork. Forget the waste. Forget the 8,570 earmarks in a bill supported by a president who poses as the scourge of earmarks. Forget the “$2 trillion in savings” that “we have already identified,” $1.6 trillion of which President Obama’s budget director later admits is the “savings” of not continuing the surge in Iraq until 2019 — 11 years after George Bush ended it and eight years after even Bush would have had us out of Iraq completely. Forget all of this. This is run-of-themill budget trickery. True, Obama’s tricks come festooned with strings of zeros tacked onto the end. But that’s a matter of scale, not principle. All presidents do that. But few undertake the kind of brazen deception at the heart of Obama’s radically transformative economic plan, a rhetorical sleight of hand so smoothly offered that few noticed. The logic of Obama’s address to Congress went like this: “Our economy did not fall into decline overnight,” he averred. Indeed, it all began before the housing crisis. What did we do wrong? We are paying for past sins in three principal areas: energy, health care, and education — importing too much oil and not finding new sources of energy (as in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf?), not reforming health care, and tolerating too many bad schools. The “day of reckoning” has now arrived. And because “it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we’ll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament,” Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal. Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people. At the very center of our economic near-depression is a credit bubble, a housing collapse and a systemic failure of the entire banking system. One can come up with a host of causes: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pushed by Washington (and greed) into improvident loans, corrupted bond-ratings agencies, insufficient regulation of new and exotic debt instruments, the easy money policy of Alan Greenspan’s Fed, irresponsible bankers pushing (and then unloading in packaged loan instruments) highly dubious mortgages, greedy house-flippers, deceitful homebuyers. The list is long. But the list of causes of the collapse of the financial system does not include the absence of universal health care, let alone of computerized medical records. Nor the absence of an industrykilling cap-and-trade carbon levy. Nor the lack of college graduates. Indeed, one could perversely make the case that, if anything, the proliferation of overeducated, Gucciwearing, smart-a** MBAs inventing ever more sophisticated and opaque mathematical models and debt instruments helped get us into this credit catastrophe in the first place. And yet with our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy. Four months after winning the election, six weeks after his swearing in, Obama has yet to unveil a plan to deal with the banking crisis. What’s going on? “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” said Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. “This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.” Things. Now we know what they are. The markets’ recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions — the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic — for enacting his “Big Bang” agenda to federalize and/or socialize health care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society. Clever politics, but intellectually dishonest to the core. Health, education and energy — worthy and weighty as they may be — are not the cause of our financial collapse. And they are not the cure. The fraudulent claim ...................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00701
Thought you would all enjoy a laugh in the middle of this "Stimulus" nightmare. This is The Long View, a regular feature in National Review magazine by Rob Long. He is hysterical (and once a screenwriter for the "Cheers" series).
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EU presidency: US economic plans 'a way to hell' Czech premier, currently European Union president, calls US economic measures 'a way to hell' Raf Casert, Associated Press Writer Wednesday March 25, 2009, 7:17 am EDT Buzz up! Print STRASBOURG, France (AP) -- A top European Union politician on Wednesday slammed U.S. plans to spend its way out of recession as "a way to hell."
Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, whose country currently holds the EU presidency, told the European Parliament that President Barack Obama's massive stimulus package and banking bailout "will undermine the stability of the global financial market."
A day after his government collapsed because of a parliamentary vote of no-confidence, Topolanek took the EU presidency on a collision course with Washington over how to deal with the global economic recession.
Most European leaders favor tighter financial regulation, while the U.S. has been pushing for larger economic stimulus plans.
Topolanek's comments are the strongest criticism so far from a European leader as the 27-nation bloc bristles from recent U.S. criticism that it is not spending enough to stimulate demand.
They also pave the way for a stormy summit next week in London between leaders of the Group of 20 industrialized countries.
The host of the summit, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, praised Obama on Tuesday for his willingness to work with Europe on reforming the global economy in the run-up to the G-20 summit.
The United States plans to spend heavily to try and lift its economy out of recession with a $787 billion economic stimulus plan of tax rebates, health and welfare benefits, as well as extra energy and infrastructure spending.
To encourage banks to lend again, the government will also pump $1 trillion into the financial system by buying up treasury bonds and mortgage securities in an effort to clear some of the "toxic assets" -- devalued and untradeable assets -- from banks' balance sheets.
Topolanek bluntly said that "the United States did not take the right path.".
He slammed the U.S.' widening budget deficit and protectionist trade measures -- such as the "Buy America" -- and said that "all of these steps, these combinations and permanency is the way to hell."
"We need to read the history books and the lessons of history and the biggest success of the (EU) is the refusal to go this way," he said.
"Americans will need liquidity to finance all their measures and they will balance this with the sale of their bonds but this will undermine the stability of the global financial market," said Topolanek.
Obama insisted Tuesday that his massive budget proposal is moving the nation down the right path and will help the ailing economy grow again. "This budget is inseparable from this recovery," he said, "because it is what lays the foundation for a secure and lasting prosperity."
Obama also claimed early progress in his aggressive campaign to lead the United States out of its worst economic crisis in 70 years and declared that despite obstacles ahead, the U.S. is "moving in the right direction."
U.S. May Oust CEOs at Banks Needing ‘Exceptional’ Aid (Update1) Share | Email | Print | A A A
By Jesse Westbrook
April 5 (Bloomberg) -- Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said he’s prepared to oust the senior management and boards of directors at banks that require “exceptional” assistance from the U.S. government.
“If in the future, banks need exceptional assistance in order to get through this, then we will make sure that assistance comes,” while ensuring taxpayers are protected, Geithner said today in an interview on the CBS “Face the Nation” program. “Where that requires a change in management and the board, then we will do that.”
Geithner noted that American International Group Inc., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had their chief executives removed after it became clear the companies couldn’t survive without government rescues. The Treasury is reviewing how much capital the biggest U.S. financial companies need in order to endure a severe economic downturn.
“Where we’ve had to do exceptional things,” the government has replaced management and boards of directors, Geithner said.
Geithner’s pledge comes as signs emerge that the world economy may be stabilizing. Confidence among U.S. consumers climbed last month from the lowest level on record, according to the Conference Board. U.K. house prices rose in March for the first time since October 2007, while Chinese manufacturing increased, reports last week showed.
Compensation Limits
The Treasury secretary pledged to enforce congressional legislation that limits pay at companies receiving government loans. Geithner said the Obama administration has no intention of letting banks get around the rules.
“Our obligation is to apply the laws that Congress just passed,” he said. “We want the American taxpayer’s assistance going to generate greater lending, not providing excess compensation.”
Treasury last month proposed a public-private partnership to spur investors to buy -- and banks to sell -- the illiquid real estate assets clogging lenders’ books. The program relies on financing from the Federal Reserve and debt guarantees from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and it could use up to $100 billion from the government’s bank-rescue fund.
Geithner, responding to a question about whether rules approved by the Financial Accounting Standards Board last week may deter banks from participating, said Treasury will make sure companies do what’s needed to clean up their balance sheets.
‘Do What’s Necessary’
“We will do what’s necessary to make sure our banking system emerges out of this stronger,” he said. He declined to say whether Treasury will force banks to sell assets.
Norwalk, Connecticut-based FASB voted on April 2 to let banks use “significant” judgment in gauging how much securities are worth. Richard Dietrich, an accounting professor at Ohio State University, said the change may discourage financial companies from selling securities because it may allow them to avoid writing down the value of their holdings.
Geithner, who accompanied President Barack Obama to London last week for the meeting of the Group of 20 policy makers, also said the administration will “keep acting as forcefully as we can” to pull the nation out of a recession.
At the summit, the world leaders called for tougher oversight of hedge funds, executive pay, credit-rating firms and derivatives trading. They also boosted funding for the International Monetary Fund, increasing its resources to $1 trillion.
‘Turning Point’
Obama called the event “historic” and predicted it will be a “turning point” for economic recovery across the world.
Geithner is pushing for an overhaul of financial rules that calls for putting big hedge funds and private-equity funds under stricter federal supervision, as well as regulating derivatives markets. He’s also seeking new powers for the government to seize and wind down nonbank financial companies whose size poses threats to the stability of the financial system.
The World Bank is warning of an “unemployment crisis,” and the U.S. lost 663,000 jobs in March, the Labor Department said April 3. The jobless rate jumped to 8.5 percent, the highest level since 1983.
Banks and financial institutions worldwide have reported more than $1.2 trillion in credit losses and writedowns. Many of those stemmed from mortgage-related investments that declined with the collapse in the U.S. housing market.
"While Foreign Terrorists were plotting to murder and maim using homemade bombs in Boston, Democrap officials in Washington DC, Albany and here were busy watching ME and other law abiding American Citizens who are gun owners and taxpayers, in an effort to blame the nation's lack of security on US so that they could have a political scapegoat."
Ya know...it just makes me laugh. The government is going to make sure that the taxpayer's money is being spend the way it was intended? Like there is no fraud or mis-use of welfare monies? Like there is no fraud or mis-use of government subsidized mortgages? Like there is no mis-use with created patronage jobs? Like there is no medicare fraud? No SSI fraud? ....and the list goes on....
Well folks, looks like we have the wolf watching the taxpayer's hen house!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Logged
When is this guy resigning in disgrace? 
